I love Innovation Norway!

While I was attending a "secret" meeting at the EU Commission in Brussels, I received the great news that Innovation Norway had decided to support us with an additional $1,2 million!  Wow!!!!

Innovation Norway has from the early days of Bipper been very supportive of us and is a big reason why we have progressed so nicely. Still, these levels of funding are rare and I'm so happy that they believe so much in us. I feel sooo lucky having them involved. This is an IRD (Industrial Research and Development) contract which is awarded to small or midsize companies that have partnerships agreements with leading international companies. In Bipper’s case this was granted based on our partnership with Motorola and a still not to be named European operator. 

The good news was celebrated on the SAS flight back to Norway where Nils and I toasted with a small bottle of free champagne in plastic cups, courtesy of SAS :-)

We are funded!

Today we raised about $ 2 millions! Wow! If you have ever been an entrepreneur yourself you know that it is not a luxurious lifestyle. Now I can finally sleep at night! Both new and old investors and we celebrated with waffles!

I’m so happy that we quickly closed our last round of funding. In total we raised about $ 2 millions.  

I’m especially excited that the great people at Holberg Fondsforvaltning, one of Norway’s leading fund management companies decided to invest about $1.1 million and to be part of our venture. They evaluate a bunch of unlisted companies every year, but typically invest in no more than ten of these so I’m thrilled that they believe so much in Bipper.  

So all the funding for expansion is in place, now we just need to add some more people to our team. Thankfully we have many interesting and qualified people that want to be part of our journey….

Hogne Tyssøy from Holdberg is happily signing the 

share issue papers. Welcome to Team Bipper!

How much cash?

A pretty interesting day today... The expert panel at Innovation Norway went pretty well I would say. No final answer yet, but my feelings are good!

Innovation Norway is the government’s support program for promising innovative start-ups, and Bipper has received a lot of support and help from them. The first start-up grant was awarded us in February 2008, and so far we have received about half a million dollars. All pure grants. The best cash you can get ;-).

Today we had our final evaluation for the IRD (Industrial Research and Development) support program from where we have applied for about $1 million in support. I huge amount of money, and a result of us partnering up with two industrial partners. One of them being Motorola. The other one is still a secret yet to be reveled....

Me and Olav arrived in the board room at ten to ten this morning to meet the experts, and almost five hours and a few tough questions later we were done. Mostly though, everyone seemed impressed, and the representatives from Innovation Norway told us that they never previously had experienced an IRD project reaching nearly 15.000 hits on Google for their IRD-partnership - before launch! I really can’t believe it myself either...

The only thing they did express worry about was our ability to grow fast enough to meet the market demand. I agree! This is my worry as well. To grow we need more people, and to hire more people we need more cash. More cash before we have income. The plans for funding are ready and the prospects are good - but you can never be sure...

Let’s just keep our fingers crossed for the $1 million grant! Please....

Me and the experts. They did smile more in the

 meeting than they do on the photo...