Sometimes you have to travel far to see the gold lying on your doorstep. At least that was the feeling I had after the first day of Web Summit and their 42.000 attendees.
Yesterday I randomly bumped into two guys. As always, when you meet people at a tech event, you ask them what they do and where they are from. It turned out they were Norwegians just like me and were doing tremendous success. The strange thing is that I had never heard about them.
The company is called Zedge, the biggest distribution platform in the world for mobile content. They have 170 million app installs, 250 million in-app content downloads per month and are used in 160 countries. Pretty impressive.
Why are not Zedge more well-known in Norway (or just to me?)
And why is it so easy to bond with someone from the same country when you are out travelling?
Then it struck me. Maybe these two questions are strongly connected. When going abroad, you travel away from your known environments. Meeting someone from your own culture that speaks your language is connecting you back to the well-known. To safety.
It’s a different scenario when you are back home. Then there is little new. That makes everything happen abroad a bit cool and exciting. We can safely watch the exciting world outside, but still feel perfectly safe at home. Because we don’t have to go anywhere.
Maybe that is the reason a company like Zedge is less known in Norway then it should be. And it’s the reason why we connect so easily over here at Web Summit.
No matter what. It’s a really interesting Norwegian company that deserves more attention.
Very interesting content. Very useful for me. Thanks for publishing the post.
Skjønte ikke hva overskriften hadde med teksten å gjøre. Det finnes gull, man må bare lete etter det? Hva er gullet i denne overførte betydningen?
Hei Henrik. Jeg opplever at gullet i denne sammenhengen gjelder den suksessrike norske bedriften Zedge, som nok er ganske ukjent for nordmenn flest. Det fremmes ofte tvil rundt om Norge er i stand til å skape innovative bedrifter med stort potensial, så her har forfatteren beskrevet at slikt gull finnes – om man bare leter litt.