Norrsken.org
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We are a pre-seed accelerator investing in the best startups solving the world’s biggest challenges.
We target early-stage startups that leverage technology to create and scale innovative solutions to new and old societal and environmental challenges. We invest $100k in them and then invite them to Stockholm for a dedicated 8 week sprint with support from successful and experienced entrepreneurs, including unicorn founders. The program will culminate in an iconic investor demo day, when startups pitch to hundreds of investors and potential customers. 
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Norrsken Impact Accelerator is sector agnostic and is open to startups in any area of impact. Each year, we’ll also highlight one or more verticals in which we’ll bring a little extra domain-specific expertise. This year, the cohort will be from mixed impact areas, with a special focus on food-tech and agri-tech.
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CO-FOUNDERS
‍Fantastic entrepreneurs launching the accelerator alongside Norrsken. They select, invest in and mentor the startups.
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MENTORS
‍Exclusively entrepreneurs we're deeply inspired by, who've built some of the fastest growing companies in the world. They mentor the startups over summer.
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VENTURE PARTNERS
‍Fantastic advisors with entrepreneurial, investment and food-tech expertise. They help select and mentor the startups.
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ADVISORS
‍Razor sharp minds with expertise in specific areas. Scientists, researchers, marketing gurus, legal advisors. They are available for advice based on request by the startups.

In addition, the program will include pitch training and program management & support from the Norrsken Foundation team.
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At Norrsken, we believe that tech entrepreneurs are essential for creating solutions that will enable us to solve some of the biggest global problems of our time.  Part of what we do is to help these entrepreneurs get their solutions out quicker, because the world can’t afford to wait. 

We also do this to showcase the fact that creating solutions that positively impact the world and making a lot of money are compatible. In fact, in the world we live in today, it is impact companies that will be the Facebooks of tomorrow. We need more capital and talent to enter the SDG market. We showcase both the impact and financial potential in impact startups to further this cause.
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Our goal is find the next generation of unicorns with impact fully integrated into their business models. 
Profit is a powerful means to achieving global scale. This is why we focus on investing in start-ups that can become highly profitable businesses, able to roll out their solutions globally.
And when impact is integral to the business model, an extra unit of revenue generates an extra unit of impact. As the company grows, so does its impact. And if it becomes a unicorn, its impact will be massive.
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- You start off getting $100k of investment.
- You join us in Stockholm for an 8 week sprint at Norrsken House - our hub for impact tech entrepreneurs
- You’ll meet the other startups in the program & have a goal-setting session to set your goals for the 8 weeks.
- You’ll have 24/7 access to workspace designed with tech entrepreneurs in mind to crunch, crunch, crunch
- You’ll join a peer group with a handful of other startups and be given a lead co-founder.
- You’ll have 1-1 mentoring sessions every other week with your lead co-founder.
- You’ll have peer group sessions the weeks in between, guided by your lead co-founder, to update each other on your progress, hold each other accountable and give each other feedback.
- You’ll also be assigned a lead mentor, who has experience from your industry or sector.
- You’ll meet your lead mentor on a frequency that makes sense for both of you (but mentors commit to spending at least 4 hours with you over the 8 weeks).
- You’ll have access to a pool of topic and impact experts. We don’t want to waste your time with unnecessary meetings, so taking up the offer is entirely in your hands. If you find it useful, you’ll be able to book meetings with experts in areas like accounting, legal, marketing, or areas like food science, clean energy, medicine.
- You’ll be able (but not required) to join Ask Me Anything sessions to ask successful founders, well, anything! Including unicorn founders from around the world.
- You’ll be invited to dinners every other week with inspiring speakers giving short talks or Q&As, your peers, co-founders, mentors, and other startups we think are great.
- You’ll have pitch training with co-founders, mentors and Investors in the last 3 weeks.
- Finally, you’ll take pitch to hundreds of investors at Investor Demo Day, and have the chance to meet potential customers there too.
- We’ll have a final celebration at the end of Week 8, but it’s not goodbye. We’ll continue to support you as alumni with a platform for getting peer advice and feedback, investor and partner connections.
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INVESTMENT & ELIGIBILITY

