Norway is about to murder its own startup ecosystem
The ‘exit tax’ means that founders building outliers are getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop.
Do you know what has been confusing the hell out of me? How Norway — a nation with immense wealth and resources, is lagging behind its Nordic neighbors — Finland, Sweden, and Denmark — in the startup landscape. The countries share similar cultures, high standards of education, and solid technological infrastructures. Yet, Finland has given rise to companies like Supercell and Rovio, Sweden boasts global successes like Spotify and Klarna, and Denmark is home to innovators like Unity. Norway’s comparative absence from this list is odd.
Seven years ago I wrote a piece about what’s missing in the ecosystem at that time, and one of the points I made was that if you want to play at VC scale, you need to actually understand how the VC/startup model works.
Norway has long been a nation that fosters innovation, entrepreneurship, and the spirit of adventure. From the Viking explorers of old to…
