An Evening With Wired Magazine in One of ”Europe’s Hottest Startup Captials”
Last week, SIME and Stockholm Business Region hosted a dinner with Wired at Stockholm’s renowned Café Opera, a restaurant dating back from 1895. Under the roof of century-old ceiling paintings, some of the best and brightest of Stockholm’s and Sweden’s startup scene met to discuss what makes a city a hot place for tech companies and entrepreneurs. The evening was also a great way to celebrate Stockholm being back on the cover of an international magazine as a leading IT city!
The backdrop to the dinner and the discussions that took place is a 20-page special feature on ”Europe’s hottest startup capitals” published in the September issue of Wired Magazine (UK). In the article, Stockholm/Sweden is described as ”the most digitally connected economy in the world” and its entreprenuers as ”having a global mindset when it comes to developing innovative tech startups.”
A main reason for arranging the evening with Wired was to enable the local business community, city decision makers and other players on the national IT and Internet scene to meet, mingle, dine and discuss together with Wired. In addition to a wonderful dinner, the focus of the evening was to discuss the business climate and startup culture of Stockholm, opportunities and challenges in the Stockholm start-up scene, and find out what one of the world’s most respected publications see on the horizon.
Ola Ahlvarsson, chairman and host of Europe’s leading internet conference SIME, guided the invited guests through an evening of presentations and a panel from the Wired editorial team. Ola also presented his own thoughts on the status of the Internet scene in general and Stockholm in particular, and guided discussions on stage as well as talks conducted at the dinner table level.
Among the many things that were mentioned during the evening was Stockholm’s incredible test market potential, the global mindset and everything-is-doable mentality of local entrepreneurs. Other areas that were mentioned was the city’s critical mass of entrepreneurs and the importance of an existing proximity between startups. Among the ideas on how to make Stockholm a better place for startups and entrepreneurs were a better funding structure, more affordable housing, and an increased pool of engineers.
The people involved in organizing the dinner (disclaimer: that includes me) were very pleased with how the evening turned out. The day after the event, we happily noted that Wired, our guest of honor and the one who made this evening possible, tweeted “Great @WiredUK event last night in #Stockholm. Many thanks to SIME and Stockholm Business Region for their support.” Considering the reaction from the attendees on site as well as on twitter during and after, the evening seems to have been appreciated and, hopefully, inspiring; especially for all the smart entrepreneurs who participated – of which several were mentioned in the Wired feature.
I hope we can make an evening with Wired an annual tradition. Let’s make sure Stockholm stays on the list next year!
To wrap up this summary of the evening with Wired, here is a Bambuser clip (shot by Bambuser CEO Hans Eriksson) with Northzone’s Pär-Jörgen Pärson, who took the stage at Café Opera to conclude the thoughts of his dinner table about what makes Stockholm a great place for startups and entreprenuers:
/Mattias Durnik
