When grabEAT was accepted into Tech Nordic Advocates’ Norway as Female Tech Founder Frontrunner international accelerator program for 2026 cohort, it felt like an important milestone for our company.
For an early-stage startup, opportunities like this matter for several reasons. They provide access to knowledge, mentoring, and visibility, but perhaps more importantly, they create the right environment to challenge assumptions, strengthen the founder’s role, and sharpen the company’s direction. For grabEAT, the program became all of those things.
It gave us access to a valuable network of founders, mentors, and ecosystem leaders. It helped strengthen how I communicate grabEAT’s vision and value proposition.
This is a reflection on why we applied, what we learned, and how the program has influenced grabEAT’s journey.
Why We Applied
grabEAT was created to solve a simple but important problem: people spend long hours in places where healthy, warm food is not available when they need it.
That can be at office buildings without canteens, transport hubs, hotels, industrial areas, or other environments where people are present but food access is limited or non-existent. Our mission is to make healthy, warm meals available 24/7 through smart, unmanned food solutions, while also contributing to a more flexible and sustainable food infrastructure.
As we have worked to build grabEAT from idea to pilot and early commercial development, one thing has become increasingly clear: a startup does not grow in isolation. It grows through learning, strategic feedback, strong relationships, and access to people who understand both the challenges and opportunities that come with building a company from the ground up.
That is why Tech Nordic Advocates’ Female Tech Founder Frontrunner program felt highly relevant to us. It brings together founders with mentors, industry experts, ecosystem leaders, and growth partners, creating an environment focused not only on company development, but also on founder development.
For grabEAT, it represented an opportunity to strengthen our positioning, sharpen our communication, and become part of a wider ecosystem of people working to support female-led technology companies.
Entering the Program
Tech Nordic Advocates described the program as part of Northern Europe’s largest female tech founder community and Europe’s only international female tech founder growth program. For me, that was both motivating and reassuring. It signalled that this was not simply a short-term startup course, but a serious platform built to support ambitious female founders over time.
From the start, it was clear that the program was designed to offer more than inspiration. It was built around practical founder needs: access to experienced advisors, structured feedback, strategic conversations, and a strong community of fellow founders navigating many of the same challenges.
The bootcamp in Oslo was the first step. Like many early-stage founders, I was balancing limited resources with a strong belief that being in the right room could make a real difference. It did. The program quickly proved valuable, not because it offered generic startup advice, but because it addressed the real questions founders face when trying to build and scale a company: how to communicate with clarity, how to strengthen confidence, how to position the company, and how to build the right relationships around it.
Being selected to continue into the accelerator felt like a meaningful validation, both for me as a founder and for grabEAT as a company.
What We Learned
Every accelerator or founder program should ideally leave a company stronger than it was before entering. For grabEAT, one of the most important outcomes was not a single workshop or session, but a shift in how I think about communication, confidence, investor readiness, and strategic network-building.
One of the most valuable things I took away from the program was learning how to pitch grabEAT with more confidence and clarity. As founders, we often know our companies in great depth. We live inside the details every day: the product, the logistics, the operations, the challenges, the opportunities, the numbers, and the moving parts that others never see. But understanding your company deeply is not the same as being able to explain it clearly and convincingly to others.
The program helped me sharpen how I communicate grabEAT’s story: what problem we solve, why it matters, where we create value, and why the solution is relevant now. That may sound simple, but it is one of the most important skills a founder can develop, at least in my case. Clear communication matters not only when pitching to investors, but also when speaking with customers, partners, property owners, and other stakeholders.
The program also strengthened my understanding of investor readiness — not only how to present the company more clearly, but how to communicate the market opportunity, growth potential, and strategic direction in a way that is relevant to investors. For grabEAT, this was especially important because our business is not only about selling food. It is about building smarter access to healthy meals through technology, partnerships, and location-based infrastructure. Being able to explain that clearly, without overcomplicating it, is essential.
Being able to explain that clearly, without overcomplicating it, is essential.
The Value of the Right Ecosystem
Another major takeaway from the program was the value of ecosystem access and relationship-building. Startups rarely grow through product development alone. They grow through people: the mentors who challenge you, the partners who open doors, the founders who share their experiences, and the organizations that connect you to new opportunities. Tech Nordic Advocates created exactly that kind of environment.
Through the program, I gained valuable new connections, including exposure to Nordic Edge and its wider network. That has been meaningful because it opened the door to further conversations and connections that may become relevant for grabEAT as we continue to grow.
For a company like ours — operating across food, technology, logistics, sustainability, and smart city infrastructure — these ecosystems are highly valuable. They create access to people and organisations who understand the broader context in which grabEAT is being built.
