

Is The Norwegian Startup Scene Hot Or Not? - Semetric
http://www.arcticstartup.com/2012/05/08/is-the-norwegian-startup-scene-hot-or-not

======
marcusf
Right by the end of the article, he hits on one of the big pain points of
starting a company in Norway, Sweden or any other small sized country compared
to the US: The comparative lack of a home market. It's basically impossible to
make it big in Sweden alone, a country with a population just slightly bigger
than NYC. Expansion of course means grappling with international governance,
international law, wildly differing cultures etc.

It seems to me that the large home market is probably the biggest advantage US
startups have (together with comparatively easy capital and a healthier
attitude towards new ventures).

~~~
ThomPete
To a certain extent you are right. But there are still very successful
businesses only based on local markets in both Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

In Denmark for instance JustEat and Trendsales were pretty successful. Both
have a heave part of logistics involved though.

If you are making something digital then always think of your home market as a
market of 6Billion people.

Successful startups out of Denmark 100% digital but none of them choose to
stay there.

Tommy Ahlers Zyb (aquired by vodafone) and Podio (acquired by citrix).
TrustPilot.com, Zendesk (moved to the US), Unity (moved to the US)

~~~
marcusf
Yeah, good point. I think it's vital to distinguish between local success and
global success though; Sweden has a number of companies that have made it big
locally but with a non-existent international footprint (Adlibris, to name
one), and a select few lobal players, like Spotify.

I agree that you should look at the world as your home market, but in practice
there's more to it than that. Just opening shop in another country usually
means incorporating for example. Our founder has mentioned a few times that
his biggest regret was setting up shop in England after Sweden, instead of
going after the US directly. In hindsight, the gain/pain ratio would've been a
lot better.

~~~
ThomPete
I agree. JustEat is making it global though.

~~~
marcusf
Cool! I've never heard of them before, probably due to me not following the
scene enough and them not being available in Stockholm, but I'll keep an eye
on them from now.

------
marvin
The tech scene in Norway is definitely nowhere near as good as Silicon
Valley's. I live in Bergen, the second-biggest city in Norway, and the parts
of the tech scene I have seen here seem very old-fashioned compared to the US.
There are a couple of companies exploiting web technology for all it's worth,
but much of what is going on is just old-fashioned consulting related to
Microsoft's platform. Opportunities for real start-up work with equity and the
whole shebang seem pretty slim.

Also, as dagw hinted at, the Norwegian oil industry has a tendency to suck in
pretty much every talented engineer in the country. The oil industry is
currently desperate for engineers and is importing skilled and ambitious
people from all over the Northern hemisphere (Italy, France, Finland, even
Thailand). I know people with degrees in applied mathematics who work with
offshore oil drilling. The salaries and benefits you can get in this industry
have a tendency to dwarf what you can expect as a salaried IT consultant. (For
instance, the average salary for offshore oil workers in Stavanger is now more
than 170,000 USD/year. Granted, offshore work pays better than land work, but
many on-shore workers also have salaries in this range).

It stands to reason that tech will attract less talented people with a
competitor like this. However, I would love to hear it if someone could
disprove my theory. I don't have extended contact with the Norwegian CS crowd
outside of my own university.

~~~
jonpacker
Similar to you I can only speak from my somewhat limited experience and group
of friends, but since moving here (Bergen) in January from Australia I've met
a ton of very well educated, up to date and motivated people working on
interesting things.

On the other hand, it seems everyone else is working in Consultancies. I don't
know what to make of that.

------
blahbap
As a Norwegian IT Professional and Hackernews junkie, I have to suggest that
the startup scene in Norway is not as hot as it could be. I am very aware of
several Swedish sucesses (Spotify on top of that list), but I can't think of a
single Norwegian startup that anyone outside of the business wouldn know of.
It's actually surprising that the high level of education combined with the
obscene amounts of oil-money floating around has not spurred more startups. I
think it boils down to a lack of entrepeneurial spirit - you can basically
make a very comfortable living in Norway without investing too much time and
effort into creating a career for yourself. As any swede that has worked in
Norway will tell you, at 16:01 the office is pretty much empty. Life's pretty
good in Norway

~~~
doktrin
Somewhat OT :

I'm a Norwegian-American dual citizen and have often thought of spending a few
years working in Norway. I would like to establish rapport with with
interesting people and companies, particularly in the startup community.

Would you have any thoughts as to how I could go about getting introduced and
involved?

