- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01J71B5WPRYFFTJPCDK6HXZ9FJ (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Ulrikke Lien: Hello. Hello. Ben Ornstein: How are you? Ulrikke Lien: I’m pretty good. How are you? Ben Ornstein: Doing well, doing well. Where are you based? Ulrikke Lien: In Norway. Ben Ornstein: Awesome. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Very cool. Ulrikke Lien: Nice. What about you? You’re in the US? Ben Ornstein: I’m in the US. Yeah, I’m in Delaware. Maybe haven’t even heard of it. I have because of the Delaware That’s what everyone knows Delaware for yeah, yeah Well, yeah, thank you so much for taking the time I really appreciate it What context do you have probably not too much? Ulrikke Lien: Not too much. So if you could film in that would be amazing. Ben Ornstein: Oh Definitely, so you probably received an email from Michael Hauk who is a startup founder. He is the co-founder of Launch House, a 16Z backed startup. Since leaving Launch House, he has started a newsletter called Hauk’s Newsletter. And it’s got something like 80,000 subscribers and he’s built a real brand in the space. One thing that he wanted to build out that I’m helping him out with is a resource for founders to learn about fundraising. And we figured what better thing to do than to speak with founders who have done it themselves. That is what we’re doing today. What’s going to end up happening is this conversation is going to be turned into a text-based case study. I’m asking softball questions here that you’ll have no problem answering. We have the read AI bot, so I have the transcript to generate the document afterwards. The video goes nowhere. It’s just for us to chat today. So feel free to be as candid as you can, as you’d like to be, because we, again, this won’t go out to the general public, it’s gonna be payment gated for founders who are interested in fundraising. Ben Ornstein: You’ll get a chance to review this prior to it going live, I’ll send you a draft, you can say, hey, I wanna change this, I wanna add this, et cetera. Yeah, I’m gonna, that’s about it. What questions do you have from that? Ulrikke Lien: No questions, I guess. It sounds great. I think for me, when I was fundraising, I was listening to podcasts with other founders sharing their stories and I got a lot of comfort from that. I’m so glad that you asked. I’m happy to share my experiences. Ulrikke Lien: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Awesome. No, I appreciate that. And, and yeah, there’s, there’s some great resources out there and we hope to be another one of those. So, um, but yeah, no, thank you again so much for taking the time. I appreciate it. Of course. Okay. So if there are no further questions, we can just get right into it. And, uh, yeah, I think a great place to start would be if you could kind of briefly introduce yourself and your startup. Ulrikke Lien: Yeah, my name is Ulrikke. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Sensorita. And yeah, we founded the company four years ago. We are developing technology for waste management companies. So trying to take this really old and ancient industry into the future with our radar and AI sensors. Ben Ornstein: Very cool. Um, yeah. What can you share about the fundraising journey so far? You know, how many rounds have you, how many funny rounds have you raised? Uh, if you’re comfortable sharing what valuations were those at, um, yeah, anything. Ulrikke Lien: Yeah, we raced two rounds. So we raced the precinct round with Angels and our incubator in Oslo. That was two years ago. And that was raced on a safe note, I guess. It’s like the equivalent, but it’s the Norwegian version. But that’s essentially without the valuation. So the round we raced recently, that we closed in May, was our first reevaluation, which was a seed round. And yeah, we haven’t shared that publicly, so I’d rather keep it that way. Ben Ornstein: No problem. For the round that you did raise previously, how much did you raise? Ulrikke Lien: The pre-seed round? Ben Ornstein: Yeah, the pre-seed. Ulrikke Lien: That was around $500,000. Awesome. Very cool. Ben Ornstein: And so, you know, when you did raise this funding and the funding round you most recently raised, what did you plan ahead of time to use the funding for? Were there milestones you wanted to hit? And yeah, how did you allocate the cash? Ulrikke Lien: Yeah, so in the deck we had like five milestones. For us it’s like we have a hardware-enabled software, so the first preset row we raised to To kind of develop the core technology, which is the hardware and then now the the round we race now is to start to deploy that large scales while keep developing new software features and and utilize the data from our hardware to build new software modules so Yeah, we have a unit deployment milestone, and we have some software products milestone. Yeah, I guess it was mine still. But what I did when I started racing the round, which is I mean, coming from Norway, the startup ecosystem here is quite, it’s not as mature and big as other, especially Americans or like the Bay Area, but also in other European cities, it’s just very different from here. So very early on, I decided to raise international capital and not raise from Norwegian investors, which, My network is mainly in Norway, so I think that was a big decision going into the round. And I guess also kind of defining what were our ambitions in this round, both in terms of milestones, but