
After Silicon Valley, Stockholm produces highest number of “unicorns” per capita - adventured
http://www.forbes.com/sites/knowledgewharton/2015/11/11/how-stockholm-became-a-unicorn-factory/
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sheraz
Title is misleading. Please add "per capita" !!!

Stockholm is so over-hyped. Yes, there is a lot of engineering culture, but
there is so little risk capital available at the bottom is it truly laughable.

Furthermore, I don't see many of these unicorns putting a lot back into the
ecosystem in terms of investment, social capital, or outreach.

Sweden's needs her of "Paypal mafia [1], Facebook Mafia [2], Trilogy Mafia,
and Dellionaires [3] if this startup startup ecosystem is to really thrive.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia)

[2] - [https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/facebook-
mafia/](https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/facebook-mafia/)

[3] -
[http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/dell...](http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/dellionaire_dell_computer_millionaire)

(edit) so more thoughts

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gozo
> little risk capital available at the bottom

Compared to where? The days where you get funding based on an idea is over. I
don't think the funding situation is particularly bad "per capita" [0]. There
are other problems with Stockholm of course, but that's another story.

[0] [http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/11/11/how-
entrepreneur...](http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/11/11/how-
entrepreneurial-is-europe/)

~~~
sheraz
Compared to London, NYC, LA, SF, Austin, Berlin to start.

Secondly, I have issues with the whole "per capita" comparison. It is an
important and often over-looked detail when looking at these ecosystems.

~~~
gozo
I don't see how that, without any data, isn't just "the grass is greener". No
one is surprised that Stockholm isn't London, that doesn't really speak to the
different ecosystems nor that you can raise money across borders. There can be
issues with "per capita" measurements, but that pretty hard to discuss when
you didn't bother to include your reasoning.

~~~
sheraz
OK, data from CBINsights (They are awesome) [1]

> raise money across borders

Tell that to any number of seed-stage, bootstrapped companies in Stockholm. A
fund-raising "roadshow" from Stockholm to London can be very costly --
especially if it is unsuccessful.

[1] - [https://www.cbinsights.com/reports/CB-Insights-KPMG-
Report-Q...](https://www.cbinsights.com/reports/CB-Insights-KPMG-
Report-Q3-2015.pdf)

~~~
gozo
Linking a 91 page presentation without specifying your point isn't very
helpful.

As I said, you don't get funding for an idea anymore so being bootstrapped is
becoming the norm. The presentation even says that "all in all, Q3 was a
quarter for big, big deals. Less so for seed-stage and Angel financing, both
of which were down for the fifth consecutive quarter on a global basis".
Fundraising is never easy, but having more and more eyes on Stockholm helps.

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acccret8
Stockholm suffers from extreme housing shortage. I live here now but in a
student flat I got after 3 years of queue time, and moving in a couple of
month. Not worth it and I think this will limit the number of startups in the
future.

Someone said something about old-school tech and it is true, I rarely meet
anyone who is on the edge on new technology. I find myself always explaining
what something is, but regardless of tech there are some talented people here.

There is also some serious tax problems, long over 50% in tax. People think
they only pay around 23% in tax since the government splits up the tax in two
parts, one for the company (around 32%) and one for the employee but money
that would have been yours. Then you have tax on items and for example gas
tax. Everything is very subtle and perhaps why they get away with it.

~~~
hueving
>, one for the company (around 32%) and one for the employee but money that
would have been yours.

This is similar in the US. There are lots of additional costs beyond the
salary for an employee. It's just never really advertised to the employee how
much money the company actually puts up to pay the salary in your offer
letter.

~~~
cylinder
Yes, employer side of payroll taxes and other costs, along with the gigantic
health insurance costs (employer side). These should be eliminated, let the
compensation flow to employees and then tax it in land values or consumption
taxes, ideally. Then people can get an idea of just how much tax they are
paying, and maybe Americans will stop thinking they're getting such a great
deal.

That said, it's still pretty remarkable how high US salaries are even with all
these costs.

