Over the last 12 months I have been lucky enough to sit down with some of Sweden’s leading tech Founders, CEOs, leadership execs and investors at many of the most exciting companies the country has produced. This is their story.

As part of a wider research project that is illustrated in the Slideshare above there is a lot of data that was collected. However what this post will focus on is some direct quotes from those interviews with the people that have succeeded to grow their companies globally.

This came from the founder whose company dominates their niche globally. With their organisation spanning every continent he reflected that due to the good old “Law of Jante” compared to their global competitors Swedish entrepreneurs and their teams needed to believe that winning globally was a good thing. Whilst this attitude of thinking no-one is better than anyone else is positive in terms of societal cohesion it does not help companies compete against the attitude of silicon valley or the work ethic of Asia.

One of Sweden’s most successful serial entrepreneurs was very focused on the idea of the “Constant Pivot”. Compared to just a few years ago the speed of innovation today, in his eyes has increased immensely. The focus now for every team should be speed. Speed of validating product / market fit and monetization before you are out performed by global competition that will also be taking advantage of unprecedented access to distribution (app stores/cloud) and low barriers of entry. Be prepared to be on a constant pivot in order to win.

This came from a CEO who had scaled their business globally and led a successful US IPO. Before he had taken on the role of CEO the business had been run by its founder who was full of passion and knowledge but simply lacked the capabilities to make the business a global success. This led to a reflection that both visionaries and entrepreneurs whilst they can sometimes be the same thing are often not. Visionaries can predict changes in the future but entrepreneurs are the ones that have the abilities to make those changes happen.

During the research the importance of personal and organisational networks was highlighed by almost every interviewee. In a smaller and ever more connected world this often unquantifiable talent for networking was identified as crucial. As one interviewee put it your network really is what really defines you — being a great person is linked to the other great talents you have access to.

Europeans compared to their US and Asian counterparts place a higher priority on the issue of work/life . And Sweden certainly leads the way in this respect. This sentiment was prevelant in all interviews, especially from those who had worked outside of Sweden and could see both the positive and negative aspects of this question. The above quote came from an entrepreneur who relocated to the US to lead his companies expansion there. This relocation also involved him doing a deal with his wife at that stage where his career and the growth of the company was prioritised over her own professional development. Rather than commenting on the rights and wrongs of this quote I think it is worth just reflecting that as technology comapnies are competing in a global environment our attitudes to working hours need to reflect this environment. My conclusion is no-one has it right but you need to know the rules of the game wherever you are playing it and be prepared for those discussions. Working hours at a desk do not count but true engagement and motivation in the growth journey 24/7 do.

And finally my favourite reflection comes from a leader at one of Swedens most successful tech growth stories over the last 15 years. I can certainly relate to this. Often with more money in the bank from eager investors, a desire to grow as quickly as possible and a war for global talent ongoing it is easy to grow just a little too fast. As more product, engineering, marketing, sales and finance positions and managers are created to sustain the growth keeping this quote in mind will be helpful. The question everyone should ask of themselves is … are you helping to make stuff, to sell stuff or are you simply stuff.

If you enjoyed this post then perhaps you would be interested in Part 1: How Swedish Tech succeeds in growing Globally.

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Innovation, Internationalisation, Leadership, StartUps, Swedish tech, Technology culture, entrepreneur, innovation, internationalisation, iZettle, Klarna, Spotify, sthlmtech, swedish tech

Originally published at jonobean.com on October 27, 2015.

This journey of discovery was actually promoted by the fact that as well as leading a high growth Swedish tech company I was also completing a MBA program and wanted to give something useful back to the Swedish tech community. Here are some of the companies that took part in the research.

The Nordics as a region region punches way beyond its weight in terms of tech success. It has been responsible for 10% of BUSD tech exits but only 2% of global GDP. If you take a European perspective the Nordics accounted for 53% of BUSD tech exits but draws only 10% of venture capital investment and represents 7% of the regions GDP.

Sweden is by far the most successful Nordic country in terms of prior success representing over 50% of Nordic exit value, 67% of total investments and now has the largest tech ecosystem in the region with over 22,000 companies and over 18% of the population employed in the tech sector in Stockholm alone.

