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Karen Dolva

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Karen Dolva
Born
Norway
NationalityNorwegian
EducationUniversity of Oslo (computer science and interaction design)
OccupationEntrepreneur, interaction designer
CompanyNo Isolation
TitleCo-founder and board member, No Isolation

Karen Dolva (born 1990) is a Norwegian entrepreneur and interaction designer who co-founded the Oslo technology company No Isolation in 2015 and served as its chief executive officer for eight years, until she handed the role to Morten Jørgensen at the end of 2023.[1] No Isolation develops communication devices for people at risk of loneliness and social isolation, chiefly the AV1 telepresence robot for children with long-term illness and the KOMP one-button screen for older people.[2]

Dolva studied computer science and interaction design at the University of Oslo, worked at the Oslo technology incubator StartupLab and co-founded the user-experience consultancy UX Lab before starting No Isolation with Marius Aabel and Matias Doyle.[3] As chief executive she led the company through rapid early growth, two rounds of staff reductions in 2018 and 2019, a surge in demand for KOMP during the COVID-19 pandemic and a later shift toward profitability.[4][1]

Her recognition includes the European Commission's 2018 EU Prize for Women Innovators in the Rising Innovator category, a place on the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list and inclusion in the BBC's 100 Women list for 2020.[5][2][6] As of October 2026, No Isolation's website lists her as co-founder, former chief executive and an active member of the company's board.[3]

Early life and education

Dolva grew up in Norway. In a 2019 profile, Aftenposten reported that she bought her first car, a used white Volvo 240, at the age of 12 with birthday and Christmas money she had saved for several years, and drove it with her father on her grandfather's fields.[7]

In a 2020 interview with E24, Dolva said that from primary school her plan had been to become a dentist, and that chemistry lessons at upper secondary school turned her toward economics instead; she considered becoming a stockbroker, a job her mother had held when Dolva was small.[8] When she was not admitted to the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), her first choice, she enrolled at a university in Edinburgh. She left after four months, having decided economics was not for her, and returned to Norway, where she worked in factoring at the bank DNB.[8]

A friend studying informatics at the University of Oslo persuaded her to apply there. Dolva later said she knew little about computing at first, but came to like the practical character of the subject, describing programming as "quite magical stuff" in which one invents things and then learns to build and design them.[8][9] She studied computer science and interaction design.[3] Sources differ on whether she completed a degree. Teknisk Ukeblad described her in 2016 as a trained interaction designer from the University of Oslo, and her Forbes profile lists a bachelor's degree, but in October 2020 Dolva told E24 that she was still 10 study credits short of her informatics degree, because work at her first start-up had left no time to finish it.[10][11][8]

Aftenposten and TV 2 both reported that Dolva had experienced loneliness as a student, and TV 2 linked that experience to her later work.[7][12] Dolva herself told E24 that the idea that No Isolation grew out of her own loneliness was "not quite right", though it had come to look that way in the media; she said that having felt lonely over a long period made it easier to commit to the problem.[8]

Career

StartupLab and UX Lab

While studying, Dolva worked part-time at StartupLab, a technology incubator in Oslo, where she described herself as a general helper who did everything from fetching coffee to recruiting people to the incubator's events.[8] She said that being around people starting companies taught her to see problems and possible solutions, although she had at first thought the founders' lives looked "absolutely awful".[8] Forbes reported in 2020 that she met her future No Isolation co-founders at StartupLab.[13]

The part-time job led to a consultancy start-up in user-experience design, UX Lab, which Dolva co-founded.[8][3] The University of Göttingen, in a speaker biography, described UX Lab as a user interaction consultancy that drew on research in cognitive psychology and human-computer interaction.[14] She left the venture after about a year.[8] No Isolation's biography of her also records a period as a board member of Oslo MedTech.[3]

Founding No Isolation (2015)

Dolva, Marius Aabel and Matias Doyle founded No Isolation on October 1, 2015.[10] The European Commission described it as a company founded in October 2015 "with the single purpose of creating tailored communications devices for groups that are socially isolated".[5] According to Forbes, what brought the three together was a conclusion that nearly all tools in the technology industry were made "to make efficient people more efficient".[13] The founders did not begin with a product in mind; Dolva later said they knew only that people should not feel lonely or excluded from everyday life.[15]

