Five startups from Norway

https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/20/norwegian-startup-scene/

by punnerud • 10 years ago

79 94 10 years ago

Anybody have some insight on what it usually takes to qualify for landing a startup gig in places like Norway/Amsterdam? (With regards to language requirements/work permits/referrals/etc.) With each passing day I find myself more interested in European startup scenes.

Arnt3• 10 years ago

I've sat on the receiving end of such applications in Norway. Find some companies you like and send them mail.

There's paperwork, but the paperwork is easier when the employer wants you, so defer it for now.

flaviuspopan6• 10 years ago

That simple huh? That's pretty motivating.

lagadu2• 10 years ago

If you have an EU nationality the paperwork (getting a SS number, a tax card, registered residence) will take maybe 3 hours of work once you have a signed contract. I've been through it and it's surprisingly agile.

I don't know about non-EU nationals, though I know people from the US and Canada who managed to get an EU nationality because of their grandparents and simply used that to avoid worrying about visas and all. That said, the companies will be very helpful if you need assistance with paperwork so you should be fine when it comes to it, though I doubt you'll need the help.

About the language, English will be fine for nearly any tech company.

That said, I'd also check out Berlin and Copenhagen; big startup scenes there.

Never worked in The Netherlands so I can't speak for Amsterdam, sorry.

flaviuspopan6• 10 years ago

I truly appreciate the guidance, thank you. I'm originally from Romania and speak English, Romanian, Spanish, and some French. Multiple people have been mentioning Germany as an alternative so I might look into that more as I have family there.

woodcut• 10 years ago

There's something called the european blue card which is equivalent to a US green card, if you can get a job offer >€38,688 a year and you work in tech then the blue card entitles you to work anywhere in the Schengen area. You'd need to work for about 18 months in the first position and after 3 years you can apply for permanent residency.

jacquesm3• 10 years ago

Germany is easy to get into and Berlin has a pretty good start-up scene.

flaviuspopan6• 10 years ago

I appreciate the tip, thank you! Do you have any first hand experience in the German startup scene? I have family in Germany and am certainly open to the idea.

kmfrk2• 10 years ago

If you're American, the US has a special arrangement with the Netherlands that should make it significantly easier for you to get to Amsterdam. At least there used to be one - try contacting your embassy in the Netherlands or the Dutch one in the US.

Maultasche• 10 years ago

There is a special arrangement, but it's for people with their own businesses. It's fairly easy to start your own business in the Netherlands as a US citizen. Great if you're a startup founder.

Employment is something else entirely. Skilled migrants can come under the knowledge worker program ("kennismigrant") or the European blue card program. There are a number of websites where you can read about this.

You do have to find a company that will sponsor you, but that's the main barrier to entry. Some Dutch companies want people who speak Dutch, but many will be happy to hire those who speak English. The Dutch government also offers incentives to people coming from abroad where the person pays 30% fewer taxes for the first 8 years in the country.

As an American who's looked into the possibilities, I'd say that the Netherlands is probably the friendliest country in Europe to migrate to. The Netherlands is welcoming to migrants (at least the skilled type), it has a healthy IT sector (with a good number of startups in the Amsterdam area), and English is widely spoken. I'd still advise eventually learning Dutch, but you can at least get along with just English.

lsseckman• 10 years ago

"Go huge" for some reason sounds like incorrect grammar. Is it correct?

cariaso• 10 years ago

it's not proper english, but it is common real world vernacular.

'go big, or go home' being a very common phrase.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=go%20big%20o...

maaaats• 10 years ago

(...)and seeing the government working with the startup scene (...) is refreshing

I've always felt jealous on the US startup culture, where you get investments. In Norway, I feel it's more like you apply and get small grants. But looking at this article things have gotten better.

What concerns me the most about our startup scene, is the scale. A successful startup in Norway can only reach 5 million people before it has to be modified to fit a new country with different language, regulations and customs. In the US, you can reach tens of millions, and when the app has grown big enough us Norwegian will accommodate and get used to the app, not the other way around.

