Comment by drakonka | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drakonka | Hacker News Reader

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I previously read someone's take on this in relation to people feeling secure enough to take risks here (not just in Stockholm but Sweden as a whole I guess). While notch's success may be an outlier, the process of trying to do your own thing isn't here. I'm not sure when in his development Notch left King, but in general there are quite a few people here who just try to go their own way (sometimes completely outside of their previous industry even). It helps when you don't have to live in fear of being completely penniless should you fail, I think.

Purely anecdotally, I am not part of a startup, but do a lot of hobby work in coffee shops around Stockholm. I'm always seeing/hearing people in local cafes discussing some new startup or project they are getting off the ground. I've also seen first hand many people get maybe a year or two of funding and start up their own game studios, for example. Of course not all of them end up being successful, but many people feel secure/comfortable enough to try. I think the volume of these attempts and people trying to do something new also helps drive up the number of "hits" overall, to be added to these kinds of lists.

I think the social safety net is definitely a part of it, yes. But after working for a couple years at different startups in Stockholm I can say that another big factor is that most Swedish founders are either rich themselves, or their parents are, or they are very well connected. They don’t see themselves this way of course, they think they are building everything from scratch, but this does tend to be the case from my experience.

I think it is becoming more common. In the early days it seems like there were more of a mix between rich drop outs and poor enthusiasts. Today, especially with the housing market, it seems like there are a lot more 'fake' companies. It used to be that if you came from a wealth family and didn't know what to do you started a public relations, event or media company to pretend that you were doing something. Today that is a "technology startup". Most of which are second or third tier companies in the sense of global reach. While much of the success of Swedish startups come from ending up being first tier companies. Maybe part of that was that Sweden sort of experienced the dot com bubble, which meant that there was less room for phonies for a while.

Definitely, having a social safety net that allows for moving on from failures is probably a huge factor.

But that safety net doesn't extend to startup founders does it? AFAIR In Norway, you need to have worked in a company as a regular employee for at least one or two years before you can claim unemployment benefits. Health insurance is always there, and so is basic social benefits (but the unemployment one is the only you can live on).

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