In recent years, Sweden has emerged as one of the most advanced countries in the world with Stockholm, it’s capital, gaining the reputation of Europe’s “unicorn factory”. Stockholm is home to more $1 billion-plus companies per capita than anywhere outside of Silicon Valley with King, Mojang, Spotify, Klarna and iZettle just to name a few. Spotify is one of the latest unicorns to emerge from Stockholm with the musical giant recently announcing it hit the 100 million paying subscribers mark.
Once only known for Ericsson, IKEA and Volvo, Stockholm has transformed its economy and market and is now being dubbed the ‘Entrepreneurial Capital of Europe’. A frenzy of successful acquisitions and IPOs in Stockholm has triggered a virtuous circle with success only breeding more success.
How Has It Grown So Successfully?
Sweden’s tech scene success can be attributed to a variety of factors. Swedes have always been early adopters of tech with the Swedish government actively encouraging this. Swedes were offered a tax break on personal computers way back in the nineties. Stockholm was home to the world’s largest open-fibre network in 1994 and was the first city in the world to launch 2G, 3G, 4G and now 5G.
Stockholm boasts an incredibly supportive start-up ecosystem with vital access to co-working spaces, start-up hubs, events, innovation grants and a growing number of angel investors and venture capital firms. Sweden’s strong social security system offers a safety net to entrepreneurs looking to be creative and take risks. Furthermore, successful Swedish entrepreneurs are always looking to offer support to start-ups. Notable names include Erik Byrenius, Henrik Torstensson and Jane Walerud. These business angels encapsulate the innovative and sharing culture of this Nordic city. Despite its meagre population of less than one million, Stockholm boasts one of the highest concentrations of tech professionals in Europe. Programmer or software developer is the most common job title in Stockholm with approximately 18% of the workforce in high-tech related jobs.
Start-up Hubs
As previously mentioned, Stockholm plays host to an incredibly supportive start-up ecosystem with start-up hubs dotted all around the city. Here are five of the most prominent hubs;
The Factory: Largest innovation and tech hub in the Nordics that hosts 1400+ people, 100+ start-ups and scale-ups, VCs, a tech school, labs and innovation centres.
SUP46: Epicentre of Stockholm’s start-up community with over 2000m2 of space.
Things: 2,000m2 co-working space for hardware start-ups – IoT, robotics, etc.
Epicentar: Epicentar offers hackathons, ideathons and offers flexible workplaces, studios, meeting rooms as well as world-class workshops and international lectures all year long.
Norrsken House: Norrsken House is Europe’s biggest tech hub dedicated to social impact and houses people with the vision to change the world.
Venture Capital Firms
Venture capital firms are highly active in Stockholm. €1.25 billion was invested in tech companies in 2016 with over €4 billion being invested since 2012. Almi, Zenith, Wellstreet Ventures, Standout Capital, Creandum, EQT Ventures, Industrifoden, NFT Ventures are just some of the plethora of VC firms operating in Stockholm.
Stockholm is renowned for its impressive exits. Not only was €1.25 billion invested into start-ups in the city, the exit value in the same year was €1.75 billion. Colossal exits and IPOs are not uncommon in the Swedish capital. King, the gaming start-up was acquired by Activision Blizzard for €5.5 billion in 2015. iZettle was acquired by fin-tech giant PayPal for €2 billion in 2018 and Spotify’s IPO finished around the €25 billion mark.
Stockholm’s start-up and tech scene is flourishing with all indications showing no sign of the growth slowing. The future is bright for this northerly city, despite the 20 hours of darkness in winter!
Looking for a job in Stockholm? Check out our full list of vancancies here.
Posted by Adam Dunne on 30 May 2019