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jamesblonde
Stockholm resident here. We have a nice combination of being seriously trendy
and having a deep engineering culture. Many of our unicorns (Spotify, Klarna,
King) embody this in their DNA. Easy to get good UI people here, which is
unusual.

~~~
johansch
Certainly lots of hipsters in Stockholm, that is true. :) If they are able to
build good UX though, that's something completely different.

// Linköpings-lantis

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dvdplm
After having spent almost a year here I have to say that it's striking to me
how much old-school tech I meet here. Ppl just starting to dip into cloud,
Go/Rust hardly heard of and Rails+jQuery still perceived as the "new" thing.
That said, good ideas and an entrepreneurial culture can flourish on oldish
tech and there's no need to obsess over the latest, I just felt the difference
compared to the us west coast was striking when i came here.

~~~
ersii
Could you elaborate more on what you mean by "old school tech"?

To add some counter-anecdata to yours, I find there's plenty of
Rails/jQuery/Go/Rust/Cloud people here in Sweden/Stockholm and that there's
quite many using cloud services and what not. I find it a bit hard to digest
that any of those languages or techniques are perceived as "new" here. Perhaps
by some, but then that would apply at any place around the globe to some
extent.

~~~
jamesblonde
You'll find that it's a bit different here. There's loads of Erlang here - not
unusual, considering it was invented here. Loads of C, C++ - not unusual,
considering Ericsson and its ecosystem.

~~~
ersii
Sorry, I will find what a bit different where? I'm speaking with the frame of
reference of Stockholm, Sweden (as mentioned in previous comment)

Yes, of course with regards to Erlang, C and C++ - but Ericsson is far from
everything in the Stockholm region and in Sweden. That said, Ericsson is
enormous and there are bound to be plenty of former Ericssoners in many other
companies. But I find it a lot more diverse than stated in the original
comment none the less. Especially if you're looking into start-ups, SME and up
- as well as with the meetup.com/HN-crowds.

------
api
This provides circumstantial evidence to support something I've thought for a
long time: that America's lead in entrepreneurship is more cultural than it is
a product of economic right-leaning / supply side policies. Sweden is
significantly more "socialistic" than anything in the USA.

Perhaps even more significantly _most of the USA is nowhere near as
entrepreneurial as places like SF, LA, and NYC, despite many places having
lower taxes and less regulation_. There's lots of states that are more
business friendly than California that have far less entrepreneurship.

Taken together these two things argue strongly against the "entrepreneurship
comes from having small government" right-wing thesis. Don't get me wrong--
_too much_ government meddling can sink business. But this argues strongly
against the hard-line rhetoric that we often hear.

Edit: It does not however support the inverse thesis -- that more government
is better. I personally think it is _mostly_ cultural and all government has
to do is not bork things too badly and keep the lights on and the barbarians
out.

~~~
enjo
I've heard it surmised that the biggest advantage the United States has in
terms of entrepreneurship is our incredibly lax bankruptcy laws. It's easy to
start a company, fail, and maintain the ability to do it again. This is partly
cultural (we don't look down on failure very much) but also is structural
(failing doesn't ruin you for life). That isn't true of many countries.

~~~
bogomipz
I don't think anybody thinks "I will start a business because I have favorable
bankruptcy laws." I'm not even sure what you mean by favorable. an LLC or an S
Corp is a business entity designed to limit the risk exposure of an individual
if they form one. And yes there are provisions in the law to allow you to
restructure - namely because it allows your creditors a chance to get paid but
there's nothing "lax" about that.

Entrepreneurship is definitely culturally engrained in the US. Starting a
business although risky is generally lauded. I think Entrepreneurship is a
very accessible concept to most Americans - most people in the US know someone
that has started their own business.

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uptown
These startups spend heavily on user acquisition, and find those users never
want to leave.

~~~
sombremesa
Good one

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Nullabillity
The population figure seems pretty off. In school it's always been 1.5M, and
Wikipedia says that it varies between 900k, 1.6M, and 2.2M, depending on what
you define as Stockholm.

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cgtyoder
I continue to find it amusing that an imaginary animal is being used to
describe a(n increasing) number of things that actually do exist.

~~~
chc
I assume the (joking) origin is that it's something everybody would like to
find but nobody really does.

