While I agree those aren't unimportant I have come to a somewhat different conclusion after spending some time outside of Sweden. Most people in most places are just busy doing other things. I don't think Stockholm's success is so much what was, but what you didn't have to do.

In the early 00s it was relative easy to become "high middle class". Rent controlled public housing was available so you didn't have to spend $10k-$100k to have stable housing. Public transport was in a good state so you didn't have to spend $5k-50k on a car. Education was available but not generally considered necessary. Mostly cost-free universal health care was the norm. Even marriage wasn't the norm. This meant you had pretty good chance of having your life relatively sorted by your mid-twenties and therefor a much lower cost of doing something else. Compared to other countries where most people are busy trying to attain such things for far longer.

That other countries didn't have the same success because they didn't have good enough broadband is a somewhat safe explanation. Most countries didn't even try, and still don't try, to get good broadband because success is mostly seen as something private.

This is of course somewhat controversial not just abroad but in Sweden as well. As the Stockholm of today would do quite badly by these criteria.

None of those factors concurred in California or other tech hubs like New York or London though.

That’s because Silicon Valley and other tech hubs need money and talent, everything else is secondary.

SV specifically had bottomless US defense spending and good local schools to create a talent pipeline. Back in the early days, the defense industry was the primary consumer of chips, which built up the industry via public defense dollars.

While I do think things defense spending matters I don't think it is what makes (or made) the difference. Look at countries like Germany, France or South Korea. Arguably they have some of the best education and industries in the world but they don't have an outsized number of new tech companies. That is because most of the time you aren't inventing technology (because that is too hard) but trying distribute or commercialize technology that mostly exists.

Silicon Valley is of course where many things in computing were invented but it is more importantly where business machines became home computers. And in the end that is were most of the graphics cards, operating systems, network switches, software applications and services comes from. Sweden didn't invent many computers or operating systems but it was ready to distribute the next thing once it became available. Just like many good synths and samplers came from Japan but many of the big electronic music artists are from the US, the UK or Sweden.

I think you may have misunderstood. It's not defence spending now, but preceding the rise of silicon valley. Vast amounts poured into radio and signals tech in Silicon Valley before integrated circuits even existed. Companies like Shockley and Fairchild laid the groundwork for SV long before home computers or business machines.

No, I understand that. I just think the reason we talk about it is because of later developments. That is why I'm taking Japan as an example because they have made some of the best music equipment around but we don't talk about how good education, research and manufacturing is the source Japanese hip hop and electronic music because that never really happened. Instead most of the world is playing American or European music made with Japanese equipment.

Maybe I'm reading the parent to harshly. I just want to make the point that talent and money isn't everything. Most of Sweden's successes hasn't come from research spending and top talent but from widespread interest and application of technologies. Spotify didn't come out of Fraunhofer. The Swedish video game industry did arguably come out of the demoscene however.

California / Silicon Valley is witness to that unusual and under-reported aspect of climate change where it simply rains money.

I would say they did maybe just not directly. There are plenty testimonials of people crashing on other peoples couches, working out of garages or sitting in on classes at Stanford in the 00s in SV. Of course today SV also recruits from all over the world and spends plenty of venture capital for housing, transportation and health care. But that isn't something most cities or even countries can do.

New York and London are outliers because they are big financial centers. They are still far more like Stockholm than the other financial centers are. In theory a smaller financial center like Zurich should arguably be better for startups than Stockholm but it isn't even a competition when looking at the outcome.

Zurich is in fact a tech hub, Google is there, and many interesting startups come from their outstanding technical school.

Other tech hubs like Paris, Tokyo, Austin, or Boston have not seen the circumstances you describe as far as I know.

> Zurich is in fact a tech hub, Google is there, and many interesting startups come from their outstanding technical school.

That is exactly what I mean. Zurich has prestigious schools and foreign companies that you have to attend because otherwise you can't get things like good housing or health care. In 00s Stockholm you didn't really have to do that. Which is why Stockholm have the homegrown companies and exits.

