2020 has been a strange year for all of us. We feel lucky to be doing alright during these challenging times.
In the beginning of the year, Rebartek moved into a new location. We now have our own office as well as a pilot factory space where we prefabricate rebar cages for our local customers. So far we have delivered 12 projects to 4 different local customers from our pilot plant.
Delivering an order for a local customer.
The corona situation in Southern Norway is stable at the moment, and that allows for our full time employees to safely work on site at our factory.
Our focus for the rest of 2020 will be on running several more pilot projects locally as well as preparing some big projects in Norway and Europe for next year. Stay tuned!
To hear more about how we are doing, watch our CEO Max on the podcast Automated Constructionwith Jarret Gross.
This summer has been very eventful for Rebartek with many new developments. Since we have not managed to update our news page in a while, we owe you a quick update on some of the latest, big developments:
Investor on board: SOSV and HAX
The Rebartek Team at the Shenzhen Facility
In May we signed our pre-seed deal with SOSV. SOSV is a multi-stage VC that has funded over 700 startups to date, and runs accelerators for different verticals all over the world. We joined HAX. HAX is a hardware-specific accelerator. Their program operates across two locations, Shenzhen and San Francisco, giving founders the resources necessary to move with lightning speed. We are currently prototyping in Shenzhen facilities. If you want to learn more about Shenzhen, here is an inspiring documentary to start with. In fall we will move on to San Francisco to raise our Seed round.
Rebartek selected for RobotUnion Accelerator
On July 3rd, Rebartek got selected for the RobotUnion accelerator program. From a pool of 206 applications, Europe’s 20 best robotic startups were selected for the feasibility phase. And we are one of them!
The best startups presented their ideas and competed for up to €223,000 in equity-free funding, alongside acceleration and world-class mentoring services.
About RobotUnion:
RobotUnion offers a total of 4M€ in equity-free funding in two open calls for startups and SMEs within the framework of the Horizon 2020 program funded by the European Commission.
Selected startups are advancing the digitalization of European industry in the areas of health, manufacturing, agriculture, civil engineering and open disruptive innovation.
HAX & EF Demoday in Hong Kong
Entrepreneur First and HAX joined forces this year. In July, they had their first joint demoday in Hong Kong. We presented our solution to over 150 investors and corporates at HAX there. We prepared intensively together with the other startups and with HAX’ help improved our pitch immensely. We connected with several promising investors and potential partners.
CEMEX Construction Startup Competition
Afterward, we went to CEMEX’ Construction Startup Competition. Over 500 startups from over 70 countries competed. We got selected as one of the ten winning startups and were invited to pitchday in Mexico. CEMEX went over and beyond and hosted an amazing event. We connected with inspiring startups, as well as potential customers and investors.
Thanks for checking in on us! We will be updating you again soon!
What our IT intern Emil has to say about his time so far in Rebartek
Text and photos by: Jona Runarsdottir.
Emil working toghether with Serhii at our factory.
Emil Morønning Ruud started as an IT- intern at Rebartek in December of last year. He has now been working with us for a few weeks, so I sat down with him to get his thoughts on the experience so far.
In order to get the word out to students, Rebartek runs ads on kompetansetorget, a platform that connects students at the University of agder and employers. But Emil found us the old fashioned way: -the jungle telegraph.
When asked about his descision to work for us, he is quick to answer:
-What tempted me the most about working here, is all the tech that is integrated in the work you are doing; Machine vision, robotics and AI, amongst other things.
In our team, Emil contributes with his skills in programming.
-At the moment we are mainly using Python as our programming language, but we might need to expand on this front at some point.
Doing something that’s never been done
Emil says he finds the other members on the
team very eager to help each other, and he explains why that is crucial in a
startup like this one:
-We are doing something that hasn’t really been
done before. So, understandably no one really has the exact expertize for the interdisciplinary
development we’re doing. So we need to try things out all the time. But this
also means that you’ve got a job where you are constantly gaining skills.
You don’t need to know it all to be an intern
Emil says he encourages students to apply for
an internship at Rebartek, and points out a common apprehension students might
have:
-People are often scared that they don’t have all
the skills that are important in an intern position. But that really doesn’t apply
here. We just need people that have some base-experience or skills in one or
more of our fields, and then your job as an intern is to learn as you go.
Rebartek welcomes Emil, and we are looking forward to seeing him develop along with our team.
Interested in an internship? Go to the “let’s talk” button on this page, and get in contact with us! You can also find us on Linkedin and twitter.