1. Impact
We invest across all UN SDGs and do not limit ourselves to a specific vertical, but we demand that impact is intentional. We are looking for companies where impact is built into the product, so that as your business grows, your impact automatically follows. When this is the case, we’ll give you the tools to manage your impact but we can focus on what we do best - helping you grow the business. We’re also especially happy to see food-tech companies this year, but are interested in and able to support other verticals. 
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2. Business model
We believe that you don’t need to sacrifice profit to make an impact. And when impact is baked into your business, if you achieve financial success, you’ve almost certainly created a lot of impact too. So we’re looking for companies that, if successful, will become unicorns.
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3. Technology
Software or hardware, we invest in innovations that use technology as a tool in creating and scaling solutions. 
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4. Stage
Because of the terms of our investment, we’re ideally suited to supporting companies at an early (pre-seed) stage. This means you’ve identified a clear market opportunity and path to market with your product. You may have built or be building your MVP, but you’ve gone beyond just the idea and have something to show. However, we are happy to support startups who have made more progress and fast-track your success from your base starting point. 
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5. Geography
We are based in Sweden and ask startups to come to Stockholm for 8 weeks over the (European) summer to sprint on their businesses with our support. However, we are looking for companies from anywhere in the world. 
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We invest using standardised deal terms. We invest $100k in each company in return for 5% equity using a relevant form of convertible security.
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Yes, all 20 startups that are selected will receive an upfront investment of $100,000 in exchange for 5% equity. These investment terms are fixed.

No. We don’t take pro rata rights or follow-on for two reasons: 
1. We want to give you full control over your cap table and allow you to choose who invests in your company and how much equity they take. 
2. If we were to do follow-on investments, we’d only be able to follow-on in a handful of companies from each batch. We don’t want to affect the ability of any of our portfolio companies to raise future rounds by a negative signalling effect. We’d rather avoid this altogether for the time being.
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We are sector agnostic, and impact sector agnostic. We focus on finding the most promising startups within various sectors and helping them to scale. As long as you’re using technology and you’re solving a big societal or environmental problem, we’d love to hear from you. 
In addition to this, each year we’ll provide extra support infrastructure around one or more specific sectors. This year, we’re adding extra infrastructure around food-tech and agri-tech, with support from Erik Byrenius and Anna Ottosson - angel investors with a huge network in the food-tech space. We’ll be able to support impact startups in any sector, but if you’re a food-tech startup, we’d especially like to hear from you.

Yes, we love supporting impact across all verticals and do not limit the type of solutions we are looking for. It is true that hardware solutions can take longer to develop and scale than software solutions. However, if you’re a great team working hard on a solution that can change the world, you should apply.

No, we won’t sign a NDA, but will informally commit to confidentiality. It’s typical for investors not to sign NDAs to enable us to consider every startup that applies and to roll out investments quickly.

Yes. As long as you’re not working on identical products, we’re happy to support startups working in the same sector.

No, this accelerator is targeting for-profit companies making an impact through their business models. NGOs and NPOs are incredibly important in driving societal and environmental change. But for this accelerator, we are only focusing on impact startups.

Yes. As long as you’re happy with our investment terms, we’re happy to hear from you regardless if you have investments from elsewhere or not.

Yes. We’d rather fund teams than single co-founders, because we think your chances of success are greater with a co-founder, but we’ll still consider strong individual founders.

Yes, you are welcome to submit more than one application, as long as each solution fits the criteria we are looking for.

No. Besides funding, we think there’s a lot of value in joining the program. And by investing in you, we’re fully aligning our incentives to help you succeed.

Yes. Especially if you’ve been through a venture-building program, you’ll be at the right stage to join us after this. If you’ve been through another program and are at a slightly later stage, we’ll aim to fast-track your progress from your starting point.

Yes! As long as you’ve gone beyond just the idea and have something to show, you’re the right stage for us, and we’re happy to support startups that have made more progress. However, we will take into account how long you’ve been working on your startup relative to how far you’ve come. So if you’ve been working on your startup for a long time and have little to show for it, you should explain why that has been the case.

1. You apply by filling in this short and quick application form. It shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. We process the applications on a rolling basis. The sooner you apply, the better.2. If you make it to the second stage, we’ll send you a more detailed application form and give you 5 days to fill it in. At this stage, we'll also ask you to send in a very short video introduction to your team. 

Second stage application - video requirements: If you are selected to the second stage we will ask you to link a video where you get the opportunity to present yourselves, your idea and why it matters. The video should be around one minute and without any fancy editing or background music, only you in the founding team should be speaking. We prefer if all the cofounders participate. You can record the video on your phone, laptop or in a Zoom-call, just make sure that we can hear you clearly. If you upload it to Youtube and don’t want other people to see it, please mark it as ‘unlisted’.

We'll process applications on a rolling basis, so the earlier you apply, the earlier you'll hear back. If you're successful, we'll send you a more detailed application form and ask you to fill it in within 5 days. At the latest, you should hear back in early March. Keep a look in your spam folder, so you don't miss our email.

If you haven’t been selected to interview this year, we’ll let you know by the beginning of April. If you’ve been selected, we’ll invite you to interview at the beginning of April. We’ll let you know if we’re extending an offer in mid-April.

We’ve timed it. It shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. If you’re successful, we’ll ask you to fill in a second, more detailed application, which should take 30 minutes to complete.

