Any thoughts from people on the ground in those areas?
Personally I do not agree with the government throwing a bunch of money at things, it creates a loop of nonsense, people milking the cow while the fun lasts. This can be seen and heard on the ground level here. Throwing money at companies is something Tekes has done for ages with established companies in Finland, like Nokia. The startups are just the hot thing now so money is flowing there.
This leads to the fact that the startup scene is hyped in general.
Please note that this comment is quite specific to Finland.
Is this anything close to the truth or did I misunderstand/mis-remember this?
But the real problem is that the government officials are not investors. Steve Blank said this well on his visit:
Ironically one of the things that’s holding back the Finnish cluster is Tekes, the government organization for financing research, development and innovation in Finland. It’s hard enough to pick which existing companies with known business models to aid. Yet Tekes does that and is trying to act like a government-run Venture Capital firm. At Tekes, government employees (and their hired consultants) – with no equity, no risk or reward, no startup or venture capital experience – try to pick startup winners and losers.
There are some major caveats: Income taxes are extremely high and tax rules makes it almost impossible to share ownership in a rational way, e.g. it is very hard to setup stock option programs etc. Also, the domestic venture capital market is extremely underdeveloped - a great opportunity for foreign investors!
I am a firm opponent of all government programs to stimulate entrepreneurship. My view is that the government should simply get out of the way. And in fact, except for the taxes, this is by and large what the Swedish government is doing. For example, there is very little bureaucracy around running a business, e.g. starting an incorporated company is now done easily over the internet, often the whole process can be completed in a matter of days.
On the first evening I had a bit of difficulty operating the keycard outside the hotel. A chap came up to me and started talking, presumably explaining how to use it. "Murgle burgle burgle wurgle furgle", he said, or something like that. I must have looked blank for about 0.1 seconds before he slipped, with barely a beat, into flawless, unaccented English. And the first English words out of his mouth were, "Oh, sorry..." :)
(This was not a unique experience. Even the petrol station attendants spoke great English. You don't even get that in England.)
And of course, in large part because this is effectively a bilingual country. In the years I've been here, I've only talked with a handful of native-born Swedes who did not speak English. Those were older people who had learned German as a student. (There are non-native-born Swedes, like immigrants from Chile who speak fluent Spanish and Swedish, whose English can be poor.)
So yes, it would be easy.
Some current listings from the Swedish equivalent of Craigslist:
If you don't mind (or prefer) living in the suburbs you can definitely reduce your costs a lot.
No startup scene, but a 1,300 sq. ft. apartment in the center of town (3bd, 1.5 ba) goes for only $1,500/month, and the commuter train to Gothenburg takes about 45 minutes.
If you have money you can get a "business apartment" for about 2x the normal rate. Those are pretty easy to find. But you'll need to have a business first (even one in the US) to rent it.
You can get an idea of what's available using the aggregator http://kvalster.se/Stockholm . When a place is "1 rum" it means studio, "2 rum" means "living room and bedroom", etc. As a decent approximation, 1sq meter is 10 sq. feet.
Rates in the tech area of Kista look about $700 for a shared room/studio. In Södermalm I see prices more around $800 for a room/studio, though you can pay a lot more. (350 sq. ft studio apartment, furnished, for one month rental while the owner is overseas, $1264 for the month.)
It is possible to get a sublet or such but it tends to be expensive and quite time consuming. A lot of scams going around as well so one has to be careful. Prices indicated above seem quite accurate.
But when I first moved to Gbg it was easy to get a 2nd-hand contract. Now it's nearly impossible. I read that there was a change ~5 years ago in the law to make it financially better for the Bfr to switch from rental to co-op, so I can see how that would also affect Stockholm.
Well, if I want my children to retire in Vasastan then I should put their name on the list soon. (And have children, but that ruins the joke.)
I think we are still fighting the unfortunate culture of the Law of Jante: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
The chapter on Iceland in Boomering Michael Lewis where he describes how the risk seeking fishermen were maybe not the best choice to become investment bankers reminded me a lot of people I knew when I was younger.
Also IMHO, Scandinavians needs to stop blaming the "law of Jante" all the time - maybe we should take a look at ourself instead? :)
EDIT: basically if you want to start company here you can get help from forming team, getting training, getting a little bit money and etc.
I think the Economist is pretty accurate on the fact that there is lot of bubbling but takes time and experience to actually build something big and successful. SV has had the mindset, experience and infrastructure for decades. We are just starting now.
PandoDaily about Helsinki:
http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/20/welcome-to-helsinki-home-of... & http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/22/out-of-the-fire-into-the-sa...
Students are clearly influenced by what they've heard and seen from the states. And the technology around them is making innovation easy.
Malmö has a great startup scene with Foo Cafe and other gatherings. In Lund you have LTH, Ericsson, Ideon, etc so there's a lot of tech talent there as well.
Anyone, feel free to hit me up for free coffee in our Malmö office :)