The Viking Code

9Change Factor: The Viking Code Meets Politics

SONDRE RASCH COULD be described as an “ultranerd.” By the age of 12, through delivering newspaper and doing housework for others, he had earned enough money to buy his first used computer for 300 euros. Inspired by his gaming community, he recognized the need to set up servers for others and developed his first business idea—right from his childhood bedroom. Today, however, Rasch no longer lives in the mountains along the rainy coast of Norway but runs his companies from San Francisco. Independent of the global wave of home-office work that arose during the COVID-19 era, Rasch moved to Palo Alto with a visionary idea. In January 2016, he became part of the renowned incubator network of Y Combinator. Just 8 months later, he managed to win Sam Altman as an investor. His company changed its name from Konsus to Superside and began offering creative services through a global network, providing cost-effective and rapid top-notch services from all time zones. Their vision: to integrate the top 1% of creatives worldwide and offer their services through this global network. Rasch and his team focused on “remote work”—working from anywhere—and were rewarded for it.

Today, globally networked work is indispensable. Safety Wing, one of Sondre Rasch's newer companies, emerged as an evolutionary development of his worldview and represents an unusual business idea: a health insurance specifically created by and for digital nomads. Traditionally, ...