Sweden have good working morale and extremely high unemployment rates among young people that often have high education. If you start a tech company you will be flooded with applications and you can cherry pick talents. The entry wage for developers are around $25,000 year, yes year, not monthly!
Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?
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Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?
#72Here's OMX, the Swedish stock index: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EOMX?p=%5EOMX vs the S&P 500: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SPY/chart?p=SPY SPY still seems to be doing significantly better over the last 5 years.
That would actually imply the point of this article, in my opinion. More startups will inevitably mean more failures due to more risks, which would drag the stock market.
But that doesn't matter. You shouldn't gauge the inventiveness and exploratory nature of a country by looking at its stock index. Especially since stock indices are irrational and get inflated for many misleading reasons.
Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?
#73Completely missed one of the most important points: It's easier to take risks, if those risks actualizing will not destroy your life. In the US, there's very little social safety net to catch you. If you get sick before the startup is big enough, it means personal bankruptcy - and no medical treatment. Missing revenue targets can mean missing student loan payments, missing rent, etc. There's real risk you'll end up h…
> In Sweden, you might end up poor, but the poor are still taken care of. You get your medical treatment, the state pays your rent, and you are guaranteed enough income to buy groceries. Way to propagate an ignorant myth. The US has a massive welfare state and social safety net. The average poor person in the US can typically draw $25,000 to $30,000 in benefits per year depending on the state they live in. Those bene…
You have a very skewed and inaccurate idea of what the U.S. welfare system is like, and what life is like if you are on welfare there.
Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?
#74Sweden have good working morale and extremely high unemployment rates among young people that often have high education. If you start a tech company you will be flooded with applications and you can cherry pick talents. The entry wage for developers are around $25,000 year, yes year, not monthly!
I have no idea why you think that. I can assure you that no developer in Sweden gets paid that little.
Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
That summary would apply more or less to any Scandinavian country so those can't be the reason.
Swedes are very different from, say, Norwegians. Swedes are forthcoming and ambitious; if you succeed in your ambition, you're celebrated by your countrymen (so long what you're doing is in the politically correct sphere). You're allowed to be proud of your achievements. Norwegians keep their head down; most seem content with what little they have. If you do achieve more success than your average countrymen, you're s…
As a Swede I disagree; I find that "Jantelagen" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante) is as strong in Sweden as anywhere else that I've been in Scandinavia if not even more so. Although, I live in Northern Sweden: far away from Stockholm. Maybe individual success is viewed more kindly there, I do not know.
Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?
#76The most important quote: "Sweden’s impressive start-up record can also be attributed to some broader aspects of how the country is set up. Its social safety net, for instance, helps entrepreneurs feel safe to take risks. In Sweden, university is free, and students can get loans for living expenses, which allows anyone to pursue higher education. Health care is free too, and childcare is heavily subsidized. None of t…
Other Scandinavian countries are also doing quite well, way beyond what their size would suggest.
But also well beyond other countries with developed welfare systems, such as France. I think these discussions always miss one key factor: Language.
If you don't speak English quite well at an early age (already at 10-13 years old) you are much less likely to get into software development at an early age. If you don't get into software development at an early age, you are much less likely to do a software based startup when you are in your twenties. There is a thousand times as much documentation, conferences, tutorials, courses, online fora etc in English as in other languages and this is how new ideas in IT spread. Only months or years afterwards, it's translated to Spanish or Chinese, and only if it has caught on. Just about everything new in IT spreads through English, whether it's AI or web development or anything else.
The Scandinavian languages are not that different from English, the countries are small and consume a lot of music, movies, TV etc from the US/UK. Movies and TV have never been dubbed, except for toddlers. So for the last 50-60 years or more, Scandinavians have been quite good at English. Your average 70 year old Scandinavian speaks English better than your average 20 year old Italian. A drunkard on a bench in Scandinavia is likely to speak better English than most academics I've met in Southern or Eastern Europe.
