What if the most important opportunity in your career isn’t found in a job ad, but in something you create on your own?
At this week’s Takeoff Tuesday, we hosted Haakon Garseg Mørk, Founder and CTO of Omny. He didn’t come to deliver a polished startup-story, but to share how a fuzzy internal idea inside Cognite became a full industrial security spinout backed by both Aker and Telenor. And what it actually takes to go from developer to founder.
The urge to build
Haakon described his motivation very simply: he likes to build things.
Everything from importing and selling bikes as an 18-year-old, to learning how to build a cabin by mixing technical requirements, YouTube tutorials and Google. Not only because he loves risk, but because it feels meaningful to create something that exists in the real world afterwards.
That same urge has taken him through NTNU, PST and Cognite. At PST he learned how threat actors always go after the weakest link, whether physical, digital or human. At Cognite he realized that the weakest link was often not the new platform, but the industrial systems around it — some almost wide open.
That was the beginning of Omny.
From internal idea to spinout
The story of Omny is far from the classic “two people in a garage.” The team started inside Cognite with a loose mandate: understand OT security, understand the competitors, and figure out where they could be truly unique.
In parallel, Aker and Telenor were exploring opportunities in industrial cybersecurity. The case for Omny emerged right between Cognite’s data platform, industrial domain knowledge and Telenor’s security operations.
There wasn’t a finished product when the investment decision was made. There was a direction, a tech foundation to build on, and a small group of people willing to own the problem. The rest was vision, pitching and learning at full speed.
What he would do differently today
Haakon shared openly what he’d repeat, and what he wouldn’t, if he were starting again:
- Don’t hire too fast
It’s tempting to build a “scaleup org” too early, especially with strong owners behind you. But doubling a team before direction and product are clear creates confusion. People end up in the wrong roles, and energy is spent reorganizing instead of building. - Hire for motivation and culture, not just CV
Overqualified people may over-engineer solutions or get bored. Slightly underqualified and very motivated can be far better. Culture doesn’t live in a Notion doc — it’s shaped by the people in the room. - Be clear on what you need from your first 5–6 hires
These people set the standard for everything. This is not the phase for “we’ll see how it goes.” You need to know exactly who they are and why you want them. - Accept the chaos
Things will be blurry. Customers will pull you off-course. The product will shift. Trying to tidy away all uncertainty with processes too early often makes things messier. You have to stand inside the fog for a while.
When AI meets OT security
Omny builds for heavy industry, where downtime is serious and trust is everything. Here, AI isn’t about cool features. It’s about helping users understand which vulnerabilities truly affect operations, and how that ties into risk and compliance.
Haakon’s message was clear: you have to ride the AI wave on multiple levels. Internally with tools that make teams faster, and in the product with agent-systems that automate the unscalable. But you must do it on the users’ terms, not the technology’s.
Take off with us
Takeoff Tuesday is exactly that: a place where ideas, experiences and new relationships get room to take off.
Thanks to Haakon for sharing the highs, the missteps and everything in between. And to anyone sitting with an idea: the best opportunity might very well be the one you create yourself.
Come by our next Takeoff Tuesday, grab lunch and a coffee in our Tech Hub and let’s talk about what you’re building.
