Focus on Arctic startups

Written by Cassandra Myhre .-

BAN Arctic

For the past two months, Business Angels Norway (BAN) together with KUPA, SpareBank 1 NordNorge, Siva Partner and Innovation Norway collaborated on a project to promote the North Norwegian startup ecosystem.

About the program

There were over 60 investors who attended the first session, where the opening night was lead by our lead angels Åsmund Johan Mandal and Jørn Lein-Mathisen. They spoke about their journey as angel investors and the basics of startup screening.

During the second session, 11 startups from this year’s Arctic Accelerator pitched their idea to all the participating investors in BAN Arctic. The investors, together with our lead angel, evaluated the startups during the third session and chose their favourite 5.

The fourth session was a collaboration between our legal partners Advokatfirmaet Tveter og Kløvfjell and a professional business developer, Dima Prisikar. They spoke about due diligence and valuation respectively, which gave the investors a more in-depth understanding of how to evaluate a startup. The participants where thereafter divided into five groups where they each were assigned a startup, which they had to evaluate for the last fifth session before demo day.

During the fifth session, the groups presented their findings, where they chose top 3 startups. These were Lifeness, Gobmi/Ghost and Safeplan.

Top 3 startups

The top 3 startups is a great example of how diversification is an important aspect for investors. Lifeness is a cloud-based medical platform that makes it easier to give people with obesity and lifestyle diseases closer follow-up. Gobmi/Ghost is a Sami-inspired clothing brand where the desolate plateau in the north and the urban city life in the south meet while Safeplan distributes critical information about the scene of the accident to the emergency services before they arrive at the scene of the accident. The three startups work in very different fields, yet they were all evaluated to be equally good. Part of an investor’s success will depend on portfolio diversification.

Winners of Arctic Accelerator 2021

Arctic Accelerator is a North-Norwegian accelerator program, initiated by KUPA and financed by Lundin Foundation, Innovation Norway, Samfunnsløftet of Sparebank 1 Nord-Norge and SIVA. The program is particularly focused on scalable startups and business ideas in the north Norwegian region.

The Arctic Accelerator 2021 together with BAN Norway, had a demo day on 3rd of June, 2021, where all the startups had one more chance to showcase their ideas. A jury compiled of specialists and the participating investors once again voted for their favourites. Most of the investors participated in all of the BAN Arctic courses, and therefore had enough knowledge on startup valuation and due diligence.

The top 3 winners of Arctic accelerator 2021 were no 1. Lifeness with the reason being that it was compiled of a very competent team with an evidence based solution oriented towards a global market. The 2nd place went to Unifractal, an AR-powered micro-training platform, offering users in complex technical environments support and quick answers to key questions and issues, and the 3rd one went to Akti Opplevelser which is a platform where companies that offer tourist attractions in North of Norway give last minute tickets for a cheaper price to the local community. These companies will received 125,000NOK, 75,000NOK and 50,000NOK respectively.

If your startup is located in north of Norway and is interested in participating in next year’s Arctic Accelerator, you can find more information here: https://www.arcticaccelerator.no

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