Two encounters shaped the first product. Teknisk Ukeblad reported that Dolva had just met Anne Fi Troye, who had lost her 16-year-old daughter to cancer in 2005 and went on to work with young cancer patients through the Cornelia Foundation; Troye told Dolva that for many patients the isolation was worse than the treatment.[10] Dolva also said that a friend working as a nurse at Rikshospitalet in Oslo had described how hard it was to watch sick children "just lying there".[4] She told E24 that the team carried out around 100 interviews with long-term ill children, their parents, nurses and teachers before concluding that the best way to help was to get the children back to school.[4] Business Insider reported that Dolva spent three months mapping the field.[16]

AV1 and early growth (2016 to 2018)

The result was AV1, a small robot that sits in the classroom in place of an absent pupil. It streams video one way and audio both ways, has built-in 4G, and is controlled by the child from a phone or tablet; classmates can pick it up and carry it to breaks, other lessons or friends' homes.[10][16] Dolva told Business Insider that children lying in bed in pyjamas preferred to see the classroom without being shown to it, which is why the robot has no screen showing the child.[16] The first prototype was tested in February 2016 and was trialled at St. Olav's Hospital in Trondheim, Oslo University Hospital and Sunnaas Hospital with children who had cancer, CFS/ME or injuries.[10] Business Insider reported that four months after start-up the company rolled out 20 prototypes.[16]

By December 2016, Teknisk Ukeblad reported, around 70 robots were in use in Norway, the company had 15 employees, it had partnered with Telia, and it was working with the Norwegian Cancer Society and the Norwegian Childhood Cancer Society on a second-generation robot. Dolva was then raising a seed round and preparing to open an office in Amsterdam in February 2017.[10] "I am learning so much every day that it feels a bit like my head is going to burst," she said at the time.[10]

By June 2018, Teknisk Ukeblad reported that No Isolation had sold robots worth 30 million Norwegian kroner to nine European countries, had around 60 employees across offices in Oslo, London and Amsterdam, and had around 400 AV1 users in nine countries.[2] In August 2018 Handelsblatt covered a presentation of the robot in Hamburg, describing Dolva, then 28, as head of a technology company with 60 staff.[17]

KOMP

After AV1 the company turned to older people. Dolva told E24 that the team asked "who is most isolated?" and concluded that the answer was the elderly; she cited Eurostat figures that 75 percent of people over 75 were not online, and said her most surprising finding was that many older people physically cannot use touch screens, because poor circulation makes the screen react to their fingers as if they were wearing gloves.[4] In 2017 Dolva had told European CEO that the next product for older people would definitely not be a robot.[18]

The result was KOMP, a screen with a single button that receives photos and video calls from a closed family group; it was developed in cooperation with the Norwegian Cancer Society and appeared at the end of 2017.[2] Calls start automatically after a countdown, so the user does not need to do anything.[13] In 2018 KOMP won the Smart Ageing Prize run by Nesta Challenges and the AAL Programme. Dolva said the award was "the external validation we really needed" and made it easier for partners and stakeholders to come on board.[19]

Cuts and restructuring (2018 to 2019)

In September 2018 Dagens Næringsliv reported that No Isolation, by then grown to 55 employees, had furloughed 15 staff because of a shortage of cash. Dolva said: "Everyone agreed that it was better to be out for a couple of months than to risk not having a workplace to come back to."[20] In December 2018 the same paper reported that the company had dismissed 14 employees that autumn, and that Idekapital, the fund of chess world champion Magnus Carlsen and his manager Espen Agdestein, was investing 20 million kroner with an option on a further 30 million.[21]

The following year was harder. According to E24, No Isolation ended 2019 with a loss of 21 million kroner and revenue five million kroner lower than the year before, and 24 of its 46 employees had to leave. Dolva said: "These are people I care about, and it is no fun."[4] She said the company had changed strategy and restructured in 2019 to focus more clearly on particular customer segments, including the public sector, and that slow municipal procurement, with no budget line set aside for video technology for older people, had contributed to the weak year.[4] In an interview with Nesta Challenges she said that in 2019 the company realised it "was not catering to our core customer group, the public sector, in the right way" and changed how it worked.[19]