FWIW I'm fully bilingual, although having never actually _lived_ in Norway or
attended school there, my writing is probably slightly below college level.

~~~
blahbap
I live in Stavanger, the Norwegian "oil capital". There are lots of tech
companies here who make a living from serving the oil industry. I would
recommend that you start out working for one of the bigger consultancy firms
(Bouvet, Evry) - you get in touch with lots of people and you'll have some
time to come up with the next big idea or team up with someone who beat you
too it.

~~~
doktrin
Thanks, I appreciate the advice. Truth be told, I hadn't actually considered
Stavanger as I was working under the assumption that the majority of the tech
scene was centered around Oslo.

------
dagw
Another aspect is that there is a very strong startup scene connected to the
oil industry that competes for the attention of talented engineers. It is (or
at least used to be) a lot easier to get funding and customers making
specialized kit for the oil industry and related fields. I had a couple of
friends working for small companies in this area and they paid much better
than consumer software start ups and had really interesting problems for
people with the relevant background.

------
ballstothewalls
On a related note, I was playing around with going to Norway to get a Masters
in statistics. Does anyone have any insight on whether this would be a good
idea or bad one? I suspect i'd want to move back to the US afterwards. Would
the degree be marketable?

~~~
10x
there's not many master students doing a pure stats degree at the university
of Oslo, and as a consequence _some_ courses are offered only periodically,
but you can still "self-study" them for credits, and there anyways enough
related courses in fields like computational finance, numerical analysis and
machine learning.

[https://www.uio.no/english/studies/mn-masters/modat-
master/s...](https://www.uio.no/english/studies/mn-masters/modat-
master/statistics/oppbygging/index.xml)

regarding moving back to the US: you can always take a local job in the oil
industry or perhaps in a global company like mckinsey and then move back when
you have some real experience (it should be easy to get a job here)

------
vetler
He forgot to mention Artplant[1], who worked on Battlestar Galactica Online,
and is also working on the Game of Thrones MMO.

Here's the "Jante Law", or Law of Jante, he mentions at the end:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante>

"... a pattern of group behaviour towards individuals within Scandinavian
communities, which negatively portrays and criticises individual success and
achievement as unworthy and inappropriate."

[1]: <http://artplant.no/>

~~~
olavk
That is a somewhat misleading representation of the "Law of Jante". It is not
specifically about achievement or success. It is rather a "small town
syndrome" (Jante is a typical small provincial town) which says you shouldn't
try to act as if you are different and better than other people. Outwardly
flashy display of wealth is definitely breaking the law, but so is beeing
indifferent to material possessions and living like a poor boheme or eccentic.

In typical protestant style, working hard and becoming wealthy and successful
is concidered virtuous, as long as you dont "act different" but remain "one of
the people".

Of course the opposite culture exist in big cities, were hipsters and
celebrities try to be as flashy and individualistic as possible.

Anyway, I don't think The Law of Jante is a real impediment to startup
culture, the real cultural issue is that Scandinavia doesn't have the same
risk-taking culture of the US.

~~~
ThomPete
_the real cultural issue is that Scandinavia doesn't have the same risk-taking
culture of the US_

Exactly. Courage is the biggest problem here.

~~~
aslakhellesoy
Case in point:

The term "venture capital" doesn't exist in the Norwegian language. The
closest translation is "risikokapital" which literally means risk capital.

This says a lot about our culture.

~~~
psykotic
> This says a lot about our culture.

That's a big leap. In Danish we just say "venture kapital". There are
thousands upon thousands of direct loanwords like this. I wouldn't read
anything deeper into it.

------
thibaut_barrere
These guys at least are totally doing hot stuff - and global by the way:

<http://highsoft.com/>

------
10x
does anyone know the status of data startups/jobs in norway?

~~~
krigath
I can't speak in general terms, but when looking for an internship for this
summer I interviewed at five different companies.

They all seemed to be in desperate need of more technical employees, and some
are forced to outsource parts of their software development, not because of
high Norwegians wages, but due to a lack of demand on the Norwegian market.

~~~
kfk
Are there places where they advertise jobs you would advice?

~~~
christianhager
You can look at www.finn.no where you will find alot of jobs. You can also
check out <http://skalar.no/?locale=en> (where Im employeed) Oslo central
RoR/mobile company - we are looking for talented developers. There also
accours job listings for startups at www.irb.no

~~~
kfk
Thanks, very good info.

