An Honest Guide to the Stockholm, Sweden Startup Life
In the north part of Europe, surrounded by hills, endless forests, and a never-ending coastline lies the city of Stockholm, capital of Scandinavia. The whole of Scandinavia agreed on that name by the way. Technically we didn’t ask Norway, Finland and Denmark if it’s okay that we’re the capital, but we’re like 99% sure they’re okay with it.
I have lived here all my life. I love it here. It’s like being in San Francisco but with fewer unicorns and less sun. Since I'm recruiting people from all over the world and convincing them to move here I get a lot of questions about life here:
“Should I work there?”
“Can I fly to London over the day?”
“Will ABBA ever reunite?”
So here is my experience. I hope I can give an authentic look into what our cold, dark corner of the world has to offer.
My day begins when I wake up in my apartment on Kungshomen. Kungsholmen is one of the three main islands in Stockholm. From there I stroll along the water to work in the city center. It takes about 25 minutes. Unfortunately, the housing market here is a bit of a disaster, so unless you enjoy changing which apartment you sublet every month or have $350k to buy your own place you are stuck taking the bus or a train into the city center like a regular peasant.
Speaking of water, Stockholm is surrounded by it. Anywhere you go you will see water. The water is supposedly clean enough to drink. I have not tried it myself since I value my life, but there are YouTube videos of people doing it.
Nobody takes the car. Thanks to some of highest taxes in the world, cars are expensive, and besides, people here believe that if you drive to work you hate the environment and wish all animals a slow and painful death. Biking to work is a good choice. There are biking lanes everywhere. Apart from saving the planet and giving you daily exercise it also signals that you live inside of the city. Preferably get a colorful bike to maximize the attention as you ride down the city streets.
Your most important decision of the morning is where you stop to buy your café latte. I don’t drink it myself since I do paleo, but the way I understand it, it’s coffee flavored hot milk. If you work at a startup you can buy coffee at any place: both Il Café and Johan & Nyström are acceptable choices.
Our office is based in an area called city center. It’s named so because the people naming it were officially out of ideas. Nearby is the cultural house which was built as a tribute to Soviet communism.
I work out of a startup hub called “SUP46”. SUP is Swedish for “drink excessive amounts of alcohol” and 46 is the country code of Sweden. So the name literally translates to “get drunk in Sweden”. Something many people have taken to heart.
SUP46 is not just an office but also a community since it has an “event space”. During evenings, there is often free food and beer in the event space. Sometimes someone is talking in a microphone and showing powerpoint slides while you eat which can be distracting. But I’m sure people are working on fixing that.
There are a few other startup hubs, the most prominent being THINGS, which as the name implies, gives you free things.
Most people, yours truly included, work in an open office space. Your choice of clothes is important since people will be seeing you walking back and forth to the coffee machine. If you are male you should probably grow a beard.
Choice of laptop also says a lot about you.
- Windows laptop: I’m unfunded.
- Mac laptop: I’m funded and I’m a rebel, supporting the world’s largest company. You are fighting the man.
- Expensive windows laptop: I’m funded and corporate. Your ethos is “I work for a boring company and that’s a good thing”. You are the hero we need but don’t deserve.
Other companies at SUP46 are Fishbrain, which based on the name must be working on creating sentient fish and Sparta which I believe are organizing a live event where they re-enact Sparta the movie.
The most famous company in Stockholm is called Spotify. They play music and collect your personal data. It is also Europe’s most famous startup. If your CV contains the word Spotify it means you can get a job at any company at any level in Europe because you are now an expert in “digital”. There is also a company called Mojang. Nobody knows if it is an actual startup or if it’s just one guy that created a game called Minecraft and sold it to Microsoft for $2.5bn or a practical joke played by the guys behind King. Either way, we’re counting it as a unicorn.
Apart from Spotify and Mojang there are five other unicorns: Mysql, Skype, King.com, Klarna and Truecaller. Technically you could also count Russian auction site Avito.ru which was founded by two Swedes in Moscow. Before starting Avito the founders had started and sold the largest European auction site Tradera to Ebay. As part of the transaction the nice people at Ebay said “look guys, you are on your own now but don’t go start a new company or our lawyers will hunt you down” and they were like “oh but COME ON, we have to do SOMETHING, you guys are not in Russia so at least let us start a company there?”. Ebay went “lol, enjoy Soviet Russia you commies” and the rest is history. It is incidentally also the reason why Ebay’s employment agreements have changed the term “not start a competitor anywhere in the world except Russia” to “ not start a competitor anywhere in the known universe”.
The fact that Stockholm has seven unicorns while London, a city with ten times the population, only has twice the number of unicorns is basically Swedish socialism’s subtle way of giving the middle finger to the British labour party. Some people argue that Sweden has unicorns despite being socialistic not thanks to it, but I digress.
Stockholm is a special place. In the summer we swim in the warm water, in the winter we ice skate on it. We remain a thorn in the side of free market theorists by producing the highest number of unicorns per capita after San Francisco despite offering free schools and universal free healthcare.
We also love everything US and have one the biggest country subreddits to prove it. The most upvoted post last year was a picture of an Ukranian literature professor who looks like Swedish football hero Zlatan Ibrahimovich.
If you want to experience it for yourself several companies are hiring, including myself, that help with relocation. Or as ABBA said:
“If you change your mind, I’m the first in line
Honey I’m still free
Take a chance on me”
If you already work here, stop wasting your time reading this and do something productive like paying more taxes.
(Big thanks to the guys over at Padlet.com for inspiring me to write this. If you decide to work in SF you should probably work for them).
