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Swedish tech startups and scaleups

swedishtechnews.com

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Re: Swedish tech startups and scaleups

#101

Post by robalni »

vimy wrote: post #94
robalni wrote: post #90

What's up with all these two-dimensional solid color people graphics that often have unrealistic colors or body shapes? I see them everywhere . Here are a few examples from the list: * https://metry.io/img/metry-product-information.png * https://norban.se/assets/img/front-page/section-1/room_7@1x.... * https://nordtechgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/undrawd... * https://www.nuvoair.com/_nuxt/img/home-enterprise-…

I really dislike this graphical style. It’s been a couple years now so I hope something else will replace it soon.

This site has some more interesting graphics: https://www.gamifiera.com/

Re: Swedish tech startups and scaleups

#102

Post by Gravityloss »

archydeb wrote: post #28

I heard that Sweden's high income tax actually incentivised startups, because the only way to get _seriously_ wealthy was through capital gains. Does anybody know whether that's true? If so, it really undermines the narrative that is somewhat dominant in Britain, that high income tax will disincentivize entrepreneurship and innovation etc etc

Stock options are taxed as salary income when excercised though.

Re: Swedish tech startups and scaleups

#103

Post by tored »

RestlessMind wrote: post #83
kkielhofner wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very accurate. While other Nordic and European countries also have strong social safety nets (certainly compared to the US) Sweden seems to have captured something special. For a country with roughly the population of the Chicago metropolitan area Sweden punches well above their weight in everything from startups to pop culture influence[0] to the point where the referenced article calls Sweden "the unofficia…

> Turns out when you have a safety net it's a lot easier to make the jump to forming your own startup I think you are overindexing on the safety net part. Here[1] is a chart of startups per capita in Europe. Looking at "startups per 1M inhabitants", Estonia has 1100+ while Germany has only 250 in spite of having a great safety net (apparently). Same article also shows that Sweden has 1769EUR VC funding per capita, wh…

Agree, if you examine Swedish modern history since the industrial revolution you will find that Sweden has always produced lots of startups (or the equivalent in the old days) with both low taxes and high taxes, with a welfare state and without.

High taxes and a welfare state do of course have some role to play (positive and/or negative), but as you say there other important parts that probably matter more.

One thing we can say empirically is that Sweden have had it difficult to create large sustainable companies from startups like it did hundred years ago, Spotify is a notable exception.

Re: Swedish tech startups and scaleups

#104

Post by sandebert »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #77
sandebert wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might you perhaps be the Swedish musician Solar Fields, who also made the music for the game Mirror's Edge?

I am not, only a fan of his music. Sorry to disappoint :)

Not disappointed, just grateful you replied - thanks!

Re: Swedish tech startups and scaleups

#105

Post by LtWorf »

jsty wrote: post #93
LtWorf wrote: post #49

How many of those are actually "contracted for the development" by a company in Malta? The swedish startup I used to work for was setup in this way to scam taxes.

The "contracted for development" setup is common amongst multi-territory IP-heavy businesses. You choose a country to hold all the IP and have other locations sell development services to that country's legal entity. You can do it to fiddle around with tax, but it's separately quite sensible to hold all your IP in a single region & entity to minimise the complexity - otherwise you'd have every territory licensing IP…

There was no "multi territory", it was a shitty startup with a bunch of people sitting in a room and sharing the office with another startup that was also owned by kinnevik (swedish VC). It was set up that way to not pay taxes in case it would ever make money.

Re: Swedish tech startups and scaleups

#106

Post by kevinak »

LtWorf wrote: post #47
geysersam wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know any country where it does. In Sweden it certainly doesn't.

It doesn't but they are taxed the second you sell them off. So cool… you're rich but if you actually want to use the money it is taxed.

Actually... Sweden has a large loophole for extremely rich people. Stick it all in a "Capital Insurance" product and pay a low yearly tax on the amount, rather than the gains.

It kind of makes Sweden into a low tax haven if you're only living off capital.

Re: Swedish tech startups and scaleups

#107

Post by kevinak »

pazx wrote: post #69
LtWorf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't but they are taxed the second you sell them off. So cool… you're rich but if you actually want to use the money it is taxed.

Income tax and capital gains tax are two different things and two different rules sets. In Sweden income tax is max ~56% while max capital gains is 30%.