COVID-19 pandemic (2020)

When Norway imposed social distancing in March 2020, demand for KOMP rose sharply. Dolva said the company was sold out in mid-March with a long waiting list.[4] Forbes reported that No Isolation sold nearly 1,800 KOMP units in March and April 2020 against 650 devices in all of 2019, and that the average KOMP went from two video calls a week before the pandemic to nine. Dolva told Forbes that the greatest change was "in the mentality of our customers", who now recognised that they had to try everything to get older people connected.[13] By the end of May, E24 reported, the company had taken 33 million kroner in revenue since the start of the year.[4]

In November 2020 No Isolation launched a second version of KOMP with built-in 4G, a higher-resolution 17-inch screen and a price of 8,000 kroner, 2,000 kroner less than the first version. Dolva said in a statement that sales had gone from 650 units in 2019 to well over 4,000 so far in 2020, with more than 30,000 monthly app users, and that the company was working to deliver more before Christmas because "no one wants to sit alone on Christmas Eve".[22] That month the BBC named her one of its 100 Women for 2020, describing her as having made it her mission to help people from young children to seniors cope with feelings of loneliness.[6][23]

Separation of KOMP and departure as chief executive (2022 to 2023)

Dolva later identified the company's two very different customer groups as one of its main difficulties: AV1 was bought by school owners, while KOMP was often bought by the families of older people. In summer 2022 No Isolation began separating KOMP into its own company, which Dolva said made it easier for the teams to focus. She added that she was glad to have had KOMP, since "during the pandemic we would have had a real problem if we had only sold AV1".[1]

On December 7, 2023, Dolva told the technology publication Shifter that she was in her last month as chief executive, after eight years in the role. "No Isolation needs something other than me now, that is what weighs heaviest," she said, adding that many major questions in the company had been settled, which allowed her and the board to see who could take it forward.[1] She had told the board she wished to step down, and the company engaged the recruitment firm Avantgarde Search; it chose Morten Jørgensen, a former consultant who had started and led McKinsey's public-sector practice and spent five years at the technology company Arundo.[1] Dolva rejected the suggestion that she wanted a more comfortable life, saying: "If comfort was important, I would probably have chosen something else a long time ago."[1]

Dolva said she would first take parental leave and had not decided on her next step; her provisional plan was to return to a different job within No Isolation if the company needed her, adding that she did not want to be "the founder who forces herself in".[1] As of October 2026, No Isolation's website describes her as an active board member, and quotes Jørgensen as chief executive in 2026.[3][24]

Leadership and management style

In December 2016, a year after founding the company, Dolva described No Isolation's management structure as flat. "Here everyone is responsible for their own work. I trust my colleagues one hundred percent," she told Teknisk Ukeblad, adding that she was working to get over impostor syndrome because running a company of 15 people was very different from being three people printing sketches on a 3D printer.[10]

In 2020 E24 noted that she had led the company without previous management experience or training. Dolva credited one of the co-founders, who joined with more leadership experience, with teaching her to be generous: to understand that people need different things and deliver in different ways. She attributed much of the company's survival to open communication among the founders, with room for praise, criticism and argument, and advised new leaders to have "one or two who are in the war with you" so they do not believe they must manage everything alone.[8]

Dolva has stressed user involvement in product design. "I could not believe that people were making things without bringing their users into the loop from day one," she told European CEO in 2017.[18] In 2019 she told D2, the magazine of Dagens Næringsliv, that both of the company's products were the result of systematic product development, in which the problem of loneliness and social isolation had been broken down into groups to understand which solutions each could use.[25]

She has also spoken about limiting her public profile. In 2023 she told Shifter that she had spent a great deal of time in the media without getting much back, grew tired of it, and decided with the company to say no to anything not related to the product or its users.[1] Looking back on the company's growth, she said: "We were going to grow, whatever it cost. Then we turned 180 degrees and built stone by stone. In recent years the focus has been on profitability."[1]

