Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 204 posts

Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?

#181

Post by kayoone »

Grustaf wrote: post #95

I think more important than the welfare system (potential entrepreneurs probably don't see welfare as their backup solution anyway) is that the quality of life depends so much less on income than in say the US, so people are not that worried about earning less for a few years. You still get the same healthcare and education, the same access to sports (even golf!) and nature (very important for us), and since there is…

It's funny how that works, even in Berlin i feel there is more of a stigma if you actually own a car instead of using public transportation, but Berlin is probably an extreme example of a very left-heavy capital.

Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?

#182

Post by [deleted] »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #108
johankmagnusson wrote: post #96

I've considered launching a start-up of my own here in Sweden so I've given the pros and cons some thought, and it is virtually risk free. To summarise, compared with other countries, we may have even more of the upside but the downside is capped at a very anxiety free level. These are a few of the reasons: - highly skilled labour is cheap in absolute terms and the cost to performance ratio for such workers is probab…

"please fill me in here Norwegians, Danes and Finns!" Well, Skype is half-Danish, so there's that :-) Others that I know of are Unity (founded in Copenhagen), Zendesk (started in Copenhagen), Steelseries, Endomondo, Just-Eat, Tradeshift, Trustpilot, Flying Tiger, Sitecore, TC Electronic, Soundboks, Navision. It kinda depends on how you define "startup". Bu no, not quite as many as Sweden, but we do have our own estab…

[deleted]

Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?

#183

Post by johankmagnusson »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #108
johankmagnusson wrote: post #96

I've considered launching a start-up of my own here in Sweden so I've given the pros and cons some thought, and it is virtually risk free. To summarise, compared with other countries, we may have even more of the upside but the downside is capped at a very anxiety free level. These are a few of the reasons: - highly skilled labour is cheap in absolute terms and the cost to performance ratio for such workers is probab…

"please fill me in here Norwegians, Danes and Finns!" Well, Skype is half-Danish, so there's that :-) Others that I know of are Unity (founded in Copenhagen), Zendesk (started in Copenhagen), Steelseries, Endomondo, Just-Eat, Tradeshift, Trustpilot, Flying Tiger, Sitecore, TC Electronic, Soundboks, Navision. It kinda depends on how you define "startup". Bu no, not quite as many as Sweden, but we do have our own estab…

Those are really cool companies I did not know were Danish! Skype I knew about, I just chose to forget that detail ;)

Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?

#184

Post by olavk »

silvestrov wrote: post #133
olavk wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Norwegians keep their head down; most seem content with what little they have. Are you aware that Norway is one of the richest countries in the wold?

They are rich as a society, not as individuals. They don't have a neighbour who has created a multi-million dollar company.

Norway have more millionaires (in dollar) than any other country in the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2007/jul/13/business.inter...

On the number of billionaires per capita, both Norway, Sweden and Iceland ranks above the US:

http://www.businessinsider.com/countries-ranked-by-billionai...

Your ideas about Scandinavia seem very disconnected from reality.

Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?

#185

Post by olavk »

erikbye wrote: post #148
silvestrov wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are rich as a society, not as individuals. They don't have a neighbour who has created a multi-million dollar company.

Exactly. Median income in Norway is scary low, especially for single-person households. https://www.ssb.no/en/inntekt-og-forbruk/nokkeltall

Scary low compared to what?

Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?

#186

Post by tome »

xfer wrote: post #179
nnq wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I say anything about PHP?! I mentioned Symfony but that's contrary too the point (and a fine example of over-engineering, btw...). And Ocaml seems cool, though Haskell people see it like "eager Haskell with too many features and complexity and syntax on top". I took a look at the Ocsigen Ocaml web framework long ago though, and I was like "jeeez, wtff"... the language may seem cool, but that thing ... ugh... But…

Haskell people see Ocaml as a language with too many features and complexity? really? Haskell, a language with a billion extensions? Have you ever tried compiling ghc? I don't know about ocsigen(i don't do web development), but i guess all web frameworks are more complex than they need to be. I haven't even mentioned all the formal verification stuff(coq, a verified C compiler, frama-c etc.) that come from inria. I m…

A lot of Haskell extensions actually increase simplicity (by removing fairly arbirary restrictions) not complexity.

Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?

#187

Post by erikbye »

olavk wrote: post #185
erikbye wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Median income in Norway is scary low, especially for single-person households. https://www.ssb.no/en/inntekt-og-forbruk/nokkeltall

Scary low compared to what?

For being one of the richest countries in the world the median income is way too low (especially for single-households). And a direct comparison with other countries can't be done without factoring in all the taxes we have in addition to payroll tax. Norway is also one of the most expensive countries in the world. We have 25% VAT on most goods and services. 15% for food and drink. Alcohol is heavily taxed, for high alc/vol 65% of the purchase price is taxes. Vehicles are heavily taxed, compared to, i.e., Sweden. A $50k car in the U.S. would be $100k here, or more, depending on engine size, emissions, etc. High environmental taxes for fuel, electricity, etc. Taxes on gifts, inheritance, property, wealth, pension, etc.

http://www.skatteetaten.no/en/Rates/Value-added-tax/

Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?

#188

Post by valesco »

flexie wrote: post #110
tnzn wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France's safety net is shit for auto entrepreneurs so this could explain that.

Still doesn't explain why I can't name a hugely popular programming language, library or framework created by a French programmer but several by Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and Dutch, all small countries but where English is a very strong second language. I'm sure there are great French programmers and programming languages, but doesn't is strike you as remarkable that there are not more? From a country of 5 million (…

There's VLC too.

Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?

#189

Post by KozmoNau7 »

ThomPete wrote: post #160
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for a starter, "Danes are even more content than Norwegians with having even less, giving almost everything back to the state" is blatantly and utterly false. The effective tax rate in Denmark is not particularly remarkable among OECD countries. This misconception, as well as call to "all Norwegians know this", and your use of the term "politically correct" as a pejorative makes it clear that you have a politica…

Danish tax rate is one of the highest in the world if not the highest in the world. On top of that you have 25% VAT and on cars, you are up to around 200% (recently lowered) Denmark is indeed remarkable.

The tax rate is high, but on the flipside we also have pretty much the best and most extensive public services and social safety nets in the world. Still, it's around 25-35% all-in, nowhere near the 50+% a lot of right-wing pundits keep lying about.

Car registration tax has never been 200%. It has been 105% up to ~$15K of the car's value and 180% above that for years, which was lowered to 150% some time ago. Now the lower rate has been reduced to 85% and the cutover raised to around ~$20K, and rebates for fuel economy and safety gear have increased significantly. A small car is only marginally more expensive in Denmark compared to Germany, while larger and luxury cars are rightfully more expensive.

You obviously only have a very tenuous grasp of what you're talking about, so please stop, listen and learn instead.

Re: Why Does Sweden Have So Many Startups?

#190

Post by nnq »

xfer wrote: post #170
nnq wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a ton of French influence in software: Symfony, OCaml, lots of Java stuff... But I treat "made in France" like a warning label for anything software, hard to explain exactly why :) I guess it might be because they have very few self-thought people (probably because university is decent and free) that have that "intuition for how to simplify stuff and make it obvious and grok-able" (academic education tends to…

Yes, PHP is a very well-thought language compared to Ocaml, right? Really KISS principle. /s There are lots of incredible good software and research (mostly out of INRIA) from France.

...and also, ugly as it may be as a language, PHP is a great tool at reducing complexity if you think higher-level (deployment, scaling): the shared-nothing, each requests runs from scratch (and in an isolated process) architecture makes lots of things 100x times simpler. Of course, this wonderfully simple architecture turns 100% against you if you have the bad taste of trying to write a big and "properly engineered" framework on top of it.

I kinda love PHP as long as I don't have to read/write any of it myself ;)

(Oh, and you made me realize what's the core of my "french software" stereotype: getting complex-vs-simple completely backwards! ...of course, it's just a funny stereotype, the real people I've actually known are all smart and cool and understand trade-offs even when we don't agree on architecture and organizing stuff :P)

Post reply on HN