But forget the numbers for a minute. The question I set out to answer, as well as the mistakes made, was what critical success factors led to these achievements and through indepth interviews with some of Sweden’s leading founders, CEOs, early leadership team members and investors here are success factors that count.

Entrepreneur & Initial Team

Not surprisingly the entrepreneurs and their initial team were identified as the most important success factor. 66% of the successful entrepreneurs interviewed had experienced prior international success and had considerable international experience.

One thing that was identified was the difference between a visionary and an entrepreneur. With visionaries being those that can predict the future but entrepreurs being the ones who actually have the capability to make things happen.

Diversity from day one was identified as a key building block of success. This helps build a global vision and the hiring of your first non Swedish employee to changing to English as the main corporate language within the first two years of operation was identified by all as a key success factor.

Innovation

A culture of innovation was identified by all as a key element in their success stories. I expected that the focus would be on innovation from a product/service perspective but whilst this is clearly important and there are some standout examples of this type of innovation such as Spotify, Klarna and Tobii it is not the only type of innovation that should be in focus.

Particularly companies that founded with the last 5 years focused on other areas of innovation as a key success factor. This is due to the fact that barriers to entry are now so low that product supremacy cannot be taken for granted however great your product.

Clear focus on other areas such as:

• Process — Innovation / Core
• Offering — Product / Customer Service
• Delivery — Channel /Brand/ Customer Experience
• Finance — Business Model / Value Network

Are important is creating a true scalable success. What is important is that every department in a growing technology company should be challenged to constantly innovate its approach and use the build, measure and learn approach to corporate as well as product development.

Network

In a much smaller and connected world compared to just 10 years ago the importance of an entrepreneur’s and organisation’s network was seen as equally important as innovation.

Both a local network in terms of angel/seed financing and initial talent acquisition as well as an international network in terms of scaling and partnership that can be important as a company grows were identified as important.

The development and nurturing of such networks were seen as vital to a companies success and considered to be very important particulary by the investment community.

Culture

Culture deserves a blog post on its own and maybe it will get one but for now it’s important that both national and organisational culture were identified as key success factors of Swedish tech success.

In terms of national culture the fact that a small domestic market forces global thinking combined with high engineering education, high English language literacy and impressive broadband penetration all help Sweden’s tech companies grow. In contrast the preoccupation with “lagom”, a fear of thinking you and your company are any better than anyone else and a focus on work life balance for Swedes are seen by some as a hinderance to global tech success.

Organisational culture however was seen as a key component of success and having a strong value driven company culture which is lived out every day by both the founders and employees is important.

One thing to learn as a company grows and goes beyond its comfortable Swedish or Nordic routes and gets to experience the delights and real challenges of clashing national cultures is the importance of organisational cultural similarities. Developers in Asia, the US and Europe may possess many of the same interests and passions as their colleagues around the world. The same is true of sales people, marketers and product owners. Use these functional cultural similarities to your advantage when you are trying to deal with national cultural difference which if you are successful you will need to overcome.

Financial Condition

Of course if you are going to go global then solid financial backing is key. But there seemed to be general consensus from both the investment and entrepreneurial community that it has never been cheaper to build and market a product. You can do a lot more for less today than was the case 10 years ago. Then you had to ensure you attracted enough in both seed and series A to see your product and team properly scale.

Today it seems that with barriers to entry so low and global competition never as intense speed in product /market validation is really what matters from an investor perspective. As ever, more important than the capital that investors provide which is relatively easy to access today are the competencies and networks the investors bring to the table to help their portfolio companies.

External Factors

The final key success factor in Swedish tech going global are external factors. For some it was market condition but for most the key external factor was timing. Whether timing is a matter of luck or judgement is up for debate but for many who have succeeded they reflect on the fact that their timing was spot on. If they had come to market five years earlier they would not have survived as their market was not ready. Alternatively if they had been founded five years later they would not have stood a chance to being the successes they are today.

But was your original question answered I hear you ask. Had these successful entrepreneurs, executives and investors made as many mistakes as you. The answer is 100% yes. In fact what was striking was the open nature of the leaders in the Swedish technology ecosystem. This embracing of failure and culture of learning and improvement is perhaps the reason why Sweden has and will go on to produce some of Europe and the worlds most successful tech companies.

To find out more about some of the reflections of those who have succeeded take a look at the second blog post in this series.