In 2015, I was in San Francisco working with Lever when I saw in a newspaper that Hans — a well-known luxury real estate agent in Oslo — was starting a new company.
I’ve always been fascinated by both luxury products and real estate, so I immediately thought: I really want to work with this guy. This was one of the very few times I’ve actually reached out to someone specifically because I wanted to work with them.
I never heard back.
But about a month later, I got a phone call from Miriam at Scandinavian Design Group in Oslo. They had landed the project of designing a website for a new luxury real estate company.
The second she mentioned it, I remember thinking: “Wait… is this Hans?”
And she was like, “Yeah — how do you know?”
I tried to play it cool and said I was just guessing.
They needed someone to help lead the digital side of the project, and that’s how I got involved. I got to do what I enjoy the most — translating a brand and identity into a digital experience.
Through that collaboration, Hans came to me with an idea.
The real estate market in Norway is extremely transactional. Most people only have a short period where they’re actively searching, and because people gradually move up the ladder — apartment, bigger apartment, house — there’s this constant cycle of buying and selling.
So we started asking ourselves:
What if your home was always quietly on the market?
And if someone offered the right price, you could decide to move.
We started in the high-end segment, back when homes above 10 million NOK were considered luxury.
One of the biggest insights we had was that buyers at that level often aren’t driven by photography first. They care more about location, architecture, privacy, size, renovation level — things like that.
So instead of building a traditional listing platform, we designed a stripped-back experience centered around a map. You could quietly list your home, define what you were looking for, and connect directly with owners if there was mutual interest.
We got really good traction with it and learned a ton. This was also back when Facebook advertising worked unbelievably well, so we were able to build both supply and demand surprisingly efficiently.
This was honestly my first real experience building a company from scratch — everything from hiring and contracts to fundraising and shareholder agreements.
Super fun project, and one I’m still very grateful for.
