gründercamp and norway's most valuable man

on thursday of last week (23 sept.), i participated in an entrepreneurial competition called gründercamp.  it was hosted by ferd, an investment/holdings group and also one of the largest in norway.  coincidentally, the ceo, johan h. andresen, is one of the wealthiest people in norway -- he is actually considered to have the highest personal net-worth of anyone in norway!

johan h. andresen

...but that's not the cool part...

the idea of the "entrepreneur camp" is that we are given an industry and 24 hours to come up with a business plan.  ferd wanted us to come up with an idea for social-entrepreneurship (basically a non-profit that actually makes money) that focused on children.  we were put in random groups and sent to work...

now we're getting to the cool part....

aside from presenting a business plan, we had to give a 3-minute presentation.  with only 3 minutes, it would be tough to have more than one presenter, so i -- stupidly or geniusly (?) -- elected to give the presentation.

hmm... a 3-minute presentation in front of the most valuable man in norway..... and I've only been here for a little over a month... nervous?  

but it went well, of course... after all, mr. andresen said it was "catchy and compelling" ("de hadde i tillegg en catchy og overbevisende presentasjon, sa johan h. andresen").  sweet.

but even better?  we won!  our idea, peoplelikeme, was/is a "group counseling social club" to help kids of divorced parents, which is a growing problem in norway.

this is an article from dagens næringsliv, one of norway's largest newspapers.
(get the pdf from this link)

also check out this article from ferd's website for more info, and ferd's social entrepreneurship facebook page for more pics.  if you don't know norwegian, just paste the text into google translate.