What I have been up to

Long time, no blogging. And this is not really an attempt at getting back to it at all, but just intended as a quick update of what I am doing now and have been doing lately:

• Artifik is where I am spending most of my time, as CTO - after being CEO getting us beyond MVP and to the first ten early access customers. We are building a procurement platform where it is easy to do things correctly and follow legal requirements that apply in particular to public procurements. At the time of writing, we are passing 20 paying customer and are around the same number of people involved in total (around half of that, counted as FTEs). A very exciting place to work as we are entering the scale-up phase, utilizing AI and cloud native serverless architecture.
• Ledidi has been growing up. I am out of the day-to-day with them having an employed CTO and their own development organization, but I am still part of the board and a significant shareholder despite selling some shares. They won a very important contract before Christmas with the largest hospital organisation in the country and things look great.
• Prokarimi - our startup in partnership with Genetic Analysis that is doing analysis of gut microbiota, often associated with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), with home tests - have built a platform and have sent out their first test kits to paying customers. My good friend and partner Fredrik is heading this now and I am somewhere between a hands-off CTO and an advisor and board member here.
• Apprendly intend to revolutionize how game-based training can be created and consumed, using AI and the same engines that power state-of-the art computer games. 
• Comono has moved even clearer in the direction of being a consultancy not looking for clients, but rather mostly working on our own stuff - meaning startups or projects where we can have a stake beyond selling hours. 

Following up on the last point, do get in touch if you have superb domain knowledge and a solution to a problem that you believe could be a startup. We often provide specialists in full- and part time roles, early funding and/or work for sweat equity.

As for the development in Comono: When we got together in Timisoara in the late summer last year, we counted around 35 people from partners - including Enovatika that were excellent hosts and we own half of,  startups we have founded and Comono itself. This was amazing to see and experience, going wine tasting in Recas with colleagues and friends. Comono now includes Comono India, which itself runs the startup Prevale that provides compliance as a service. In Oslo we are around ten people, with offices in Gamlebyen Loft, next door to Fuglen coffee. 

And if you wonder "weren't you in edtech?", that is absolutely the case, but not so much these days beyond the board seat in Apprendly - with our reading platform Lesemester being acquired by Lexplore, where I was part of the board for a while and has helped a bit here and there as an advisor. Inspera is still going strong, but beyond coaching a small team we have helping there, I am not involved much anymore. I do help Creaza a bit still. Finally, I am sometimes being asked to assist on things like DD processes and reviews of software development organizations as a subcontractor to one of the big strategy consultancies.

On the private side, I enjoy being a dad, still like poker as a hobby (100% cash rate in the Main Event!), have picked up eFoiling as a great alternative to surfing given our relatively wave-free location of living in Oslo and feel like I have nailed the work/life balance a bit more than when I routinely worked 70+ hours a week.