also round size, who are our ideal investors. Ben Ornstein: Very cool. I like the the international investor approach. You people talk about like the strategic investors. And in your case, it wasn’t like a partner for like for as a customer, but you wanted access to different regions. That’s very smart. Ulrikke Lien: Yeah, the round sizes are a lot smaller in Norway, but you’re expected to compete on an international stage, so why not get the international round sizes and the international network that comes with your investors, rather than trying to take the world from this small corner up north. It’s a lot harder when you don’t have the right tool set to do that. Ben Ornstein: 100% can only imagine. And so, you know, part of part of what you were looking for was the region that the investor was in. But how else did you decide? How’d you decide investors were a good fit? Ulrikke Lien: That’s difficult, because at the end of the day, when you’re fundraising, It’s difficult to get in a position where you are the one that gets to choose. It’s more of the other way where you are trying to be chosen by the investors, especially in this, the capital market of today. We did, however, end up in a situation where we could choose, which was really fortunate for us. And I the decisions we made was based on how well We connected with our contact person and the person who who like led the deal from the investor’s side Uh, because that’s the essential that’s the person you’re gonna report to who will sit in our case on our board uh who you will call when shit hits the fan you want to trust that person and we had two investors coming in this round and both of our contact persons there are people I really connected with and want to work with so that was a big one and I guess both of the investors we have now are also they have some sort of One of them comes from the built industry and the type of waste we work with and have a vast network there. And I’ve seen also how it is to scale technology in old school industries. So that’s great. And the other one is in connectivity. It’s actually a CVC, which is like It’s pros and cons, I guess, with that, as it is with other hardcore VCs. That was also one thing that was on the pro side for them, was they have some technological expertise that’s relevant for our product and can be risk-reducing for us. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. And how did you get in touch with these investors? Ulrikke Lien: I probably did like 300 investor meetings or something. Ulrikke Lien: But the funny thing is that the VC that ended up taking the lead was someone I met in person at Slush, the largest startup conference in Europe. And it was just by chance we were sitting together watching pitches and I just like chatted started talking to the guy next to me it turned out he was working in Vinci one of the largest construction contractors in Europe and we were working with construction waste so we had a lot to talk about and yeah we remained in touch for one and a half years and then he started and brick-and-mortar ventures half a year before we started discussing investment. So it’s kind of sad I guess that I wasted so much time doing all this those like investor calls and then it’s It’s not so strange that it’s the person who’s been following our progress for for Like almost two years and seen What we have achieved. Um I think that’s it builds trust in That we are the right company and that we are the right team to to execute on this opportunity And I think it’s hard to gain that confidence in video calls over a couple of weeks, especially in the market where investors are a little more risk averse. So, yeah. Ben Ornstein: That’s, that’s a funny story. It’s crazy how that works. And, and obviously it wasn’t wasted. You probably learned so much over the course of those calls in terms of how to pitch your product and the positioning and yeah, maybe didn’t result in anything tangible in terms of funding, but definitely not a waste of time, right? Ulrikke Lien: Yes and no. I don’t know. I think just like some of the discussions I had were really great and I felt like even though they ended up not investing I felt like it was such a good they asked such good questions that really made me think however like spending time fundraising means that you can spend less time doing other stuff so I also feel like I have been away from the company for half a year and then now returning and have more time and energy and to talk to customers and work on stuff that actually matters when you build a company. So I guess it’s both pros and cons, but I’d rather be without fundraising, to be honest. I know, for sure. Ben Ornstein: No, absolutely. And that actually leads really well into my next question of, in terms of how many people you did outreach to, I mean, you kind of already covered this, but so you said you reached out to 300 How many people did you reach out to? Then what subset of those people did you have initial meetings with and then the subset of those that ended up investing? So I guess I got the second and third parts of that were 300 and then kind of none exactly right. Is that right? Ulrikke Lien: I think How I didn’t track this and I probably Whatever I think maybe I was in touch with 150 I think most of them were warm intros or meeting at events. Ulrikke Lien: Or in yeah, mostly warm intro, so I didn’t reach like cold reach out to many investors and then so like from intro to meeting that was like most of them would go to the meeting since I had the warm intros and Then I think many would also go to a second meeting It Yeah, and I guess how many did I have more than three meetings with? Maybe 20? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Wow. Ulrikke Lien: Maybe more? I’m not sure. Actually, I have no idea. This is all like a blur for me. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. Ulrikke Lien: And it’s different with the Norwegian investors because I’ve talked to them for years here and there. The ecosystem is so small, so you run into people all the time. For international investors it was different and it’s also a little harder because you get to an analyst and then you have to like work your way up to meeting the partner and that’s actually when it really starts and you have to start every call was like starting all over again with a new person Well, the ones I met at events, it would be the partner. And then it’s easier to get to a decision maker, pastor. Ulrikke Lien: So that was a little different. And I talked to a lot of different investors, VCs, family offices, CVCs. Ulrikke Lien: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. It’s pretty broad. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Now, hey, that’s that’s part of the process. Right. But and when you were talking to these investors, what did you emphasize in your pitch? Ulrikke Lien: Well, I think a challenge for us is that very few people know about the waste industry or they know it exists, but they don’t know anything more than that. So explaining why, like when you hear that a waste company doesn’t know how many containers they own and that they lose 1% of the container fleet every year, it’s like unbelievable that they have they have so little control. So it’s all these nuances that you have no intuition in understanding how the waste industry works. So I feel like I spend a lot of time explaining that. But I think our emphasis was we have, we’ve had paying customers since before we started the company. So that was something I really tried to emphasis that this is not product trying to find a customer, or what do you say, like solution trying to find the, what is it? Anyways, it’s something that we have pretty good traction. So I think that’s, and our team, our team is also pretty strong and help people with like pretty cool theories. So I guess it’s about trying to like emphasis the, that makes you unique. But at the end of the day, you’re like meeting a person with their own pre assumptions. And we’ve had so much strange feedback, and that really I guess it’s good feedback because it shows like what people misunderstand and that’s not clear but um at the end of the day there’s a like a group of people that have to truly believe in what you’re saying is true if they have don’t know the industry themselves they have to believe that you are the right people to do it They have so many other interesting cases, so it’s easier to invest, at least for a generalist VC, to invest in a market and a problem that you’re familiar with, than invest in this new niche problem that you’ve never heard or thought about before. Ulrikke Lien: And I understand that for sure, but that means that you get a lot of no’s, and that the no’s are, they feel like they have to give you a feedback, and the feedback is not always something that you should listen to, because it’s just, you don’t know how much thought they put into it. But still, they can show you what they misunderstood and didn’t understand and what they liked, so I guess it’s not completely useless. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, 100%. And when you were doing these pitches and going through the fundraising process, did you ever apply some sort of urgency among investors to close the round? And if you did, what strategies did you use? Ulrikke Lien: I tried really hard to do that, but that was difficult. What I did try was Which I personally think it was a good angle because we were starting to discuss a pilot with a new customer, but we didn’t have any capacity to follow up on that because we were also deploying solution with another customer that requires quite a lot of attention to make sure it’s a success. So trying to show that we have so much traction that we cannot deliver and that’s why we are racing this round. That was my main narrative. And I also used recruiting that we were talking to this these like all these really exciting candidates And they are looking for a new job right now. So if we don’t close this round now, I will have to let them go I don’t know how much this actually worked because Investors like to take their time But I did try to create some sense of urgency. Ben Ornstein: Cool. Yeah, no, it’s so hard when you’re on, you know, if you’re not in the position to be able to do that, but it’s… Ulrikke Lien: Exactly. The real sense of urgency is like, well, we will run out of money next month, so… Right. Ben Ornstein: You can’t tell them that though, right? Ulrikke Lien: Yeah, they will have so much power in the negotiations. Ben Ornstein: Exactly, exactly. And so you’ve definitely talked about some of the challenges that came up during fundraising, but was there one singular, like, biggest challenge that you had to overcome during fundraising? Ulrikke Lien: Yes, and I think that it’s not one single incident, it’s more the, like, build-up of rejections you get, and you get rejected so many times and then you have to be able to reset and go into the next