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.
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.
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.
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.
Other tech hubs like Paris, Tokyo, Austin, or Boston have not seen the circumstances you describe as far as I know.
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.
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.
https://www.nyteknik.se/ingenjorskarriar/karriar/it-bransche...
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.
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.
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:
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.