Arnt3• 10 years ago

Some people argue the other way around, and tell stories about e.g. American startups that never got around to supporting addresses in non-US formats. Companies in a small country have to face the world and can't stick their heads in the sand.

kuschku2• 10 years ago

What concerns me the most about our startup scene, is the scale. A successful startup in Norway can only reach 5 million people before it has to be modified to fit a new country with different language, regulations and customs. In the US, you can reach tens of millions, and when the app has grown big enough us Norwegian will accommodate and get used to the app, not the other way around.

And that’s one of the biggest advantages the EU is supposed to bring, but which several countries are still blocking. You can read over 200 million people in the EU just with an English product, and if the single market was done better, it’d be very competitive with the US.

Instead, we’re seeing Britain leaving, and potentially the EU breaking apart completely.

toyg• 10 years ago

potentially the EU breaking apart completely.

You can see it like that, or you can see it the other way around. This is pretty much make-or-break, put-up-or-shut-up time for EU integration. The Lisbon treaty is finally biting. You can't be "mildly pro-EU" or see it as "simply a trade union" anymore; you either go all-in with fiscal and legislative harmonization, or you go home. Italy and Greece were the first to go all-in; Britain might be the first to go home. The next decade is a tipping point one way or another, and it might actually be the beginning of the "real" federal EU a lot of people have been asking for 40 years.

T-A2• 10 years ago

Just pretend that you are a US startup and target the US from the get-go. Happens all the time.

nemild• 10 years ago

Spotify is one counter-example. Grow in a smaller market where you can do things that can't be done in larger markets (e.g., license streaming cheaply) - and then scale when you've proven the model.

lagadu2• 10 years ago

As someone from the industry living in the north, I get the impression that the biggest obstacle to this is the seemingly much larger startup scene just ~500km away in Copenhagen. It's likely my experience is biased in some way but I seem to have a lot more contacts and startup job offers from companies based in Copenhagen than anywhere else around here, and I have lived in both places in the past 3 years. I get the definite impression that its proximity is pulling a lot of resources away from mostly Oslo.

jkot• 10 years ago

that its proximity is pulling a lot of resources away from mostly Oslo

I can confirm that, some companies I interviewed with in Sweden had Norwegian roots/owners. Two reasons: Sweden is cheaper and is part of EU.

Illniyar• 10 years ago

From the article it seems more like "go somewhat bigger but still tiny" then "go huge".

Government aid programs have failed to generate startup scene basically everywhere they were used.

I think buulding a real startup scene is a long process, starting with a few companies that breakout, a good culture and the willingness of private capital to invest. It is layers and layers that build upon eachother until a critical mass is reached.

audunw• 10 years ago

Didn't Silicon Valley grow out of a collection of companies doing defense contracts and research grants?

Regardless, you're right that it does take a lot of time. For Silicon Valley it took multiple decades.

But it does seem to me that the nordic startup communities are growing very rapidly. There's cause to be optimistic. For Norway one of the problems is that the vast majority of new investment is still in oil and gas. And I suspect that community of engineers and investors are more likely to grow into a community centered around subsea and other marine activities even after oil becomes unprofitable.

What nobody has mentioned yet is that Norway has a healthy semiconductor and electronics design industry. There are some exiting startups there that people often forget about.

collyw3• 10 years ago

One thing I always wonder is why startup cities always seem to be so bloody expensive. SF is the classic case looking at Europe, London is probably the biggest center, and the wages / costs there are close to twice of many parts of the UK. Norway ain't cheap either. I suppose Berlin is relatively cheap and has a big startup scene.

All those costs must make it far more expensive to build something.

pm90• 10 years ago

Hrm, I wonder if the oil and gas industry can act as the bootstrap to create enough skilled tech workers to kickstart the startup engine. They would have competition from Houston/Texas where we have many companies doing the same though and I personally don't see that happening (unless its for Norwegian clients only).

SilasX• 10 years ago

>Government aid programs have failed to generate startup scene basically everywhere they were used.
Didn't Silicon Valley grow out of a collection of companies doing defense contracts and research grants?

I think you're talking past each other. The parent was referring (AIUI) to government programs specifically intended to promote a "startup scene".

So you may be right that government spending was responsible for making SV what it is now; however, that spending was not in the form of "hey, we want to jumpstart a specific kind of business environment by filtering for companies that meet that mold and heavily subsidizing them in their early stages", which is the kind of aid program the parent meant.