Don't forget to add the "totally not income tax" aka arbetsgivaravgift at another 30% :D

Re: Swedish tech startups and scaleups

#108

Post by jollybean »

jacobr wrote: post #99
jollybean wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still uncompromisingly brutal in the minds of most people. The 'Swede' I know best (Doctor) left for that reason. The argument most often used is 'But I Get Good Services' - which I'm suspicious of because 1) well, you could just keep the money and spend on the services you want, instead of the services the state chooses for you and 2) there's incredible efficiency in private institutions. I don't see any govern…

> I think that would start to create some social nudging functions (i.e. payment for Healthcare) while being a bit more fair (i.e. service quality sometimes proportional to money put in). An interesting definition of “fair” - in Sweden the principle is equal health care prioritized according to who needs or benefits most from the care, not how much you pay. If you see it from that point of view, tax is not a transact…

Most people would reject the idea that someone works hard all of their life gets the same healthcare that someone who does nothing.

Most people are somewhere in the middle, but there absolutely are people do nothing and people who are always being constructive, some in powerful ways.

A society in which 100% of resources would be allocated in that manner (basically communist) would completely fall apart.

I think 'same treatment Healthcare' is actually a bit of a hard-socialist idea that happened to make it's way through society historically (because it needed to have some socialization) but that will ultimately fail, it's on the edge in Canada right now as they are discussion private options.

In much the same way I think fully-private healthcare is a failure.

For the later (fully private) we have to understand the mechanisms are not the same as for regular products or even food etc. - there are existential issues which create gigantic asymmetries. So there must be heavy regulation and likely socialization in certain aspects.

But the converse is still true: 'everyone the same' is a disaster for most of the economy, it's also maybe not such a good idea for healthcare.

FYI - in Sweden the are Private Clinics.

In Canada, where I am from, we have pretty crazy laws, some of those most limiting in the world.

It's illegal to provide private services for all but a minority of issues.

Just consider that: a mechanic can fix your Mazerati, but it's illegal for them to fix your arm.

In practice - there is filtering. 'Important People' somehow manage to get good access, like Sports Stars, politicians. Actual Doctors/Hospitals are not owned by the government (as they are in UK) so they are selective, but the billing rates are theoretically the same.

On the other end, you may or may not get the surgery depending on if you're an alcoholic/smoker etc..

Due to all of this there are very, very weird asymmetries in Healthcare all over the place, notably Doctor's guilds controlling access to their domain, pricing insanity in the US for actual services, insane drug prices due to IP laws and lobbying, inability of governments to innovate effectively. One weird artifact of the later is how much we have to depend on the advancements of other nations.

The NGO style they have in the US is an interesting model as well.

Re: Swedish tech startups and scaleups

#109

Post by sofixa »

xvedejas wrote: post #63
pazx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The swedish welfare system will give you around 2000usd in unemployment every month, depending on previous salary

If you're a founder of a startup working full-time and unable to pay yourself a salary yet, can you receive unemployment? (Maybe you would count this as "underemployment"?) What if you left your previous job voluntarily?

In France, yes. You can apply to get the money you would receive in unemployment benefits as an initial capital in your startup (for paying yourself or for other expenses).

Re: Swedish tech startups and scaleups

#110

Post by sofixa »

jollybean wrote: post #98
hoschicz wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't add 55+25 like that; VAT is 25 % of the 45 % left over. So maximum total marginal tax rate is 66.25 %

It's still uncompromisingly brutal in the minds of most people. The 'Swede' I know best (Doctor) left for that reason. The argument most often used is 'But I Get Good Services' - which I'm suspicious of because 1) well, you could just keep the money and spend on the services you want, instead of the services the state chooses for you and 2) there's incredible efficiency in private institutions. I don't see any govern…

> The argument most often used is 'But I Get Good Services' - which I'm suspicious of because 1) well, you could just keep the money and spend on the services you want, instead of the services the state chooses for you

I'm honestly baffled anyone seriously thinks that. It takes a minimum of reflection on all of the services provided by a functioning state and their role in society to realise that is just highly impractical. You get economies of scale, you get people who can't afford "services" who can not die, you get social mobility, happiness (if the workers servicing the ones that can afford services are unhappy slaves, that would impact service), etc.

> there's incredible efficiency in private institutions. I don't see any government in the world ever making a good 'Spotify'. Despite it's flaws, it's nice to have 'music when I want it'.

There's incredible efficiency in public institutions too, they just optimise for different things. One for money, the other for reach, impact, accountability. Despite it's flaws, it's nice to have healthcare when you need it without fear of bankruptcy.

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