Norway’s first co-working community Mesh has acquired The Hub, the largest recruiting platform for startups in the Nordics. The community gathers founders, creatives, freelancers, and entrepreneurs under one roof in an inspiring and nurturing space. The acquisition will advance Mesh’s recruitment services and goals to expand to different Nordic markets by offering its members access to the best talent in the whole region. Thomas Sveum, who started Startupmatcher in 2016, will join The Hub as CEO. The sale of The Hub gives Danske Bank the opportunity to focus on banking and financial services towards growth companies. The new version of The Hub’s platform will be launched on 27th February 2023.
The Hub was launched by Danske Bank in 2016 and has connected over one million job seekers with startups since its inception. Today, the platform has 300,000 job seeker profiles and over 10,000 startup jobs listed in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
Mesh Community is the largest coworking community in Oslo, Copenhagen and Trondheim, with over 600 companies and over 4,000 members. The goal is to build the best spaces and offer valuable services within recruitment, funding and networking in the Nordic region. Mesh hosts hundreds of thousands of participants at events each year connecting founders, startups and investors. It’s physical expansion was put on hold due to the pandemic in 2020 and the company focused fully on its digital services. In 2021 Mesh acquired Startupmatcher, Norway’s leading recruitment platform for startups, to offer its members access to the best talent within Norway.
The acquisition of The Hub will advance Mesh’s recruitment services and goals to expand to different Nordic markets by offering its members and community access to the best talent in the whole region.
“The Hub is a fantastic service, and being able to combine that with our Startupmatcher platform, allows us to offer a complete Nordic recruitment platform. It’s a great opportunity to expand faster and further into the Nordics,” says CEO and co-founder of Mesh Anders Mjåset. “The pandemic has set the company four to five years back in relation to our planned physical expansion in the Nordic region, but the acquisition of the Hub accelerates the company three years forward with its digital ambitions.”
Thomas Sveum, who started Startupmatcher in 2016, will join The Hub as CEO. He will lead the team in Copenhagen, which for the past six years was seen as his direct competitor. “It’s amazing that the two platforms have merged and we can offer a full recruitment service for the whole Nordic region under one brand, The Hub. The whole team is excited about what we can achieve together and 2023 will be filled with exciting opportunities,” says Thomas.
The sale of The Hub gives Danske Bank the opportunity to focus on banking and financial services towards growth companies.
“The Hub has been a tremendous success for us at Danske Bank since its inception just seven years ago, and the fact that over 300,000 individual applicants have used the service to send over one million job applications is almost unbelievable. The goal for The Hub was to become a significant and important service for the Nordic startup environment, and we have succeeded at that. At the same time, growth companies have become an important investment area for the bank and it is natural for us to increase our focus around banking and financial services towards this segment in the future. We look forward to seeing the success story around The Hub evolve and look forward to working closely with Mesh Community,” says Klavs Hjort, SVP Growth at Danske Bank.