“I’m here to learn from the best in business and technology,” said CEO Kenneth Akselsen with a smile.

Want to go out into the world

During an intense week, the participants undergo the so-called super intensive MBA (academic degree: Master of Business Administration), where they meet, among others, with the best professors from MIT University of Technology and from Babson.

Hamar’s company was selected by Innovation Norway to take part in GET (Global Entrepreneurship Training), a skills program for start-ups that are considered to have great potential.

– We could choose to become an interior agent. So we will probably set slightly different priorities initially, and will probably have a larger salary account than we have now. But since we started, we have always had the ambition to invest internationally, says Akselsen.

In 2012, SocialCee was founded in Hamar. In less than three years, this company, which makes a living by making communication on social media profitable for companies and organizations, has grown to 18 employees (ten in Norway, eight in its wholly owned subsidiary in Gdansk, Poland). In addition, sales partners have been established in Sweden and the UK, and our own employees in Finland have just started.

– The feedback we get from customers and partners in Norway and internationally is that our solutions cover growing needs. This is especially exciting when we manage it with few resources and limited access to risk capital. This shows that we have risks, and that there is something in the concepts and ideas that we have developed that has caused a stir even beyond national borders.

Concretely, SocialCee delivers a so-called cloud-based dashboard solution, which enables customer service, marketing, customer insights and data capture in social media. The target group is mainly medium and large companies, and in the list of customers we find, among others, Norway, Specsavers, Manpower and Eidsiva.

Technology improvements

– Why do you want to get out into the real world?
– Ambition and motivation, and because we believe we are sitting on something unique. We’ve always had a strong desire to reach internationally and it’s time to dust off and take the leap. For us, that’s what makes life fun.

The SocialCee team believes that they stand out from many other startups when it comes to social media management software.

– We have financed most of the company’s technological development with the help of agency operations and consulting activities. But it’s great to see more and more of our revenue coming from licensing the socialcee.com technology platform. More and more customers are using self-service solutions.

Now they are looking for investors:

– We have good cooperation with Innovation Norway, but would like to see more willingness to take risks from those with money at home.