Kahoot inspires new wave in Norwegian edtech

The Norwegian venture capital ecosystem is growing steadily, but has been somewhat outpaced and outshined by its Scandinavian neighbours. Argentum Asset Management's Ellen Amalie Vold presented the data to support this argument at Norway's Startup Extreme, an event for startups and VC investors held in Voss in late June.

Vold told the audience that Sweden still led the field in 2018, attracting 41% of all VC investments in the Nordic region (256 transactions), followed by Finland with 27% and Denmark with 18%, while Norway lagged behind with 14%.

One exception to this trend is the educational technology (edtech) sub-sector. In March last year, Northzone and Creandum took part in a $17m funding round for Kahoot, a game-based classroom learning platform, generating a strong exit for some of the early-stage investors.

With the VCs' support, Kahoot completed the acquisition of two other Norwegian edtech companies, Dragonbox and Poio, in May this year. Dragonbox develops games to teach children maths and algebra, and has partnered with Norwegian world chess champion Magnus Carlsen to create digital chess tuition tools, while Poio makes reading games.

Northzone's Henrik Grim believes that successes such as Kahoot are an important factor for the entire startup ecosystem: "The first thing you need is talent, the second is capital and the third is role models," he said on a panel discussion at Startup Extreme. "We are starting to see some breakout successes that inspire people; Kahoot is one of them, and that inspiration is very important. Stockholm has had that for a long time and now we are starting to see it in Norway."

Finding freshmen
The knock-on effect of this inspiration was evident at Startup Extreme, where a significant number of early-stage edtech companies were showcasing their products in the hope of attracting further institutional funding.

"Kahoot has been a big north star and it is really important to have a company like that, which can influence the Norwegian ecosystem by acquiring other promising startups in its space," says Eirik Wahlstrøm, the CEO and co-founder of virtual reality edtech startup Ludenso. Wahlstrøm and co-founder Harald Manheim originally took their VR headsets to the consumer market for cinema experience under the brand Moviemask, but relaunched with an educational focus last year. The company has previously been supported by Norwegian state grants and €500,000 in angel investments; it will now target an institutionally backed seed round to raise more than €1m.

Another driver of the Norwegian edtech boom is a change to the primary-education curriculum. Part of this new curriculum will be putting coding into maths lessons, and Makekit founders Henning Pedersen and Steinar Holøs hope to take advantage of this. Their company makes kits that children can use to build and programme their own drones and they are expecting to raise NOK 2-4m by the end of the year.

However, Learnlink's head of product, Tellef Tveit, thinks the problem with Norwegian education is deeper than the curriculum. "One quarter of kids do not finish school In Norway and that is not because the curriculum is not good enough but because it is not personalised to every student," he says. Learnlink provides personalised learning online to help children who struggle at school. It aims to combat the dropout rate and expects to raise seed funding of €700,000-1m to support this effort by the summer of 2020.

In addition to providing inspiration to these entrepreneurs, Kahoot founder Johan Brand also provides advice and sometimes capital. He is currently promoting Hold, an Oslo-based startup that makes an application that rewards users for not looking at their phones. It plans to raise a $1-3m series-A round, launching in October.

Edtech is only a small part of the broader startup universe in Norway, but its success reflects broader cultural trends. "Kahoot has made people see that you can create a company that solves a problem and makes revenues," says Learnlink's Tveit. "People who finish school now do not want to make another oil well, they want to solve a problem and do something that creates impact, so I hope and expect that we will have more startups focused on sustainability and problem solving in the future." 

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• Topics
• Nordics
• Investments
• Venture
• Norway
• Argentum