Daniel Ek didn't attend university. He tried to apply to Google but wasn't accepted. Now Spotify has had a $30 billion IPO. Presumably more than all contemporary Swiss startups exits ever. His co-founder had a degree in civil engineering (as roads and water infrastructure) but had instead founded and exited an adtech company.

Markus Persson didn't attend university either. The company behind Minecraft which he owned ~70% of sold for $2.5 billon to Microsoft. He was a former employee of King, the company behind Candy Crush Saga, which sold to Activision Blizzard for $5.9 billion.

That was the difference between Stockholm and Zurich. And between Stockholm and most other self-proclaimed tech hubs for that matter.

>His co-founder had a degree in civil engineering (as roads and water infrastructure)

I think this might be something that got lost in translation - at least according to Wikipedia, Martin Lorentzon studied Industrial Economics at Chalmers University.

The Swedish word Civilingenjör translates to Master of Science in Engineering, not to Civil engineer.

I was referencing Swedish Wikipedia which says he studied actual civil engineering (väg- och vattenbyggnad numera samhällsbyggnad) at Chalmers. NyTeknik writes that he applied for industrial economics but didn't get accepted.

https://www.nyteknik.se/ingenjorskarriar/karriar/it-bransche...

I'll be damned. Thanks for the correction!

So in essence, every other tech hub is an exception to Sweden…

There are however a dozen other places with good social support and public services where startups did not happen on that level.

As it stands, the only real common threads I see among all the startup hotbeds (SV, NYC, Boston, London, Stockholm, etc) are a tradition for trade/commerce/entrepreneurship, good universities for talent, and fairly laissez-faire regulations.

> Daniel Ek didn't attend university. He tried to apply to Google but wasn't accepted.

Amazing, so he combines two Silicon Valley founder narratives of 1) being a college dropout (or lacking a degree at any rate) and 2) being rejected by an established big company.

Who are the others?

1) is a cliche at this point, to the extent that this 2015 listicle has a huge variety of figures both new and old:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/tech-ceos-who-ditched-college-for...

2) WhatsApp founder Brian Acton was famously rejected by Facebook (and Twitter), and is the canonical example, but there are others. There's even a website:

https://rejected.us

No, they had literal silicon, DARPA instead and then a swarm of investors.

Hands off regulation and overall liberty to pursue both private and business affairs without interference (as long as you pay the massive taxes) was a big surprise for me when I moved to Sweden.

Yeah it's a trade off that can be worth it, as a lot of time and energy is being saved, so mental space can be channeled elsewhere than into frustration about bureaucracy and excessive administrative requirements.

It does seem like Sweden is quite a bit easier to start up a business, cost-wise and regulation-wise, than the rest of Scandinavia.

I looked into starting a company in Denmark and was quickly put off.

The regulation is still pretty high compared to the US though. Especially once you plan to start employing people. Not that that'd a bad thing.

> as long as you pay the massive taxes

You're supposed to set up operations as a charity to dodge the taxes.

Also it's a country where staying inside is comfy, so being in front of a computer as your job is pretty appealing.

I was thinking of BankID the other day, and that I don't know how the authentication / authorization problem is solved in other countries. Fellow hackers, how do you log in to your internet bank and to your government services such as the tax office?

In Belgium bank sends you a token generator that allows activating your account. You put the bank card in and it produces numbers you can use for the internet banking. I only had to use it once with the KBC bank, as it allowed to authenticate with the mobile app after the initial set up.

The Belgian resident card also allows you to log into government services. You need a card reader for that(~20EUR). Same as with the banking, you can set up a mobile app that can be used for authentication without a card reader, after you complete the initial set up.

When I was living in Germany, my first residence permit(2014) was similar to the Belgian one. However, they stopped issuing those to foreigners in favour of a piece of paper which they stick into your passport. Consequently, I couldn't use any eID in Germany up until 2019 when I moved away. So if you want something done, you get an appointment with the local citizen office. Any paperwork is, well, done with paper. Most of the companies send you a ton of letters.