Major deals and strategic decisions

  • Seed and later funding. Dolva was raising a seed round in late 2016.[10] Forbes's profile of her reported US$6.1 million in seed funding, and in May 2020 Forbes reported that the company had raised US$10.6 million in seed capital.[11][13] Shifter reported that institutional investors including MP Pensjon, Idekapital, Ferd and Oslo Pensjonsforsikring backed the company.[1]
  • Idekapital investment (December 2018). Idekapital committed 20 million kroner with an option on 30 million more, following the autumn 2018 cuts.[21]
  • Second product line. The decision to build KOMP for older people alongside AV1 gave the company a second market; Dolva later said the company would have had "a real problem" in the pandemic without it.[1]
  • Public-sector focus (2019). The 2019 restructuring narrowed the company's customer focus to segments including the public sector.[4]
  • KOMP spin-off (from 2022). The separation of KOMP into its own company began in summer 2022.[1]

Financial and market performance

No Isolation is privately held. Figures reported during Dolva's tenure include:

  • Headcount: 15 employees in December 2016;[10] around 60 in mid-2018;[2] 46 before the 2019 cuts, when 24 left;[4] 25 in May 2020;[13] and 19 by late 2023, down from a peak of more than 60.[1]
  • Results: a loss of 21 million kroner in 2019, with revenue down five million kroner on 2018.[4]
  • Sales: robots worth 30 million kroner sold to nine countries by June 2018;[2] 650 products sold in 2019 and more than 4,000 KOMP units sold by November 2020;[22] revenue of 33 million kroner in the first five months of 2020.[4]
  • 2023 forecast: Shifter reported that the group expected sales revenue of 44 million kroner from AV1 and 19 million kroner from KOMP in 2023, with recurring subscription revenue from both products also growing.[1]

Board memberships and outside roles

After stepping down as chief executive, Dolva remained on the board of No Isolation, which as of October 2026 lists her as an active board member.[3] Her No Isolation biography also records earlier service as a board member of Oslo MedTech.[3] In January 2023 Dagens Næringsliv noted that No Isolation, under her leadership, was one of few Norwegian technology companies with a female majority on its board.[26]

Dolva has given two TEDx talks, according to the Inspiring Fifty Nordics profile of her.[27] She appeared as a guest on the Norwegian talk show Lindmo in its 14th season.[28] She has spoken publicly in support of women in technology. On receiving the EU prize in 2018 she said she wanted to inspire other women to take the same risks, "because it is really fun and in no way a man's thing".[2] In 2017 she told European CEO that she objected when traits she valued in herself, "being unafraid, tough and good at sales", were described as male.[18] In 2021 the investor Trond Riiber Knudsen cited her as an example when he said he preferred to invest in female founders, a generalisation some of his colleagues questioned.[29]

Views on technology and loneliness

Dolva has argued that technology is not the cause of social isolation. "You wouldn't blame your washing machine for making you socially isolated, and that's a technology," she told Business Insider in 2018, while also questioning "whether or not social media is social at all".[16] She said she wanted to establish the "pricetag of loneliness", such as the cost to government of a child missing years of school or of older people needing care earlier, because "that's the only way we can keep really pushing the market in front of us".[16] She has repeatedly cited research that long-term loneliness is as harmful to health as smoking.[4][25] In the Nesta interview she warned that removing cash, post offices and bank branches took away places where older people met others, and that "thinking that the generation currently relying on the analogue is 'dying out' is both horrific and not true".[19]

Personal life

In December 2023 Dolva said she was the mother of a young child and was expecting her second child in January 2024; she said the pregnancy was not the deciding factor in her decision to step down.[1] In 2020 she had spent long periods at No Isolation's London office before returning to Oslo.[8]

