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In 2015, Karen Dolva and two friends, Marius Aabel and Matias Doyle, started the No Isolation company. With a small robot, they would give long-term sick children and young people the opportunity to participate in the classroom. Children can communicate, speak and follow the class easily from home or from the hospital.
– We had heard stories about children in hospitals and it made us realize that we must do something. We can’t just sit here and talk about it, when we can think of something that improves those lives a little bit, says Dolva on TV 2’s Bare Business show.
Prevent isolation
The goal of No Isolation is to create technology that reduces involuntary loneliness. And entrepreneurs constantly get feedback that the little robot helps many.
– Digital solutions can also be perceived as very little personal. Does this solve the problem of loneliness?
– I don’t think technology ever alene It can solve the problem of loneliness. Loneliness is often the result of prolonged social isolation. We try to avoid this isolation and here technology can play a very important role. Some do not dare to go back to school after two years, because they have not met their friends in the two years they have been sick. Being able to show up to class for five minutes every day through a robot makes a difference. Suddenly, you don’t quit anyway. So that robot has done its job, and well, says Dolva.
Hidden in a bubble
And Karen Dolva herself has experience with loneliness. He slipped when he started college and realized that making new friends wasn’t as fast as one might imagine.
– I had moved on my own, and it was very easy to hide in that bubble there and not come out. I remember the nonsense that “if I die now, it will be a while before someone finds me.” It wasn’t because I didn’t have good people around me, but rather that I was independent. If mom doesn’t get an answer in three days, then she just has to put up with it. It is a defense mechanism that you build yourself in your own little shell. He didn’t understand how important it was to go to a party, for example, that it was a tool to get out of it, says Dolva.
– Your own experiences weren’t a direct reason why you started No Isolation, but do you think you would have created exactly this without those experiences?
– No I dont think so. I think we all understood the weight of that problem and felt it in the body itself. And we had talked for a long time that if we started a company together, there would be something we could work on for the rest of our lives. It must be large enough for us to dedicate our careers to it. And we discovered that by working for social isolation and loneliness, says Dolva.
A button for the elderly
Three years ago, No Isolation started a new project, this time aimed at seniors and others struggling with new technology: KOMP looks like a television, but it only has a large button that lights up.
Through video, the user can talk to his family, doctor or other callers. For many older people, ordinary tablets and smartphones become too complicated, and also physically difficult.
– Dry fingertips prevent touch surfaces from working. Many vision problems cause small screens to not work. And cognitive challenges are a big problem. It became important for us to create something that was so incredibly simple that no matter who you were and what you already know, you can use it, says Dolva.
– I’m not sure if we will ever see four daily trips to Alicante.
International expantion
As a start-up company, it’s not always easy to keep ambitions and finances together.
Last year, No Isolation had to drastically reduce staffing, but in 2020 sales soared, helped by the corona pandemic. And most of the sales are now international:
For more than two years, the company has had an office in London and sells there, as in Norway, mainly to municipalities and public institutions, which then distribute to users.
This fall, the company opened an office in Germany, and Dolva and the co-founders are also looking to Europe for the long term.
– We are thinking of North America, but now it is difficult to say how fast or slow it will go. We have a clear ambition to double sales every year, but I think we can build on a lot of that in the UK and Germany. For the moment, it can happen there, says Karen Dolva.
Watch the full interview with Karen Dolva on Bare business this weekend on TV 2 Nyhetskanalen, or free on Sumo.
