Customer story
Octo Ventures, is an Oslo-based incubator that initiates, invests in and develops companies together with external co-founders.
The incubator’s vision is to “inspire entrepreneurs globally and contribute to significantly increasing their chance of success”. The strategy to achieve this vision is to develop, implement and share scientifically proven best practice within entrepreneurship.
Managing partner of the company is André Baustad Benonisen Prydz and he leads the company together with Partners Tormod Benonisen and Erlend Hausken. The brothers André and Tormod have background from investment banking and management consulting while Erlend is an experienced entrepreneur and CEO. Last year Erlend sold his latest company, the music app Voisey, to the NYSE listed company Snap Inc. In addition to the three partners, the incubator involves a dozen external co-founders.
According to the team behind Octo Ventures, learnings over time should be manifested in principles that can guide the company’s business and behavior.
Indeed, Octo Ventures has its own set of principles:
- Care deeply about people and the planet
- Challenge the status quo
- Choose the scientific approach
- Do as much as possible with as little as possible
- Be radically transparent
Further, its investments must aim to contribute to the achievement of the UN’s sustainable development goals.
“To me, business is about effectively solving important problems, and to do so more efficiently than anyone else,” says André. The better the solution, the more value is created to the customers. The more efficiently the solution can be delivered, the more value is created for shareholders, he argues.
If you create value for the customers and the shareholders, you will at the same create value for the society.
– If more companies raise the environmental, social and governance standards, and contribute to the financing of public services such as healthcare and education through paying taxes, this could take us one step closer towards creating a sustainable future for all, says the Octo Ventures managing partner.
The incentive structure must be in place to accomplish this. Octo Ventures’ philosophy is that everyone contributing to the value creation shall receive their fair share.
Tormod’s core compentence is within innovation and how to create autonomous teams, which are among the areas he lends support to Octo Ventures’ portofolio companies.
Octo Ventures also builds its own solutions based on a scientific approach and Tormod spends a lot of time analyzing success factors and measuring risk. It is important to be able to make decisions even when there’s a lot of uncertainty. Measurement is not about removing uncertainty, but to reduce it, he argues.
– If you are going to solve important problems you must possess intellectual humility, be open to changes and have the drive to stay in the game until the end, Tormod explains.
We, Reinholdt Advokatfirma AS, have had the privilege to help the team with corportate law and advisory in connection with the existing portofolio and new investments.
This is what André says about our work:
“Thomas Reinholdt is first and foremost a professional who brings important competence and experience into the many legal matters that we encounter and must address. In addition, he has a positive attitude and is a good communicator. In short, a lawyer that we have experienced is capable of finding good and balanced solutions.”
We at Reinholdt Advokatfirma are really looking forward to follow Octo Ventures on their value creating journey.