> When I was living in Germany, my first residence permit(2014) was similar to the Belgian one. However, they stopped issuing those to foreigners in favor of a piece of paper which they stick into your passport.

Interestingly, they stepped back from that two years ago, as almost all of the residence permits are now electrical. The only problem is that the electronic properties of the permits are not used anywhere.

I got my EU long-term residence permit in 2019 and it was still a paper kind. Maybe they really changed it now.

> how do you log in to your internet bank and to your government services such as the tax office?

In Denmark both of those are done using the same national 2FA app.

Same in Norway, pretty much everything to do with money uses BankID as the authentication mechanism.

BankID works ridiculously well. Would be interesting to know how the project is run, and how they managed to be so successful.

I can speak for the countries I've lived in. In Spain they use regular digital certificates since ages, in Italy they've recently introduced a weird cloud system. In the UK it's username and password (+ 2FA).

>Italy they've recently introduced a weird cloud system

Not really weird in itself, but overall stupid, what is weird is how you get it (and how its use is becoming mandatory almost anywhere in governement sites).

The thingy is called SPID, and you get it through a small number of (private) firms (for a fee) or from Poste Italiane (the National Post Office) for free.

What they don't tell you (and that you learn only once you have one) is that there are three levels for it:

1) lowest level basically login+password

2) middle level, login+password+SMS or 2FA via app

3) high level that requires a smartcard (like the new electronic national ID card or the Codice Fiscale card) AND a smart card reader

BUT on some government sites (not all) you can use any among login+pin/password, SPID, CIE or CNS.

It is a mess.

Of course banks do not use any opf them and you have separate login+password+SMS or 2FA via specific bank app.

> your internet bank

A proprietary scheme specific to that one bank.

> to your government services

Often: Using a signature. As in, pen on paper, stuck into an envelope or a fax machine (not a scanner and e-mail, oh no, has to be fax).

Government online services that do exist often have their own authentication scheme (each authority has a separate one), typically "we'll mail you an activation code" (snail mail of course) paired with SMS 2FA after the initial registration.

Bank has their own system which uses a token to authenticate. It used to be a 2FA with a physical device but now it's a mobile app.

Government services have multitude of methods to log in, they include using a government issued ID with a card reader or using on of lesser auth methods like using the bank token.

I don't think you can use your government ID to log into your bank, even though it would make sense.

German banks have had HBCI later FinTS for decades[0]. What I don't know is why that standard ended up in new Fintech banks rolling their own standards later on. I suspect the implementation, certification and licensing must be a nightmare, but I really don't know.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinTS

I was surprised when I moved to the US from Sweden. to login into your bank you just use a regular password.

For other government-related login you usually just use your SSN, if someone gains access to your SSN you are screwed. Compared in Sweden I will happily yell out my SSN to a cashier :)

If I understand Swedish BankID correctly, it's a common system owned / operated / used by all the banks together (via some company they all own part of or something, I presume), right?

Here in Finland, each bank has their own. Lots of other entities, webshops -- of both big brick-and-mortar companies and pure online businesses -- and state / municipal agencies alike usually use the banks' services. They have umpteen bank logos to click on their check-out purchase or secure login pages, "Log in with Nordea", "Log in with S-Pankki", etc. For instance, when I want to access my data[0] in the health-care / prescriptions DB of the Social Insurance Institution[1] (i.e. the green "Sign in to e-Services" button on [2]) as a private citizen[3], I click the logo of my bank on the next page the button opens, and then use my bank's mobile app to prove I'm me.

Feels a bit inefficient compared to a common system, but then again there might be a benefit in decentralization: If there is a problem one system, the others still work. Also, if you are going to have a single centralised service, one would have thought the thoroughly registered and bureaucratized Nordic countries would have implemented this as a state service -- in Finland probably run by the Digital and Population Data Services Agency[4]; in Sweden by the Swedish Tax Agency[5][6]. AIUI, that's how it works in our Baltic neighbour Estonia.

