Sure, he’s an angel investor, so of course he, like any VC, needs companies to be big, fast. But this is very seldom what’s best <i>for the company</i>. As Joel Spolsky called it in <i>Strategy Letter I¹</i>, they want to be Ben and Jerry’s, not Amazon.<p>① <a href="https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-ben-and-jerrys-vs-amazon/" rel="nofollow">https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-...</a>
I'm a US Citizen who was self-employed in Sweden for about six years (1999-2006). I was very frustrated at how hard it was to get things to 1. where I was approved to do work and 2. get feedback so I could 3. get paid.<p>On the other hand, now that I'm back in the US I get tired of the continual rat race and wish I had as much vacation as everybody else got in Sweden. The US doesn't give decompression time, but Sweden didn't allow for as much deep focus time.<p>Mind you, I also had communication problems. I expected people to clearly say yes or no and then stick to that. The Swedish politeness took awhile to interpret.
The implication that the Nordic region is underperforming in startups, even in swing-for-the-fences, huge-exit startups, doesn't seem to be borne out by the numbers: over the past decade, 10% of worldwide >$1 billion exits are from the Nordic region, despite it having only 0.3% of the world's population, and 2% of the world's GDP.<p>Stat from here, which has a decent overview: <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/11689464/How-Sweden-became-the-startup-capital-of-Europe.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...</a>
I dealt with a fair number of founders thanks to my job & I've found that it comes down to personality more than nationality.<p>Trust me - you get French A-holes and you get Swedish A-holes.<p>What I have noticed though is that Nordic founders are really difficult to contact. I'm in a privileged position in that they don't have much of a choice - they're required to respond to me. Yet sometimes its difficult...Spanish and Nordic in particular.
I think this could be any smaller country eg Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore. Its really difficult to build a world beating huge company from smaller centres. Perhaps dominating local markets or selling out to a global behemoth are the only successful models.
This is a very short article with very little to back up the claims that these things are actually lacking and why it's a bad thing that they are.<p>I mean sure, it's advise but honestly:<p>> So, please Nordic founders with your fantastic design and culture skills, please have greater ambition, stronger conviction, and ship more often.<p>Nothing in that whole article helps you, as a (Nordic) founder, to achieve any of it. Considering this is coming from a VC, maybe a bit more "how to go about this" would be helpful instead of the blanket "you just kinda suck at this" statement.
One of the first things I learned when going to Sweden is the history of the Vasa ship, which was a ship designed to be the most powerful in its time. The only problem is that it couldn't actually stay afloat due to its weight and design.<p>That offers a noble lesson about planning, setting goals, etc., and it has probably influenced the local entrepreneurial culture.
Maybe this article is correct, but I would say there are tons of other systematic limitations of doing a startup in Scandinavia: language, funding, customers etc.<p>Given this - I would say that Scandinavian founders probably, on the whole, 'swing above their weight'.<p>The lack of 'AirBnB' and 'Uber' style successes has far more to do with market size, fluidity, and the 'mega centre' of the Silicon Valley than anything.