Hacker News Reader

Comment by maggit | Hacker News Reader

I'm involved in the startup scene in Norway, and it seems to me that there are mainly two sources of real money; oil (gas/offshore/etc) and fish, considering both private and public funding. It doesn't look to me like unrelated tech startups gain any special advantages by being in Norway.

I think we are still fighting the unfortunate culture of the Law of Jante: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

View on HN

I grew up in a community in the North of Scotland that was dominated by fishing (more oil these days) and most boat-owning skippers were pretty much risk-seeking entrepreneurs - with pretty big rewards possible (certainly well into F-you money).

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.

I partially agree. Norway is a pretty small country - and folks here, it's seems, would rather sit on cafés drinking coffy and "solving the problems of the world" rather than getting into the hard world of entrepreneurship. There's just not that many good ideas to fund here (?) There's some gov. initiative, and now they are also open sourcing more (of our) data (and even throws in a competition: www.apps4norge.no)

Also IMHO, Scandinavians needs to stop blaming the "law of Jante" all the time - maybe we should take a look at ourself instead? :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com