Hasta La Ideas

Photo by Kjetil Hasselgård

In a city like Oslo, which is officially the most expensive in the world, it can be difficult to strike out as an entrepreneur. Independent start-up founders, like artists, tend to thrive in less expensive cities, where the consequences of failure are fewer and costs of setup are less. But tucked away in the downtown area is a new coworking space, MESH Norway, where you’ll find freelancers and entrepreneurs working together on technology and design problems. Five stories high, with around 75 companies, MESH is Oslo’s first coworking space, and it’s grown quickly since it first started in February 2012.

“Our main focus is on early stage startups,” noted co-founder Kriszti Toth, who started the space with Anders Mjaset and Audun Ueland, “but we try to keep a balance around 70% on startups and 30% creative individuals like filmmakers, animation makers, graphic designers, etc.” This keeps the people and services diverse and the activities busy, with companies like Holder de ord (Norwegian for “keeping their word”), which tracks politicians’ promises; Justcoin, a currency exchange for Bitcoin; and the social entrepreneurial group World Wide Narrative. When I visited to give a talk for Creative Mornings Oslo, I caught a brainstorming session afterward for Memorylanes, an award-winning storytelling app for communities.

Photo by Alex Asensi

Designed by the founders, the space contains a mixture of smaller spaces, from a hip night club to individual offices and more collaborative spaces to a busy ground-floor coffee shop for the general public. “The office space had these brick walls when we got here,” she explained, “and all the interior was me and Anders and people who shaped it just by being here and using it. The tables are from IKEA, we painted all of them ourselves. Old couches are second hand catches.”

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