Technology, Working Life | When entrepreneur Lars (33) came home from the USA, he had only one goal in mind – now his company is worth two billion kroner

Two brothers and a friend developed a solution in a few months that outperformed the competition. – We have the best product in the world by a large margin, says the boss.

SANDNES (Nettavisen Økonomi 🙂 In the heart of oil-dominated Forus, Norway’s largest business area, several exciting and very ambitious companies have emerged in just a few years. Just by batteriselskapet Beyonder and car charger company Easee is the chatbot company Boost AI.

Founder and CEO Lars Selsås (33) and operations director Camilla Gjetvik (33) meet Nettavisen Økonomi in spacious, but close to empty premises. Boost AI has recently been acquired by the acquisition fund Nordic Capital, an agreement that will price the company to up to two billion kroner.

It is not more than four years since the company launched the chatbot that large companies such as Santander, DNB, Nordea, Telenor and Telia just had to get hold of. Nevertheless, they are well on their way to the goal the entrepreneurs have had from day one: on unicorn, to be worth a billion dollars or more.

– We shall become a unicorn. When that happens, it’s hard to predict. There are a number of factors that make it possible to turn quickly in one or the other direction. A lot is about how the world will look in the future. But I think we are a unicorn in three to five years, says founder Selsås, without preferring a mine.

Also read: Norwegian company will build floating solar cells for a wealthy Greek family: – Feathers in the hat for us

Must conquer the world

Operations Director Gjetvik meets Selsås and smiles. Already on her first day on the job in 2017, while the first employees were still sitting close together in the entrepreneurial premises of SR-Bank, she received a crystal clear message that this company aimed to be worth at least eight billion Norwegian kroner.

It all started when Lars Selsås in 2016 came home to Stavanger from Silicon Valley, where he had worked with machine learning for three years. He had already decided that he wanted to start a company, and brought with him his brother Hadle Selsås and his friend Henry Vaage Iversen.

The trio started from a perspective where technology meant everything, and had to be Boost AI’s core. But fantastic technology in itself is not enough to build a company and break through, and the entrepreneurs had to learn along the way.

– We have the best product in the world by a large margin, but we have had to work to bring out the commercial potential in it, says Selsås.

Sparebank 1 SR-Bank asked the founders to build virtual assistants, advanced chatbots that could automate contact with customers in a user-friendly way. With a share capital of NOK 30,000, the entrepreneurs set about the task, and within two months of coding, Boost AI had developed a solution that outperformed the competitors in the market in Norway.

In 2020, Boost AI’s large parts of revenues of NOK 80 million came from financial institutions, telecom companies and the public sector, as well as from companies such as Norway Post, Aker BP and Norsk Tipping. Most of the income came from the Nordic countries, while a few million also came from other parts of the world.

– Now we focus on Europe and the USA. We can actually sell to all industries of a certain size and which have a certain pressure with inquiries and inquiries, says Selsås.

Also read: Siri Kalvig went from close quarters to author with a doctorate: – Not so important what you study

Customers do not agree to wait more days

Regular headlines appear that say jobs will be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence, and that this will continue increasing strength in the future.

Surveys among employers globally show that 63 percent believe that artificial intelligence will lead to bigger changes than the internet revolution. But this type of technology will probably create more jobs than it replaces, shows a survey from last fall.

– For our customers, for example SR-Bank, the question has not been how to go from 40 to 20 employees in customer service. It has rather been “how do we avoid going from 40 to 80 employees”. There is high pressure, and they must constantly staff up, at the same time customers become more demanding, says Selsås and continues:

– Today we demand a quick response from the companies we are customers of, and it is not good enough to get an answer several days later. People are far more demanding customers now than before, and companies must try to answer that.

Operations Director Camilla Gjetvik says that Boost AI technology has created new jobs for customers in the form of AI trainers and other adaptation roles.

– At the same time, our product is about freeing up capacity to do other things. Human employees have qualities that our products do not have, and can use their capacity for other things, says Gjetvik.

The seas: Norwegian pioneering climate technology makes topsoil from desert sand – now Desert Control will go public

Korona made chatbots speed up

The outbreak of the coronavirus sent office workers to their home offices, put the planes on the ground and caused tens of thousands of Norwegians to be laid off or fired. At the same time, players in chatbot solutions experienced a major upswing.

– The traffic from the insurance industry went through the roof. The travel agents also had to take away an absurd amount of inquiries. NAV also received extreme volumes, says Selsås.

– We got an early corona fine in place for our public customers who could answer questions about corona. It included NIPH and several municipalities. We also got customers in Sweden and Finland who wanted it. An enormous need for information grew, and it became a big job for us to build a fine to take away all the inquiries, says Gjetvik.

Analysts predict that the Boost AI market operates within, will more than double over the next few years. The Stavanger company will be the biggest and best, and with fresh money from the new major owner Nordic Capital, Boost AI is hungry for success.

Rogaland’s previous unicorn Autostore was dthis week acquired by the Japanese giant fund Softbank with an agreement that values ​​the company at NOK 65.5 billion. A few days later it became clear that Softbank also acquires in Kolonial / Oda.

– I think it is fun to see that more Norwegian companies are on the radar of large international investment companies. We received many requests from large funds before we decided to choose Nordic Capital, says Gjetvik.

Also read: Rich people pour money into revolutionary sawdust batteries

–