meeting with like the biggest confidence in the world and you have to convince this person you don’t know that you will take over the world even though you were just rejected 10 minutes ago by an investor you spent a lot of time talking to. And when you get like 200 rejections, that becomes increasingly more difficult. And it’s just like so, so killing. So yeah, motivation and like having high spirits even when you’re rejected. And it’s part of the game. And I guess that I felt like I took comfort talking to, we’re sitting in an incubator and talking to other founders who were also fundraising was like really helpful. It means that it’s not only me, it’s part of the game. Ben Ornstein: This is part of the game. Yeah, 100% absolutely. You told that funny story of how you end up getting one of your investors. Are there any other interesting fundraising stories or unique stories that you haven’t talked about yet? Ulrikke Lien: Yeah, I think for me, Our investors don’t know that though. We were getting close with Brick and Mortar, who actually led the round. I had really good contact with the European person, but I thought there’s no way that… They’re quite a small team. They’re only five or six people. Then I thought there is no way that they will make a decision without all the other people, at least some of them, have met me in person. So I decided to take a chance. We were not actively seeking American investors, but I had some calls here and there. Ulrikke Lien: But our main market is Europe, so it makes more sense to have European-focused investors. But yeah, I saw that they were quite interested. I also felt a slight hesitation because they didn’t know, the rest of the team didn’t know me that well, even though our main contact did. So I decided to book a last minute flight to San Francisco. And it was like towards the end of runway, so it was also like a chance to take, but I guess that was I have a feeling that it was worth the trip because I got the chance to meet a couple of them in person. And I guess it also shows some opportunity-seeking mindset, maybe. So I guess it was right before Christmas. Ulrikke Lien: Yeah. I guess the trip is not long if you’re in the US, but coming from Europe is quite an effort. Ben Ornstein: And that investor did end up investing? They did, yeah. Nice. That’s a cool story. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Awesome. Ulrikke Lien: It wouldn’t be so cool if they ended up not investing. Ben Ornstein: It would be less of a cool story, but it would still be cool. What’s one piece of fundraising advice that you would give to other founders? Ulrikke Lien: I think my advice is to have a couple of founder friends that you can talk to and seek motivation from I had a couple of friends who would be like, come on, you got this. Even if I just got 10 no’s that day, I tried not to involve the rest of the team so much because I didn’t want that. Energy to bleed into other stuff we were doing. Um, so I relied on other people who had been in the exact same situation and that’s I think for me that was very critical because When you have when you’re in the middle of it of it, you don’t know It’s so easy for me to sit here on the other side. I just I we closed around successfully we were in a very fortunate position where we could actually choose our investors and But I didn’t know that, and I didn’t know that until the very last week. And when you’re in the middle of fundraising, to keep going even if you are kind of unsure whether it will be a success or not, I think trying to set up yourself so that you have the highest chances to have the mental capacity and stamina to just push through it and keep going. Ulrikke Lien: For me, that was having those two founder friends. It was going to choir practice every Thursday. And dance class every Monday and having that like rhythm as well. That’s something to like hold on to. Ben Ornstein: That’s awesome. That’s great advice. And, you know, we have this little question to give you a chance to like shout out an investor that you think, you know, you’d recommend other founders to work with. Is there someone you’d like to recommend? Ulrikke Lien: Well of course I’m super excited to work with our investors now, Brick and Mortar Ventures and Telenor, which is a Norwegian telco company. Ulrikke Lien: I did also talk to Gil in Angular Ventures. They ended up not investing but that was also extremely good conversations I had with them. So I’m trying to stay in touch just like have them ask the difficult questions and make me think because you know most of us Talking to investors who’ve seen similar problems to what we are solving in other industries, I think that’s extremely relevant to see what has been successful and what hasn’t, and then you can learn from that. Even though the industry is very different, it’s still some similarities or some key takeaways that you can learn. Ben Ornstein: I love when I’m doing these and founders recommend investors that didn’t end up investing in the company. That’s cool, because there’s not that many founders who have done that. So it is really cool. Ulrikke Lien: Yeah. