Is The Norwegian Startup Scene Hot Or Not?
This guest post is by Tor Grønsund, a Norwegian entrepreneur, educator, speaker, and writer of the The Methodologist blog on startup innovation. Follow him on Twitter @tor
For the better or the worse, the Norwegian startup scene finally has some heat. Although TechCrunch’s harsh take on Norway’s startup state sparked some longed for discussion (or lack thereof), the picture painted needs to be nuanced.
Nevermind the research
Mike Butcher compares the ones of Spotify, Rovio, Tradeshift, and Everbread to the lack of evidence of successful startups from Norway, even pondering upon Opera as a half-fledged success. The arguments are as half the truth as pointing at two startups, Bipper and Wonderloop as examples of the opposite.
Symptoms Of The Norwegian Startup Ecosystem
This guest post is by Tor R. Grønsund. He is the founder of Lingo Social, a lecturer of Entrepreneurship at the University of Oslo, and the writer of the blog Methodologist. Follow him on Twitter at @tor.
As inventors of the object-oriented programming language and the modern GSM technology, you would expect Norway to have the perfect ingredients for a vibrant startup scene. If you, however, search this or any other notable tech blog for news on early-stage Norwegian startups, you would find next to nothing. While Nordic and Baltic startups seems to thrive, why don’t we see any ventures emerging out of Norway, several Nordic and European professionals questioned me. After talking to a handful of entrepreneurs, investors, and scholars about why this is the case, I discovered seven symptoms of the Norwegian start-up ecosystem that might explain why Norway’s tech innovation is lagging behind that of its neighbors.