The program reinforced that founder growth is often accelerated by proximity to the right ecosystem. It is not only about who you know, but about being in environments where relevant relationships can form naturally through trust, conversation, and shared ambition.
Founder Development Is Business Development
A third important lesson was a reminder that founder development and company development are deeply connected.
The strongest startup programs do not only help you improve your pitch deck or think about growth strategy. They also help you develop as the person leading the company. That matters, because a startup can only grow as far as the founder is able to lead it.
For me, the program created space to reflect more strategically on how I show up as a founder: how I communicate, how I build confidence in important rooms, how I represent the company, and how I make decisions about focus and growth. Those are not secondary questions. They are central to whether a company is able to move from early traction to long-term momentum.
The Impact On grabEAT
The value of Tech Nordic Advocates’ Female Tech Founder Frontrunner programme goes beyond the learning itself. It has had a real impact on how I think about grabEAT’s next phase.
First, it has strengthened how I position the company externally. grabEAT is not just a vending solution. It is a company working to solve a broader challenge around access to healthy, warm food in locations where traditional food service does not work. It sits within a larger conversation about workplace wellbeing, mobility, smart buildings, sustainability, convenience, and food infrastructure. The program helped me communicate that more clearly and more strategically.
Second, it expanded grabEAT’s network in ways that matter. Our company depends on strong relationships across the value chain: food producers, property owners, workplaces, hotels, charging locations, technology partners, and ecosystem actors who can help us scale. New introductions and stronger visibility within the right environments are therefore not a side benefit. They are part of the foundation for future growth.
Third, it gave me renewed confidence in the journey we are on. Building a startup often means working for long periods without much external validation. You keep going because you believe in the problem you are solving and in the company you are building. But moments where you gain new clarity, external perspective, and a sense that you are in the right rooms with the right people can be incredibly important. This program was one of those moments.
The People Behind The Program
One of the clearest strengths of Tech Nordic Advocates’ Female Tech Founder Frontrunner program is the quality of the people behind it.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Jeanette Carlsson, founder and CEO of Tech Nordic Advocates, for building a platform and community that creates meaningful opportunities for female founders across the Nordics and beyond.
Thank you also to Becky Wightman for leading the program in Norway with commitment, professionalism, and genuine support for the founders in the cohort.
A special thank you to Alexander Sæbø Løtvedt from Nordea, who took the time to meet with me online, listen patiently and genuinely to what I am building, and engage with grabEAT in a way that was both encouraging and valuable. Those conversations matter. When people with experience and perspective take founders seriously and create space to listen, it can have a meaningful impact.
I would also like to thank Solvej Biddle, one of our mentors, for her energy, insight, and genuine desire to help early-stage founders. It is always noticeable when someone brings both competence and generosity into a founder program, and that has been deeply appreciated.
More broadly, thank you to the mentors, coaches, organizers, speakers, partners, and fellow founders who contributed to the program. Building a startup can be demanding and, at times, isolating. Being part of a program where people are willing to share knowledge, ask thoughtful questions, and open doors for one another is both valuable and motivating.
Why Programs Like This Matter
Programs like Tech Nordic Advocates’ Female Tech Founder Frontrunner matter because they do more than support individual companies. They strengthen the wider startup ecosystem.
Female founders still face barriers in visibility, access to capital, and access to influential networks. Programmes that are intentionally designed to support female-led technology companies help address that imbalance by creating stronger pathways to knowledge, confidence, credibility, and connections.
That matters not only for the founders involved, but for the quality of the ecosystem as a whole. When more women are supported in building and scaling ambitious technology companies, the startup landscape becomes stronger, more diverse, and better equipped to solve a wider range of real-world problems.
grabEAT has benefited from being part of that environment, and I believe many more companies will do the same.
Looking Ahead
Completing Tech Nordic Advocates’ Female Tech Founder Frontrunner program does not feel like the end of something. It feels like an important step in a much longer journey.
grabEAT is still early in its growth story, but we are building with a clear ambition: to make healthy, warm meals accessible 24/7 in places where traditional food service does not work, while contributing to a smarter and more sustainable food infrastructure around where people actually are.
The program has strengthened how I think about that mission. It has helped me communicate it more clearly, position it more strategically, and build stronger confidence around the path ahead. It has also reminded me that growth is not only about the product or the numbers. It is about the people around the company, the quality of the relationships being built, and the founder’s ability to keep learning while leading.
For that, I am deeply grateful.
Glenda Anfinsen, CEO of grabEAT AS