The journey takes albeit only 14 minutes by tube from Waterloo station to Canary Wharf station, but it almost feels like a journey through at least one century, maybe two.
You start in the familiar traditional London and ends up in the most modern “new” London.
One of London’s most prominent skyscrapers – and the second highest – stands here, Canada Square One, the one with the pyramid on top.
It is thus here, up in the floors, it happens. A new Silicon Valley in London.
In 39-floor Level39, a kind of nirvana for startup businesses.
Here sits many of the companies we may come to talk about the future, here they make themselves ready for investors , here you may complete their dreams.
Ruger on Norwegian ideas
The list of entrepreneurs who have applied for membership in Level39 is mile long, 800 managed to apply for a place before they had to say stop for a while. Of them have received 150 workplace in the coveted floor. A couple of them are Norwegian, including company Penetrace.
– It really is a sense of having ten exams at once, says founder and CEO Henning Tunsli about being Level39.
Penetrace have brief developed a software that measures what companies get in return for advertising their investments. Not what the advertising industry says you can earn, but what you actually earn on advertising.
Until recently, Norway and the Nordic countries have been the focus area, but now wish Tunsli bigger playground.
– There is a great potential there, and the interesting thing is that when you settle in London, so it is not an establishment in the UK, but in Europe. The companies are international, and the boundaries are not there anymore, he said.
Norwegian plastic adventure ready for the world
The other Norwegian company that has gained a foothold in the highly exclusive floor is Thin Film Electronics, an established and listed company in Norway, but with international ambitions.
The second is Penetrace and Henning Tunsli, specializing in technology-based advertising analysis. Photo: Espen Aas / NRK
Thin Film Electronics and Davor P. Sutja is one of two Norwegian companies that have gained access to Level 39. Photo: Espen Aas / NRK
The company is working to replace expensive electronics solutions today are based on silicon, discount electronics, based on plastic.
CEO Davor Peter Sutja demonstrates willing to roll out a huge plastic roll full of barcodes which according to him can put both circuits and memory at the very most, “Internet of things” as it is called.
– Correct information at the right time, not only large amounts of it, but precise information you can act on summarizes he eagerly.
Thin Films technology will make it possible to place the electronics on more or less everything in the home and outside, because the costs will be dramatically lower than today.
The milk in the fridge can tell that the expiration date approaches, the cheese can tell that it is in the wrong temperature and so on. With current solutions are limited technology of computers, phones, cars and other høykostprodukter.
Norwegian state aid success exploration
The two Norwegian companies have not come here without any help. Innovation Norway has through its London office helped them on their way with contacts and funds.
Innovation Norway’s new CEO Anita Krohn Traaseth is currently on a kind of inspection tour to see what all the billions used and now tour reached London and the companies that may be involved in creating what we will live after oil.
– We manage between 27 and 28 billion, and the measuring what we do, we come to to be even better in the future. But we must also remember that we are in the business of “failures,” says Traaseth.
– We know that 75-80 percent of the companies we support, they’re not going to live the next five years. That is why we exist, to take the risks the private market did not dare take in, she said.
On the journey through Level39 takes Traaseth eager photos with your mobile phone, ask questions and record answers. This is one of Europe’s most high tech places, in a very short time, many drawn towards Canary Wharf area of East London to take part in what is happening here.
Looking for those with the highest potential
Although Innovation Norway must assume that many of the companies they provide starting help does not come on, there are stately with them that creates growth and earnings. In this environment the way be short of success.
As the guide has “innovation manager” man who largely decide who gets to be here or not, Eric van der Klej, Level39s boss.
A very energetic gentleman who at one moment demonstrates how their super-smart coffee machine controlled from a tablet, then showcase an ultramodern sleep pod (!) where people can find the perfect sleep for themselves. (See picture of sleep-pod’en in the picture gallery.) In a furious pace blaring through his premises and tries to explain everything that is produced and conceivably out.
Eric van der Klej is the man who decides who is allowed to enter Level 39. Here with the popular cake clock each afternoon alerts 150 entrepreneurial companies that it is freshly baked cakes to get. Photo: Espen Aas / NRK
The most important time of the day is still not as high tech, it’s 15 o’clock where he rings a little bell, then served piping hot cookies to entrepreneurs.
There is such a sacred time that is as far as he dare demonstrate bell for us.
– What we are doing here is to speed up the startup companies with the highest potential to make them so successful as possible, he said eagerly.
– How do you pick out the right companies?
– Carefully, he laughs and smiles. But adds that entrepreneurs must have something to show off, a prototype. They can not just come up with an idea. Investors need to know what kind of products they put money in.
“Monetary helpers”
In the same building there namely also those who will invest in what you believe may be something that meets the founders and considering their ideas. For example Mattias Ljungman company Atomico.
Ljungman and Atomico lives by investing in promising technology companies worldwide, and Ljungman hoping to sniff out new successes in London. One of the partners founded his in his time Skype, now they look forward into the future.
– How do you pick out the right companies, and you do it? NRK will know.
– I think we do, says Ljungman and lists a number of companies, both in Scandinavia and beyond as Atomico has invested in.
– The most important entrepreneurial companies is that they are trying to develop the current technology, taking it into the next generation and strive to become a leader in the selected area. It’s tough to get to, he adds.
(The article continues below.)
A separate so-called ‘søvnpod’ where hardworking entrepreneurs can take a power nap. They choose a color that gives a subdued light inside the pod.
Those who have survived
Three floors up in the iconic skyscraper, there Level42, who has nothing with the British funkpopgruppen 80s to do. Where holding companies that have managed to evolve into.
Many thence both helps and invests in companies three floors further down. One of them is Bill Chute, director of a company by the name Acadiant while he operates as a mentor for startup companies.
While Bill Chute, who has experience in both the financial and technology companies, helping startup companies to understand how large investors think. Photo: Espen Aas / NRK
Swedish Mattias Ljungman lives by discovering success companies. Photo: Espen Aas / NRK – Because I have a lot of experience from the financial world, I help young companies to understand how to communicate with the major investors, I can “translate” the language for them.
– I help them to behave like a more established company, explains Chute.
– How can you pick out which companies who survives and who does not?
– It is almost impossible to say exactly, it’s neither about statistics or numbers. I play on both sides with my own startup company, to see how it will survive.
– I try to keep a finger in both the financial part, but even more exciting is the innovative is happening down on Level39. Every time you introduce a new sensor in IT environment introduces simultaneously a new business opportunity, so it’s fun to see what comes out of it, says Chute.
And just “see what coming out of it “is largely the all about the Level39, they try to find out what we will be concerned, long before we know it yourself.
Battling forward Norwegian width
From a Norwegian perspective, this is just a part of Norway’s future, according to Innovation Norway boss.
– The main thing for us is to create a much greater breadth of innovation culture in Norway . But we must do as they do here in London, decide clearly on WHAT we should be good at.
– We will not replace oil and gas industry with one new industry, we should have several industries stand on. Is there anything we have learned about the Norwegian economy over the last 40 years is that it is very vulnerable to be dependent on a product, concludes Anita Krohn Traaseth.
The last 40 Norwegian years has undoubtedly been well oiled, and while oil revenues shrink, increasing the pressure on to find out what we should be good at. It may lie in the tech community in London, it can be home in Norway.
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