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Are there any resources you would recommend to founders, like books, newsletters, podcasts, really anything? Ulrikke Lien: No, oh I have one advice that I that I got a little too late But I’m definitely gonna do in the next round is to have a founder associate that can like help you in the fundraising and set up a data room or like help you with with some of the like admin of fundraising that’s very time consuming so that you don’t have to like put your full effort on it but you can kind of offload it to someone um and i’ve seen like others to have found someone that really loves the venture game and fundraising game because it’s very much like it’s like dating on steroids basically and if you love like trying to hack that game having someone like that to help you oh my god that would be that would be a dream for me uh that’s not necessarily a resource but if you find that person um I think that that would be amazing and um I do I don’t want to plug them too much, but the reason why I talked to Gill, the investor I recommended, was because I follow their newsletter and I always enjoy reading it. So that’s why I reached out to them. So I guess in some ways it’s kind of a success that they consider us. That was a cold outrage actually. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Cool. Ulrikke Lien: Yeah, it’s called the angle. Other than that, I try to actually spend more time with the waste industry and those arenas rather than the startup and investor arenas. Ulrikke Lien: Because that’s what truly matters, I think. Ben Ornstein: Yep, absolutely. No, that’s awesome. Ulrikke Lien: It sounds like the resources you’re building is what I should have been knowing about when I was in the middle of it. Ben Ornstein: Well, maybe in certain ways, but in certain other ways, that’s it seems like you took advantage because you’re right speaking, you know, staying in touch with your industry and like your customers and, and partners in the space. That is the most important thing. So that’s awesome. Ben Ornstein: Um, and the last question is, do you have any hot takes regarding the fundraising process? Ulrikke Lien: just like in general trends or any… Ben Ornstein: Anything that you kind of feel or think about the industry that is a bold, that people disagree with you about or could disagree with you about? Ulrikke Lien: Yeah, I have one actually. Ulrikke Lien: So going into fundraising, We’re doing hardware. So that’s very like a no-go for many investors but I think in the future and I feel like I’ve already seen a shift is that hardware will be more attractive for investors because it’s such a strong moat and stickiness factor and like lock-in for like physical lock-in for the customer so I think hardware startups will really have, will peak in a couple of years on the fundraising side. Ulrikke Lien: That’s my hot take. I like that. Ben Ornstein: I like that a lot. Yeah. Cause there, yeah, that’s, that’s interesting for sure. Well, thank you so much for taking the time and print out your name. It’s, can you pronounce your name again? Ulrikke Lien: Ulrikke. Ben Ornstein: Ulrikke. Yeah, well, thank you so much for the time, Ulrikke. I really appreciate it. This was a really fun conversation. I’ll get the draft of this to you. It could be as soon as end of day tomorrow or sometime early next week. I’m not positive yet. But yeah, if you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to email me. But thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it. Ulrikke Lien: Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. And let me know if you need any more information or anything that wasn’t clear. Just let me know. Ben Ornstein: I’ll do that. If there’s something, I’ll make a comment in the doc and say, hey, can you give a little more information here? Ulrikke Lien: And that’ll be great. Yeah. All right. I must say, you have a very Norwegian-sounding name. Ben Ornstein: Do I? I know, I definitely, my family is partly from Germany, Austria, and Poland, but I don’t think I have a Norwegian background. Not that I’m aware of I’ve never even visited Norway, that’s somewhere I haven’t been. Ulrikke Lien: It’s just like the word Stein, like that’s a very typical Norwegian surname. Or you have like some, something Stein. And Orn, it sounds like if you have, so we have the O with a slash. Ben Ornstein: Yep, yep. Ulrikke Lien: And Ornstein, that’s like a Norwegian name for sure. It means the eagle stone. Ben Ornstein: Eagles what? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Stone. Ulrikke Lien: Oh, okay. Ben Ornstein: Interesting. Yeah very cool yeah so maybe you have some I mean it’s not that german it’s not that far yeah maybe there is some norwegian background in there one of my favorite tennis players is from norway so oh yeah big Ulrikke Lien: fan close friend of my one in my family casper is yeah No way, that’s pretty cool. No way, it’s like this small. Ben Ornstein: That’s awesome. Yeah, one of the things I do in my free time is I have a tennis newsletter, like an email newsletter with a friend of mine who actually is a tennis creator. He’s like a big YouTube subscriber base. And he creates a lot of content. And so I built the newsletter for him. And I also built like a discord community. Ulrikke Lien: So it’s, it’s really into tennis. Ben Ornstein: I played I played college tennis myself. It’s a one of my passions. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Nice. Ben Ornstein: Very cool. Well, thank you again so much for the time. I really appreciate it. And yeah, please feel free to reach out with anything that I can help with in the meantime. Ulrikke Lien: Yeah, great. Great talking to you. Ben Ornstein: You as well. All right, well, thank you. Yeah, you have a nice rest of your day. I appreciate it. Ulrikke Lien: Bye. Bye.