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Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

In the meantime while Nordics are home to just 3% of Europe’s population, it has created more than 50% of Europe’s Billion Dollar exits since 2005.

If there is startup capital in Europe, it's Stockholm.

https://medium.com/creandum-family/the-nordics-in-context-th...

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Part of that is mobile games companies like Supercell with Clash of the Clans - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercell_(video_game_company) ... Hay Day, Angry Birds and others. Basically out of the ashes of Nokia, a bunch of mobile gaming companies has sprung up and to some extent are dominating the industry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_game_companies_... - more at https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/10/from-nokias-snake-game-to-... - apparently they generate 1.8 Billion in total

It is not just a nokia thing.

Also from Nordic countries:

1. Linux 2. Irc 3. Demoscene 4. DICE

5. Skype (AFAIK).

Eesti can into Nordic?

Estonia is as "nordic" as Finland.

Don't know about that[1] but Skype founders were Swedish & Danish and Estonia is close by.

[1] "consist of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_countries

Finnish is not a Nordic language, while Estonian is a Finnic language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnic_languages Ethically Finland is a Baltic nation rather than a Nordic one, It's also was never a part of the 3 monarchies of Scandinavia until the more modern use of Scandinavia for tourism.

Hence my reply to "Does Estonia count as a Nordic state" question :)

Geographic/country classification, languages and genetic roots all mesh differently in this case. Languagewise the Baltic countries apart from Estonia have Slavic majority languages. Biologically Finnish genetic makeup comes from a mix of Sami, Swedish & ugric peoples and is quite diverse [1] but does have a lot of overlap with Estonians. Culturally Finland differs due to having avoided Soviet occupation.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finns#Genetics

Your argument is sadly still not clear to me. Some one asked is Estonia a nordic country, I said that in my book it as much as one as Finland because those 2 countries share an ethnic bound that is probably stronger than what Finland shares with Denmark.

This has nothing to do with ethnic similarity between ests and fins. The only reason why Finland is considered nordic is that it still has swedish speaking population and it is second official language. Estonian swedes left because of WW2. Linus as you might know is from Finland but speaks swedish.

> It's also was never a part of the 3 monarchies of Scandinavia until the more modern use of Scandinavia for tourism.

Finland was a part of Sweden from ~1200 to 1809. Finland also still has a large Swedish minority and has Swedish as an official language. The biggest religion is Lutheran due to Swedes forcing it on people when they conquered the land. Estonia is more Orthodox.

More importantly, Finland has been co-operating with the other Nordic nations politically and economically for the ~century that it has been independent. Remember that the Nordic nations aren't just a cultural region, but they also share political, social and legal systems, have a passport union (although that overlaps with the EU nowadays) and, while they have not been able to develop any official military alliance due to Russian and American pressure, they co-operate a lot.

All in all, Estonia has some things in common with Finland, but it doesn't have much claim to being a "Nordic nation". They might be in the future, but not today.

You are confusing "Nordic" with "Scandinavian". Finnish is a Nordic language by definition.

Estonia isn't Nordic, it is not part of Nordic Council.

Finland is Nordic, and Estonia is not, so Estonia is not as Nordic as Finland.

To me, Estonia is part of Nordic, just like Finland.

But then there is this. http://satwcomic.com/new-nordic (sorry, I just needed a reason to post a SATW link)

Klarna, Minecraft, King, Soundcloud, Paradox ...

5. Git

Jumping on the bandwagon

Linus was already in the US when it created GIT, so I don't think it should count

And SSH, MySQL.

Spotify

King (Candy Crush), Mojang (Minecraft), Rovio (Angry Birds), CCP Games (Eve online), Supercell (Clash of Clans), Unity (game engine) ...

CCP is Icelandic and while it's "nordic" it's kinda far out there, it's also not a particularly big company. Unity Technologies started in Denmark but they moved to SanFran quite early and effectively Unity grew up in SV AFAIK Unity Tech doesn't have an office or any presence in Denmark and that has been true since the very early days.

There are quite a bit of other game related successful ventures up in the north, DICE, Remedy, Nordic Games, Funcom and quite a few others come to mind.

Unity definitely has an office in Copenhagen, Denmark. https://unity3d.com/jobs

Looks like they have reopened their offices, it still doesn't change the fact that Unity grew up in SV not in Copenhagen.

Stockholm has severe housing problem. It is impossible to get long term contracts which means you have to move somewhere else every six months approximately. Living expenses are too high comparing to low salaries. Only a few companies in Stockholm pay higher than 40k swedish krona. (that means 25k after tax. 25k -> 2.6k euros). If you are not a native here, you can only get a flat through black market. Eventually, you pay around 8k-12k sek for a single bedroom with 30 mins commute. Tough winter is also another case.

Denmark has better chance for being the capital of startups in Europe. Higher pay and no rent problem. Stockholm obviously is not going to scale.

If you are planning to move EU, I would definitely suggest Berlin. You can make 55k-70k euros easily. Cheap rent and food. Nothing to say about its nightlife. (best in EU)

> no rent problem

I take it you don't live here, it's arguably worse but salaries are noticeably higher so it's impact is not as big.

It is very common for Swedish startups to incorporate in the UK, even if you keep the office in Sweden. It is easier and cheaper to incorporate there, and you get better access to London VCs. I wonder if that will get more difficult.

Were London VC's unable to invest in Swedish-incorporated startups before?

Maybe unwilling. There is no legal problem with doing so (apart from the additional hassle of having to know about a different set of laws.) This is similar to the Delaware situation.

Really? So were all of these companies funded by VCs that are based in Stockholm? Or were they funded by VCs in the US and the UK?

And did thoss exits resulted in sustainable and long-term growth ?

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