Recognition

  • 2016: Innovator of the Year in the Ledertalentene awards run by E24.[2][14]
  • 2016: Norway Female Entrepreneur Award, according to No Isolation.[3]
  • January 2018: Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe, social entrepreneurs.[2]
  • 2018: Business Insider's list of the most influential women in Nordic technology, and the Abelia and ODA network list of Norway's top 50 women in technology.[2]
  • March 2018: SHE entrepreneur of the year.[2]
  • June 2018: EU Prize for Women Innovators, Rising Innovator category, worth €20,000, presented in Brussels by Commissioner Carlos Moedas and MEP Eva Kaili.[5][2]
  • December 2018: Forbes list of the world's top 50 women in technology.[3]
  • 2019: Nominated in D2's "30 under 30" Ledestjerner list of young Norwegians working on sustainability.[25]
  • November 2020: BBC 100 Women.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 <ref>"Karen Dolva gir seg som toppsjef i No Isolation".December 7, 2023.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 <ref>"Hun ble frarådet å satse - nå har den norske gründeren fått prestisjefylt EU-pris".June 25, 2018.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 <ref>"Karen Dolva".No Isolation.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  4. ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 4.11 4.12 <ref>"I fjor måtte over halvparten av de ansatte gå etter omsetningssvikt: nå styrer de mot tidenes år".June 28, 2020.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 <ref>"EU Prize for Women Innovators 2018".European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 <ref>"BBC 100 Women 2020: Who is on the list this year?".BBC News.November 23, 2020.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 <ref>"Som student var Karen Dolva ensom. Det hun lærte, har gjort henne rik.".February 8, 2019.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  8. ↑ 8.00 8.01 8.02 8.03 8.04 8.05 8.06 8.07 8.08 8.09 8.10 <ref>"Karen Dolva (30) kunne ingenting om data, men falt for informatikk: Ganske magiske greier".October 7, 2020.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  9. ↑ <ref>"En venninne ble avgjørende for No Isolation-gründerens studievalg".July 19, 2023.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  10. ↑ 10.00 10.01 10.02 10.03 10.04 10.05 10.06 10.07 10.08 10.09 <ref>"Karen (26) med gründersuksess: Jeg ville jobbe med noe som utgjør en forskjell".December 4, 2016.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 <ref>"Karen Dolva".Forbes.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  12. ↑ <ref>"Jeg tullet med at hvis jeg døde, tar det tid før noen finner meg".TV 2.November 29, 2020.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 <ref>"Business Is Booming During Coronavirus Lockdowns For Norwegian Startup Producing One-Button Computers For Old People".Forbes.May 21, 2020.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 <ref>"Karen Dolva".University of Göttingen.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  15. ↑ <ref>"Millions of people experience loneliness every day: a Norwegian startup is tackling this through innovative communication tools".WEgate.January 30, 2023.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5 <ref>"This female CEO is trying to defeat loneliness - and robots are part of her plan".Business Insider India.September 16, 2018.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  17. ↑ <ref>"Karen Dolva: Eine Norwegerin bringt kranke Kinder dank Robotern in die Schulklasse".August 21, 2018.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 <ref>"Robots aren't the enemy; they're helping to cure social isolation".European CEO.July 25, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 <ref>"Interview with Karen Dolva, previous Smart Ageing Prize winner".Nesta Challenges.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  20. ↑ <ref>"Pengeskvis for gründerselskapet No Isolation: måtte permittere 15 ansatte".September 12, 2018.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 <ref>"Magnus Carlsen-fond satser 20 mill. på ensomhetsbekjempere".December 13, 2018.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 <ref>"Norske No Isolation lanserer ny versjon av sin «ensomhets-dreper» Komp".November 24, 2020.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  23. ↑ <ref>"BBC 100 Women 2020".BBC News.November 23, 2020.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  24. ↑ <ref>"About No Isolation".No Isolation.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 <ref>"30 under 30: Roboten hennes får syke barn på skolen".2019.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  26. ↑ <ref>"Regjeringens nye likestillingsforslag: Hun må kvotere inn en mann i styret".January 8, 2023.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  27. ↑ <ref>"Karen Dolva".Inspiring Fifty Nordics.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  28. ↑ <ref>"Lindmo, sesong 14, episode 8".VG TV Guide.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  29. ↑ <ref>"Investor vil helst satse penger på kvinnelige gründere som Karen Dolva".July 29, 2021.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
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