We live in an era of software driven startups. It's easy to forget that it was not always like that. There were times when successful businesses were driven by mechanics (GM), electronics (Sony), chemistry (Kodak), trade or other factors. Now it's software, and whether your language, framework, or library of choice is C, C++, Python, Lisp, Java, PHP, JS, HTML, CSS, Tensorflow, React, or almost any other tech that the unicorns are built with, the new developments in that tech will initially have spread from English speakers to English speakers. The fact that the largest software companies in the last two decades have all been American then reinforces that trend.
Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
That summary would apply more or less to any Scandinavian country so those can't be the reason.
Swedes are very different from, say, Norwegians. Swedes are forthcoming and ambitious; if you succeed in your ambition, you're celebrated by your countrymen (so long what you're doing is in the politically correct sphere). You're allowed to be proud of your achievements. Norwegians keep their head down; most seem content with what little they have. If you do achieve more success than your average countrymen, you're s…
Strongly disagree. As a swede I've been taught my entire life not to think I'm special or in any way better at anything than anyone else. It's only in recent years I've come to realize that being good at something does actually give you the right to say you're good at it as long as it's true and not empty bragging.
That's not to say Swedes aren't hard working but you'll rarely hear a swede talk about their achievements in the way a person from the US would for instance.
Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?
#78Sweden have good working morale and extremely high unemployment rates among young people that often have high education. If you start a tech company you will be flooded with applications and you can cherry pick talents. The entry wage for developers are around $25,000 year, yes year, not monthly!
I have no idea why you think that. I can assure you that no developer in Sweden gets paid that little.
While I have seen people fresh out of high school making about those numbers as devs most college educated engineers start at around $3000-$3500 monthly. Bear in mind that this includes (nearly) free health care, free education and very low interest student loans, so you normally don't start of with several hundred thousand dollars worth of debt.
Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm an entrepreneur and I'm strongly in favour of these policies for this exact reason. It often surprises people that there are entrepreneurs who're in favour or more , not less, social spending. But I think that in the long term, making to feasible for anybody , not just rich kids, to start companies is good for the economy. I wish we (the Netherlands) had a system more similar to the Scandinavian countries. We hav…
> Notably, having been an entrepreneur puts you in one of those gaps. Do you mind expanding? Is this something to do with having been ‘unemployed’ while working on your company?
No. Only when you're an employee somewhere part of your taxes are marked as "paying premium for social security". But as an entrepreneur, I'm only covered for health, not unemployment.
Note that many entrepreneurs agree with this policy: they rather pay as little tax/premium/whatever and just sort things out themselves. The thing that bothers me is that I can't even choose to pay the same state unemployment premium as my employees are forced to pay.
But when you're not entitled to unemployment money (also happens if you've never had a job more than x months in a row), you're not entitled to all the extra benefits you get when trying to get out of unemployment. Eg you don't get day care support for kids because you're home all day, right. No matter that you're trying to reeducate yourself to get a new job - you're not costing the state any money so it's your problem. However if you are entitled to unemployment benefits and then working on reschooling yourself, then you get day care support for your kids as if you had a job.
NL is very American in that respect. The social security is designed from the perspective of the treasury, not the people's well being.
Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?
#80Completely missed one of the most important points: It's easier to take risks, if those risks actualizing will not destroy your life. In the US, there's very little social safety net to catch you. If you get sick before the startup is big enough, it means personal bankruptcy - and no medical treatment. Missing revenue targets can mean missing student loan payments, missing rent, etc. There's real risk you'll end up h…
I'm an entrepreneur and I'm strongly in favour of these policies for this exact reason. It often surprises people that there are entrepreneurs who're in favour or more , not less, social spending. But I think that in the long term, making to feasible for anybody , not just rich kids, to start companies is good for the economy. I wish we (the Netherlands) had a system more similar to the Scandinavian countries. We hav…
Well it is quite similar in Finland. It seems like the government does everything in its power to pull the social security net out under entrepreneurs.
A more pessimistic view is that the government does everything it it's power to pull the social security net out under everyone, but the current the legislation makes it much easier to do for entrepreneurs.