ACCEL Energy Wrap-up

Many impressing pitches were presented at Demo Day in Stavanger. The participants have really worked well on their business plans and are now well-positioned for further development of their business ideas and companies.

One of GCE Subsea’s priorities is to stimulate and facilitate entrepreneurship and one of the tools we apply is to offer the ACCEL Energy programme for free to oil and gas entrepreneurs.

The programme is run by Caspar M. Lund from BTO and supported by Innovation Norway, DNB and Innovation Dock. During the ten programme sessions and the entrepreneurs’ individual work between sessions they have received valuable input on how to accelerate their business by following best practice in a Lean startup process. This is designed to help the start-ups achieve their growth ambitions faster, and with less efforts.

– The programme has definitely helped us on focusing our business plan and sharpening our value proposition, says Jan Børge Sagmo and Finn-Blydt-Svendsen, co-founders of Bergen Carbon Solutions.

Pit stop Stavanger

This time the program was carried out in collaboration with Innovation Dock in Stavanger, and the final Demo Day was arranged in their fit-for-purpose facilities in Stavanger.

The following nine entrepreneurs pitched their business cases for an attentive audience of industry partners and investors:

• Sølve Hetland – Nor Oil Tools, Stavanger
• Eugene Pribytkov – Petrohub, Stavanger
• Asbjørn Traaserud – Pipe Pilot, Bergen
• Karl Erik Dahl – Presight, Stavanger
• Frode Ivar Karlsen – SIL Valves, Bergen
• Bernt Pettersen – Snapwelder, Bergen
• Carlo Cafarao – Subsealink, Stavanger
• Jan Børge Sandmo and Finn Blydt-Svendsen – Bergen Carbon Solutions, Bergen
• Earth Science Analytics – Behzad Alaei, Bergen-Stavanger

Drilling and Well Academy have also participated in the programme, but were not able to attend Demo Day.

Pitching, Pizza and Mingling

The industry partners and investors from Statoil Technology Invest, Proventure and Sarsia Seed followed the 10-minute pitches with keen interest.

After the pitching there was set aside ample time for mingling with pizza and beer in the nice facilities at Innovation Dock, right on the Stavanger seafront. Here, the entrepreneurs soon found the investors, and vice versa, and hopefully some of the entrepreneurs managed to evoke enough interest with some of the investors or industry partners to initiate further conversations and meetings with a view to collaborate.

– We hear a lot of such presentations in the course of our work, and the quality of the start-up companies, the entrepreneurs and the presentations is constantly increasing, says Jon Trygve Berg from Sarsia Seed.

– There are many clever people out there, as a consequence of the restructuring of the oil and gas business. Definitely some cases that we want to look further into, Berg concludes.