TRIIN HERTMANN: Far from the conference halls: How cold and physical strain build strong startup connections

Have you ever created a special connection to someone after you have gone through a difficult circumstance where you shared both the effort and accomplishment? That's what happened to me recently thanks to the Mesh Collective. Creating these experiences was Anders Mjaset’s vision, he knows the perfect recipe to creating genuine connections, and it beats every startup and investor event I have ever been to.

The Mesh Collective invited a hundred selected founders and investors to a really remote place, Nusfjord, Lofoten islands in Norway. Some of us (including our tiny group of Estonians) had to take 4 flights to get there, so it's really remote! From Estonia I was lucky to join an impressive and inspiring bunch which included Kristel Kruustük (Testlio), Karen Burns (Fyma) and Gabriel Ferraz (Creem).

It was so worth it. We got to take boat trips, watched orcas and eagles and caught our own fish for dinner from the Arctic sea. We kayaked, surfed in the freezing water, conquered the mountains on foot and on skis, chilled at the spa, danced and mingled. And, during these strenuous actions and relaxing moments, we built really personal connections. We got to know each other on a much deeper level than you possibly can in the corridors of tech conferences.

You will always remember the guy who helped you out of the freezing water on a kayaking trip or the woman who let you borrow their gloves during a hiking trip across snowy mountains. It is so great to learn first about the person’s hobbies, passions and cool life hacks before you even find out what they do as a job.

We talk a lot about the New Nordics startup scene and how there should be more connections and cooperation between the Nordic/Baltic founders and investors, but in reality it is still very scattered and random. At the same time, from a distance (for example the US), our region is quite appealing with a thriving tech scene and lots of awesome things being built. I do believe all the countries in this corner of the world are very similar culturally and how we view the world.

We still have so much to learn from each other so we can all build even stronger ecosystems that are very appealing as a place to invest in tech innovation.

After this trip we all felt really lucky and elevated and the memories made, connections and friends will stay with us. I hope we can somehow measure the economic (and personal!) impact these events trigger. I am sure it is huge and stretches further for many years to come.