Over the past few years, BTO has expanded and strengthened its incubator services and we are now offering a wide range of pre-incubation and incubation services to start-up companies and students in the Bergen region. The hard work and progress has been noticed by Siva.
“Siva is very pleased with the developments the incubator has shown”, writes Randi Torvik, responsible for the program Innovation in Siva in an email to BTO.
–This is primarily a great acknowledgment of the job we have put down over the years. We deliver high quality incubation and good results in terms of development and growth in companies that use our services. It proofs that our strategy – focusing on cooperation, collocation with clusters and close links to investors – is a success, says Hilde Indresøvde, Head of Incubation and acceleration at BTO.
Strict criteria
Siva is a public enterprise owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Fisheries. Their innovation programs aim to create new businesses and provide new growth in established business by identifying, further developing and commercializing good ideas.
Siva uses a five-level model to rank the 35 incubators who are qualified to participate in the Siva incubation program. The incubators are evaluated on 20 different criteria. BTO scores high on these criteria and as a result of this our incubator service is being hoisted from level 3 to level 5 in the Siva ranking.
This means that BTO is ranked at the same level as StartupLab in Oslo and Validé in Stavanger, and that Siva’s funding of our incubator services increases from 3 to 5 million NOK.
High demand
BTO’s various incubator services are very popular among the start-up community in the region. Our incubation programs Nyskapingsparken Inkubator and Mediekuben are experiencing huge interest from entrepreneurs who want assistance from our experienced advisors. A record total of 123 startup companies were members of our services at the start of 2018.