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 for the company. As Joel Spolsky called it in Strategy Letter I¹, they want to be Ben and Jerry’s, not Amazon.
That seems to be the default complaint from investors about the cultures in non-valley places: "They choose risk/reward balances most beneficial to themselves instead of the investors. That makes them less attractive than the firms that structure themselves as outsourced R&D teams paid in lottery tickets".
I agree with you, of course ALL investors prefer companies to "burn out than to fade away."
BUT - at the same time all cultures have their issues. I think the Nordics are "punching above their weight" statistically. But at the same time, we are held back by honestly a fear of "beeing seen."
I have no problem with founders aiming for building stable good lifestyle companies or even consultancy shops. But then they should say that. If they are raising money, then by god they have to play the investor game.
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.
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.
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.
These observations, though perhaps interesting, have nothing to do with the article from what I can see. They relate more to the immigration process in Sweden and how to get a work permit and consecutively a personnummer and bank account.
The 'politeness' he mentioned is very relevant to the cultural issues the article discusses.
It's a consensus culture. Finland is even worse. Disagreeing with the group is a huge taboo, something that will make a meeting room go very uncomfortably quiet very quickly.
Of course it has its advantages, like everything it is a trade-off, but in terms of being entrepreneurial I think it is a big reason why entrepreneurship is held back in the Nordics. You can't just fight it out with ideas and then shrug it off like I see in other places - for better or worse people are more sensitive and 'correct' in intrapersonal dealings.
Don't know why it's like that, I hear Canada is the same. Perhaps the cold climate means people mingle less, and so social occasions are meant to reaffirm social cohesion, to the exclusion of airing differences.
Oh yeah, it's also 'socially correct' to outwardly acknowledge and reject the Law of Jante-effect - which just leads to criticism being even less tolerated; you're just jealous, narrow-minded, etc. if you are critical of anyone.
As a counterpoint to Finland being a consensus culture, they also have "management by perkele" [1]. In particular Linus Torvalds has said his direct style is part of Finnish culture [2].
> Perhaps the cold climate means people mingle less, and so social occasions are meant to reaffirm social cohesion, to the exclusion of airing differences.
I know this article and comment is about the Nordic countries. But I'm not sure this reasoning is generalizable across countries/cultures. In my experience, climate doesn't seem to be the driver in the US. I'm not sure whether or not New Englanders are more sensitive, but folks from other parts of the country seem to find us more gruff than e.g. down south or in the southwest. ;)
> Perhaps the cold climate means people mingle less, and so social occasions are meant to reaffirm social cohesion, to the exclusion of airing differences.
My pet hypothesis is pretty much the opposite: until a century ago or so, these countries were quite poor, most people lived on farms, often far from neighbors, and for at least six months every year, anyone "nasty" enough to be expelled from the group was likely to be dead within days if not hours. So the "dissent gene" was weeded out.
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.
No, I agree. The Nordics is swinging above its weight.
But I think all cultures have their reasons to not create more amazing things. The Nordics have a lot of investors preferring safe returns, and therefore perhaps the same within the entrepreneur communinuty.
I dealt with a fair number of founders thanks to my job & I've found that it comes down to personality more than nationality.
Trust me - you get French A-holes and you get Swedish A-holes.
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.
Spanish? I'm not Spanish, but culturally close, so I'm surprised. What do you mean by "difficult to contact"? They won't answer your emails/take your calls?
Long list of issues. My personal favourite being "this line does not accept incoming calls". Mails being ignored. Or they pass it off to some random other person. Or they just tell you they don't have time.
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.
The internet is what lets companies aspire to become global quickly. Lots of countries have access to it and have fostered hugely popular products and companies because of it. Many startups in the US are busy dreaming of dominating local markets and selling out to global behemoths too. Especially in SV.
Agreed, but if you want a large world leading company you need a couple thousand people skilled & experienced in all sorts of professions. If you're in Helsinki or even Stockholm you just can't go out and hire such a large experienced teams let alone expect them to beat the world.
Rovio is from Helsinki. King.com from Stockholm. One of the Skype founders was Swedish and they HQ'd in Estonia. Unity3d from Denmark. Opera from Norway. Nokia from Finland. It's already happened and unlikely to be isolated incidences.
Nokia is the only company on that list that was large and that didn't last very long. I'm not trying to did Nordic companies, I'm just saying its difficult.
The billionaires King.com created probably disagree. Skype is still one of the most popular messaging platforms in the world, having been traded around a couple times now for $billions too.
USA had a first-mover advantage on internet access, but 20 years later many wealthy nations now have the necessary infrastructure ... a payment gateway, appstores, marketplaces, web hosting ... to flourish online.
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.
I mean sure, it's advise but honestly:
> So, please Nordic founders with your fantastic design and culture skills, please have greater ambition, stronger conviction, and ship more often.
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.
I didn't want to write a research post. It was actually a rant turned into a post. I was really tired of asking "so, why are you actually doing this company?".
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.
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.
Given this - I would say that Scandinavian founders probably, on the whole, 'swing above their weight'.
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.
① https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-...