🚀 Startups and scale-ups: entry points and experience building

Product teams here value not a ‘perfect resume’ but the ability to deliver results quickly: metrics, experiments, working prototypes. The good news is that the ecosystem is dense: jobs are posted openly, hubs are accessible, and you can meet recruiters and founders at meetups in a single evening. Below, we'll tell you where to look for roles right now, which platforms and events will speed up your entry, what case studies to show at interviews, and how short-term contracts for nomads work.

🔎 Where to look for roles in English-speaking startups?

Start with two ‘showcases’ of Nordic products: The Hub (a large job board for all of Scandinavia, including local and remote positions) and STARTUPLAB Job Board (a feed from residents of the largest tech incubator).

Both platforms regularly post English-language roles ranging from engineers and designers to growth and operations. For early stages, take a look at Antler (founder residency with investments) and industry accelerators Katapult and TheFactory (fintech/proptech/greentech).

🏙 What hubs and meetups help you get into the ecosystem?

In the capital, the ecosystem revolves around MESH (two venues in the centre; community, events, fast networking) and the annual Oslo Innovation Week (20–24 October 2025, run by Oslo Business Region) — a great week to meet investors and teams all at once. Weekly events are conveniently listed on the Oslo Business Region calendar and on platforms such as Rebel (lots of tech meetups). On the west coast, focus on Marineholmen/VIS and the Media City Bergen and NCE Finance Innovation clusters; in Trondheim, check out DIGS and Trondheim Tech Port.

A useful seasonal landmark in the west is Innovasjonsuken OPP (15–21 September 2025): dozens of events, demo days and career formats (e.g. ‘Join a Startup Vestland’ from StartupLab+VIS). Plan your trip for this week to get the most contacts in a short time.

📂 What cases/portfolios are best to show at interviews?

The ‘show, don't tell’ approach.

• Engineering/data. GitHub with live repos, demo links, architecture notes, short ‘product’ readme files (problem → hypothesis → implementation → metrics).
• Product/design. 2–3 cases in Figma/Notion: how you validated the problem, what experiments you ran, what ultimately changed in North Star/retention/conversion.
• Growth/marketing. Experiment table: goal → channel → budget → result → next step.
• DevOps/platform. Short diagrams of the environment and SLO/SLA, incident graphs before/after.

Add an ‘experience battery’: participation in accelerators/meetups, pitches at local innovation weeks (Oslo Innovation Week, OPP) — these are easily verifiable signals for recruiters.

⏳ Are there short-term contracts for digital nomads?

Yes, and there are several options:

• Project roles on boards (The Hub allows you to filter by employment type, STARTUPLAB — subscription to a talent network for quick matches).
• Community approach. Access to founders through MESH/DIGS and profile weeks (OIW/OPP) — a common path to 1–3-month contracts.
• Legally compliant payment schemes. If you have not opened a local form (ENK/AS), there are payroll services such as Frilans Finans, which allow you to legally issue invoices without your own company (they withhold taxes/contributions). For distributed teams, startups sometimes use EOR/Contractor platforms (Remote, Deel) — when you need to quickly and legally hire or contract someone without a legal entity. This is not an advertisement, but an industry-described way to solve compliance issues. Check with your employer to see what they support.

🗓 4-week mini-route

1. Market. Subscribe to The Hub and STARTUPLAB Jobs; make a shortlist of 15 companies in your areas of interest.
2. Hubs. Get a day pass to MESH/DIGS, check out the nearest meetups and office hours.
3. Season. Tie your visit to OIW (October) or OPP (September in the West).
4. Cases. Prepare 2–3 stories ‘problem → experiment → metric’ with artefacts: repo, Figma, graphs.
5. Legal framework. Agree on the payment format: invoice via Frilans Finans, contract, or EOR — whatever is most convenient for both parties.

This ecosystem is friendly to newcomers, but it likes specifics. Focus on ‘visible’ progress: live prototypes, experiment numbers, clear cases. Build a funnel: job boards → hubs/meetups → innovation week → targeted responses. And keep the legal side under control — then it will be easier for both the founder and you to start even with a short-term contract, and experience will accumulate quickly and meaningfully.