The BBC’s weekly The Boss series profiles different business leaders from around the world. This week we speak to Mathias Mikkelsen, founder of Norwegian tech company Memory.
Mathias Mikkelsen was so keen to get his business up and running that he slept in a cupboard for three months.
Back in late 2013, the then 23-year-old entrepreneur had moved on his own from Norway to Silicon Valley in California, to try to secure backing for his start-up idea – an online project and time management tool called Timely.
There was just one big problem for the Norwegian – he didn’t know a single person in the wider San Francisco Bay Area.
“At the time there wasn’t really a tech start-up scene in Norway, so I decided that moving to Silicon Valley – the tech capital of the world – would be the best thing for me to do,” says Mathias.
“But I didn’t know anyone at all out there. So when I landed human instinct kicked in, and the first thing I knew I needed to do was make friends. Then I realised that most people make friends via work or at college, and I wasn’t going to be joining a workplace or going to be a student.”
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