Student Startup Trip 2022: Stockholm edition
Yearly, Academics For Technology (AFT) organizes its Student Startup Trip (SST). During this trip, we aim to discover a world-class startup hub. In April 2022, we departed for Stockholm, which has a flourishing tech and sustainability scene. While visiting multiple startups and accelerator programs, a group of highly ambitious students got the opportunity of a lifetime. Keeping that wisdom to ourselves would be selfish and thus we write this article to inspire the next batch of entrepreneurs.
What is the Student Startup Trip?
The SST brings together a group of high-potential students in a thriving startup scene. They are dared to take the plunge and discover the whole ecosystem: startups, innovative companies, incubators, accelerators, investors, entrepreneurs, etc. We want to give them the opportunity to learn from both successes and mistakes and spot trends across different industries and continents. We hope that they become inspired by this experience and bring their entrepreneurial dreams to reality.
Thursday, April 7th — Off to an excellent start
Hack Your Closet
Our first visit was probably the best start that this trip could have had. We talked with Mikaela Larsell Ayesa who is the COO and co-founder of Hack Your Closet, a company that is closing the loop in the fashion industry. She told us about her story and how entrepreneurship fits into that. Why should you start an entrepreneurial career according to her? Well, it’s a scene completely different from the corporate world, full of nice people who will inspire you and support you along your journey. This makes for a very fast career path.
Einride
Next up was a talk by Christofer Laurell, Einride’s VP of research and public affairs. Einride is the future of transport with its revolutionary self-driving electric truck. How to sell your product you ask? Well, don’t try to sell your product, but take a look at the current problems of your client and make them understand how your product can solve their most prevalent issues.
CAKE
One of the most inspiring moments on our trip came from Stefan Ytterborn, the founder of CAKE, an electric (motor)bike company. The funny thing is, he hates motorbikes and CAKE is there for those that share that feeling. The idea is that by bringing style and electric power to motorbikes, it is possible to address those that are not yet into motorbikes. The advice that he had was: It is okay to not be super crazy about an idea, but patience, in that case, is key. You should kill ideas that don’t give you that burning sense of passion, but one day there will be a magic moment, where you will get the goosebumps and then you have to start walking the war.
Friday, April 8th — Surfing the wave of passion
+impact accelerator
We started off Friday morning with Jens Ingelstedt, +impact program manager, at the WeWork offices in Stockholm. He has a lot of experience with guiding startups through their accelerator program that has a focus on impact startups. Two of the programme’s alumni joined us that morning. These were Samer Nameer from Enerpoly and Sebastian Haglund El Gaidi from rebase.energy. According to Jens, anyone can become an entrepreneur. However, you should do it for the right reasons and not because you chase the entrepreneurial lifestyle.
Kwarts
Friday evening we had a meeting with Ruben De Moor who is head of growth at Kwarts, a company that visualizes the customer journeys for pharma companies. The advice that he has, is to focus on one sector at first. This can limit your startup’s potential, so you need to be ready to expand when the time is there.
Saturday, April 9th — Get to work
Early-stage entrepreneurs panel discussion
Saturday was a quiet day, but extremely inspiring. In the evening, we invited four early-stage entrepreneurs for a panel discussion on starting out. The key message? Just get to work and persist! Be extremely stubborn, and refuse to give up; a lot of people quit too early, so you should keep pushing and outlast them. The more stubborn you are the more it pays off! Everything is a problem, until one day it isn’t. So keep going!
Oh and make sure to think twice about the right co-founder. It has to be someone that complements you, but you should also get along as you’ll probably see your co-founder more than your spouse
Monday, April 11th — Technology is the key to innovation
Airmee
After a free day on Sunday, Monday once again started off early. We talked with Julian Lee, the founder of Airmee. Airmee has been growing steadily over the last years, which is thanks to Julian’s core principle: achieve growth every day. Growing just 5–7% on a daily basis will eventually compound into making massive strides. Of course, this can be overwhelming, but honestly, that just means that you’re winning.
Whatever you do, keep in mind that a lot of the success of a startup is defined by luck. This doesn’t take away from any of the hard work put in by the founding team, which ensures that every bit of luck can be taken advantage of.
Houlihan Lokey
Following Airmee, we were invited by Olivier Timmerman, who is an SST alumnus and currently works in Stockholm for Houlihan Lokey, the N1 M&A advisor in the US. He talked about the financing structure for startups. Some tips that he had were:
- Don’t dilute yourself early on, this will make it difficult to attract new investors.
- Surround yourself with good lawyers that can protect you from bad deals.
- Try to be bootstrapped as long as possible
Alex Therapeutics
In the early afternoon, we met with John Drakenberg Renander, the co-founder and CEO of Alex Therapeutics, a platform to create fully digital psychology treatments. Their idea frees up psychologists, which would make therapy available to more people. Do you think that having the right idea is important for a startup? No, 97% of a successful startup is execution. The idea will change and if it doesn’t, you should be seriously worried!
Flowtropolis
Late afternoon was filled with a demo by Robert Södergren and Patrik von Berlepsch from Flowtropolis, who are re-imagining the meeting room. Timing is everything. With the recent pandemic, it became difficult to meet in person. However, online meetings aren’t everything as you can’t show off physical products. For a lot of companies this hampered R&D, sales, etc. With the introduction of a VR meeting room, they try to solve these issues.
Tuesday, April 12th — Awakening the fire within
KTH Innovation
Tuesday, the last day of this awe-inspiring trip, started with a visit to the innovation center of Stockholm’s engineering university, KTH Stockholm. We were welcomed by Viktor, Magnus and Donnie for a tour of their facility and a presentation on how they handle projects. Do you want to know how they think of entrepreneurship? Their definition is: Find an important problem that needs fixing, find a way to fix it, and find people to pay for it.
We were also joined by one alumnus startup (Porkchop) and one currently in the programme (Riedia). They shared their experience in KTH Innovation and what was most remarkable is how easily they can back-burner their education and focus on their startup. This is because education is free in Sweden and apparently the average graduation age is 29! This surely enables a lot of student-entrepreneurship.
Norrsken House
The last visit of the SST was to Norrsken House, the place to be for any impact entrepreneur. Their goal is to foster impact unicorns, meaning companies that have impacted a billion people.
We enjoyed a presentation from William Bergh, the founder of Cling Systems, a B2B trading platform to buy and sell batteries to close the lithium-ion loop. Being an entrepreneur is not easy according to him. Often, you will feel like the world is moving faster than you and that you are not good enough. However, you’re the one that started this, so you’re more than capable!
Lastly, we ended our visit at Norrsken House with Erik Månsson the CEO of Innoscentia, a company innovating in the food label industry. He provided us with some tips on getting in touch with people. Be persistent, but be polite! Create content on social media, making yourself heard is the first step in convincing people to work with you.
Belgian Ambassador in Sweden
We officially ended our trip with an evening with the Belgian Ambassador in Sweden where all of the above speakers were invited for a final networking evening. Being surrounded by all these amazing people surely got all of us inspired to go ahead and create our own ventures.
Closing notes
We are so happy to see that even extremely busy people can find the time for a group of students. They are founders or C-level executives that go back to their roots and want to inspire the next generation. Often, these students are able to challenge the speakers by asking the right questions and perhaps even providing some insights into their current problems. It truly is a win-win situation for both sides of the table.
If you’d like to see some more visuals, go ahead and watch our amazing aftermovie!
That was it for this year’s edition to Stockholm, we hope that this article taught you a thing or two. Additionaly, we would like to once more thank our partners in this venture: Cronos Leuven, KU Leuven Kick, Bracquené legal consulting and Datacamp. On to next year!
