Early Stage – The Startup School

Why is entrepreneurship education so theoretical at the nation's colleges and universities?

What would happen if young people were allowed to learn entrepreneurship in practice, by doing it instead of just hearing about it?

How much value could be created if young talents started their careers with an entrepreneurial mindset and skills?

These were the questions we asked ourselves back in 2016. Jacob Mørch and Christer Dalsbøe had their own learning journeys as relative entrepreneurs of Easybnb and first employee of the tech company Timely, and wanted to give more entrepreneurs a similar experience.

Unfortunately, at this time there was no natural place to go to learn hands-on entrepreneurship, so we decided to take matters into our own hands by creating our own program of study.

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A completely different learning experience

In 2016, the first Early Stage program was conducted in Bergen, thanks to financial support from Sparebanken Vest, VIS Innovation and Bergen Municipality, and thanks to the 17 students who chose to spend time and energy learning something new, without receiving credits for it.

The participants in the Early Stage had a learning experience that was clearly different from what they were used to from their studies at the University, the School of Economics and the University of Bergen. During the Early Stage collections, they were sent out on the street to talk to real customers and dig for customer problems, and they were challenged to create prototypes and attempt to sell them to customers, to test different business models, to create web pages explaining the product they are trying to create, to respond to inquiries from customers who were not happy with what they had bought, and all the other things one has to deal with when bringing one A new idea for the market.

Students tried, failed, and tried again and again, until most of the teams reached the goal of launching and selling a new product in eight short weeks. In other words: they practiced entrepreneurship in the only training arena that provides truly honest and real learning experiences - the real world.

Since then, many more students have followed in their footsteps. At the time of writing, over 150 students have gone through Early Stage and gained their first entrepreneurial experience.

These former participants have started at least nine companies, raised millions of kroner in early-stage investments from investors, and launched innovation projects as intrapreneurs in larger companies.

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Our contribution to a more entrepreneurial society

Early Stage exists only because we believe entrepreneurship as a positive force to solve problems, create value and drive society forward. We do not earn money from implementing these programs, but we have done it every single year since 2016 — this is our talent project to help Norway get more of the entrepreneurs we desperately need in the face of an uncertain future.

We would like to thank our current and former partners for making Early Stage possible: Sparebanken Vest, Bergen Kommune, VIS Innovasjon, De Bergenske Hotell, Innovasjon Norge, and Sparebank 1 Nord-Norge.

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