Yes, you’ll see a world limit on individual questions. The word limit is not there as a guideline, just as a maximum. If in doubt, less is more. We’d also prefer you not to use jargon or high-flying language. Keep it plain and simple, and we’ll be happy.

If you are selected to the second stage we will ask you to link a video where you get the opportunity to present yourselves, your idea and why it matters. The video should be around one minute and without any fancy editing or background music, only you in the founding team should be speaking. We prefer if all the cofounders participate. You can record the video on your phone, laptop or in a Zoom-call, just make sure that we can hear you clearly. If you upload it to Youtube and don’t want other people to see it, please mark it as ‘unlisted’.

The deadline for ordinary applications was February 28. We’ll keep allowing teams to submit late applications after that until the full batch has been announced later this spring, but late applications will be reviewed after all the applications that were submitted before the deadline have been screened. In other words, the later you submit your application, the harder it is to get into Norrsken Impact Accelerator.”

No, there’s no program fee. We’re covering the cost of the program because we want you to be able to use the investment to directly cover the costs required to launch or grow your business. We think this investment should give you a runway for around 6 months, by which time you should be able to secure your next investment round with our support.

- Investment - of $100K for 5% equity
- A Lead Mentor - always an entrepreneur (and maybe a unicorn founder) who understands the challenges you’re facing and can give you the right advice to launch and grow your business
- Network - connections through mentors, co-founders, experts and others involved in the program
- Specific support - access to a pool of topic and impact experts for support or advice on specific topics
- Access -  to investors, talent, and potential customers 
- Warm intros to investors - outside of meeting investors at Demo Day, we’ll also provide introductions to specific investors where we see a good match

We are open to early-stage tech startups that are solving a problem across any SDG or impact sector. Each year, we’ll build a little bit of extra infrastructure around one or more specific verticals. This year, it’s food-tech (and agri-tech). We have experience of running a food-tech program, food-tech angel investors as Venture Partners and researchers and institutions from this field as advisors. 
There are no hard targets over the number of food-tech specific companies we want in the program, but it will be less than half the cohort. If you’re a food-tech startup, you’ll benefit from a core group of peers in the same industry. If you’re not in food-tech, you’ll receive stellar support regardless.

Mentors will be given a choice of startups within the area of their expertise, so you’ll be matched with a mentor who can help you to grow.

Yes. And no. Every startup who joins us will have a dedicated mentor during the time they are with us. Some of these are unicorn founders, others are founders of currently fast-growing startups. Some are experienced entrepreneurs who are now working in investing and advisory capacities. Others are active in their companies today. They all bring different things to the table. We think it’s more important that you have a dedicated mentor who understands your challenges and your market and can give you the right advice, so your mentor may or may not be a unicorn founder. However, unicorn founders will be available for office hours and Ask Me Anything sessions, so you will have the opportunity to be mentored by them.

In the last week, you’ll attend Investor Demo Day and meet investors and, if relevant, potential customers. And of course, we can’t forget one epic final celebration. After this, you’ll join our alumni network. We’ll keep pretty close contact over the next few months and support you if you’re raising a new round in that time. You’ll remain part of our alumni network for life, and will have the ability to reach out to your peers, future participants, mentors and advisors.

We have a dedicated week at the end of the program to help power your success, where we introduce you to investors at Demo Day and afterwards. We’ll give warm introductions to investors outside of this setting too. Before Demo Day, we’ll work on your pitch, and you’ll get advice, and honest feedback from mentors, co-founders and pitch coaches.

No, we really do want you to join us in Stockholm. We think that being in the same place for 8 weeks and interacting with your peers is essential to create the atmosphere needed to power your sprint. It could be one of those quick questions to your peers by the coffee machine or late nights at the “office” that make all the difference to your success. That’s why we’re bringing you to Stockholm for the summer rather than doing this virtually. However, you are allowed to rotate the founders who are in Stockholm during this period if necessary.

We ask you to cover the costs of transport and living during the 8-week sprint. From our side, we’ll make sure that you receive the $100k investment in advance of the program, so you can use this to cover travel and accommodation costs if necessary. We do also have the great partner Strawberry Living who help lower these costs by providing entrepreneurs in our program with a large discount on accommodation.

We’ll help you apply for visas if needed.

The official language that will be used in the accelerator is English.

Fantastic! If you want to become a mentor or help advise the startups within Norrsken’s ecosystem, please share some more details about yourself, your background and interests through this form. We will then get back to you within a few weeks.

If you’d like to get in touch, send us an email at accelerator@norrsken.org. We won’t be able to respond to requests for updates on ongoing applications or be able to connect on calls, but we’ll do our very best to get back regarding other queries and written questions.