[EDIT: Minor wording changes / clarification.]

___

[0] Say, to check if one of my prescriptions for diabetes medicines is running out and needs renewing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kela_(institution)

[2] https://www.kela.fi/web/en

[3] They also happen to be my employer, but work is a whole separate VPN.

[4] https://dvv.fi/en/about-the-agency

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Tax_Agency

[6] https://www.skatteverket.se/servicelankar/otherlanguages/ine...

Yes this is right. So for banking, this is what you need and that works across the board. But there is actually competition for general authentication, so for login to government services you can now often use Freja eID. It is independent from banks, and does not work for banks, but their niche seems to be authentication face-to-face, replacing the physical card, and also Covid vaccination proof etc. So there is an ecosystem and some competition, but BankID is the giant.

> "We have been naive" and "we didn't see it coming"

For context it should be noted that these two famous quotes by the prime minister and staff were not in the context of software or business, but regarding violent crime and the demographic shift away from natives ethnic homogeneity

That was said during the pandemic.

I feel you are pushing a narrative here.

Those specific quotes (or rather direct translations of quotes) were said in regards to bad integration policy (by Stefan Löfven in 2015 and 2019).

There has probably been said things with similar sentiment in regards to the pandemic. But not those two specific ones.

Even though I agree OP is pushing a narrative a bit too much, your correction is also wrong. Since these were not said during the pandemic.

My comment cleared up that the quotes were out of context, and in pretty dry words explained in what context they were said. If simply stating the context is pushing a narrative, we can’t converse.

That I had missed - but that is also not the topic of IT or business, so the point stands

> I feel you are pushing a narrative here.

Your feelings are beyond my control

> Your feelings are beyond my control

Clever, yet generally false. How we behave and what we say impacts other people's feelings in general.

It was not, I feel you are pushing another narrative here.

> > "We have been naive" and "we didn't see it coming"

> For context it should be noted that these two famous quotes by the prime minister and staff were not in the context of software or business, but regarding violent crime and the demographic shift away from natives ethnic homogeneity

It's been used (and roundly criticised from the right) mainly in those contexts recently, but also for pretty much anything they've screwed up for over a decade now.

IMO the right (both the "accepted" traditional parties and the newer populist ones) is basically right in asking, "If you can't see fricking anything coming, are you really qualified to run the country?" It may work as an excuse the first few times, but it wears out pretty quickly; AFAICS the point where it shows not how hugely unpredictable the consequences of their actions are, but just how bad at predicting / willing to ignore them they are has long since been passed.

It was also used during the pandemic.

Skype was made in Estonia

Co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennström is a Swede and so Skype always had a clear connection to Sweden. But yes, Estonia also deserves a lot of credit for Skype of course, as the development work was mostly done there.

A lot of the credit? Estonia is 99% of Skype. There's a reason their tech ecosystem (which is more impressive than Sweden's) is called the "Skype Mafia"

The Skype mafia looks to me rather “diverse” international https://www.forbes.com/sites/samshead/2019/08/21/the-skype-m...

Anyway, my point is that whether correctly or incorrectly, that thanks to Zennström, many people do associate Skype also with Sweden, and he acted as an early role model for other future startup entrepreneurs from Sweden.

You can search the #EstonianMafia. Is Skype, Pipedrive, Wise (Transferwise), Bolt, etc...

> (Skype, Spotify, even Pirate Bay)

Ericsson ?

It's Swedish, but I wouldn't put it in the same category, as the company was founded in 1876.

The UK outdoes Sweden on all of those points. London is the SV of Europe.

As someone not very knowledgeable within these areas, will it continue being that now after Brexit?

Yes. Visas for tech workers aren't a big problem, the UK is still better for starting a business than any EU country and they have the innovator and startup visas, too. Brexit only fucked British manufacturers, non-tangible goods are fine.