The SV funding you're referring to, by contrast, was contracts for stuff the government had wanted for (and was optimizing for) completely unrelated reasons, and which (over a long time) created a startup scene as a side-effect.

rdtsc• 10 years ago

As a rule every time a piece comes in the news about some place being "the next startup scene", it usually doesn't work out that way. It is usually driven by PR due to some tax advantage being put into law or local municipality providing grants or something like that.

xiaoma3• 10 years ago

I dunno. I read an awful lot of articles in 2011 saying that SF was the next startup scene and that soon it wouldn't be about the valley anymore. Those articles were all right.

kmfrk2• 10 years ago

I remember this with Barcelona (or somewhere in Spain) which was building some kind of Silicon Valley hub that was supposed to be the startup capital of Europe.

cplanas• 10 years ago

I can remember at least 9 different cities that have been called "the startup capital of Europe".

msvan• 10 years ago

It's a shame that Barcelona isn't the startup capital of Europe. Amazing weather, beautiful streets, close to other major European cities, lots of great food. SV will always win on weather against other cities.

legulere• 10 years ago

Why should people move to Norway? Software developers don't really earn more than elsewhere in Europe while the cost of living is drastically higher.

adrianN• 10 years ago

It's a beautiful country full of happy people. It's #3 in the Where-to-be-born index [1] and ranks really high when you ask people about general satisfaction with their life [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index

[2] http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/norway/

superswordfish2• 10 years ago

Programmers (and their children) don't really have to be born in a particular country to have good quality of life. That sort of ranking is more useful if you're poor. There is the "safety net" factor, but again, less important when you have skills that pay well.

coldcode• 10 years ago

It's so dark in the winter, I guess it helps to work in a startup maybe you don't notice as much!

fegu• 10 years ago

This is the Norwegian secret of success. Food is fuel in Norway, we are not gourmets. We don't have much else to do than work and have sex during the winter.

freekh3• 10 years ago

To get "cheap" (or as "cheap" as elsewhere in Europe) software devs to join them in their startup?

NDizzle• 10 years ago

Forget Norway. Kenya!!!

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/kenya

J_Darnley• 10 years ago

Ha. A real blast from the past.

aavotins• 10 years ago

Norway has one of the highest taxes in the world. Combined with labor laws that are somewhat biased in favour of the employee.

Wouldn't it be hard to create a scene like that in a socially developed country. Large wages would mean ridiculous taxes, so it would be very expensive to attract talent and workforce, based on wages alone(think Bay Area in the US). What about iterating quickly, which involves hiring and firing people quickly as well? If I'm not mistaken, in the US you can fire people on the spot, but that's not the case in Europe and Norway. You have strict labor laws, notice periods, the whole shebang. Won't that be an extra burden for startups?

edit: spelling

vidarh2• 10 years ago

Norway's taxes on personal income are just marginally above the OECD average [1], which places it somewhat above the US, but not particularly high for a developed country. The idea that Norway is particular high tax tends to come from the marginal tax rate, which indeed is higher than the US, but the threshold is also high.

Norwegian corporate taxes are low, at 25% corporate income tax [2], well below the OECD average, while US corporate taxes are one of the highest in the world and by far the highest of any OECD country [2] [3].

What about iterating quickly, which involves hiring and firing people quickly as well?

Then hire people on contracts. Nothing in Norwegian law prevents you from hiring and firing at will as long as you don't make people think you're hiring for a position that is meant to last.

[1] http://taxfoundation.org/article/comparison-tax-burden-labor...

[2] http://stats.oecd.org//Index.aspx?QueryId=58204

[2] http://taxfoundation.org/blog/us-has-highest-corporate-incom...

JPKab• 10 years ago

So the solution is to contract instead of hire? That's no good. If contract workers were as ideal as employees, then everyone would do it. But they don't, for a multitude of reasons.

alephnil• 10 years ago

There is no problem firing people in Norway as long as you have a real need to reduce the workforce, or even reduce the headcount in one profession and at the same point increase in another (like in restructuring). This is easier in Norway than many other European countries, especially in Southern Europe.

What you can't do is to fire someone because you don't like them or fire someone while you at the same time is hiring for positions the individuals you are firing are qualified for.

While what you say about contractors are only partially right. If the contractors are hired as individuals, they can legally claim a permanent position after working there for three years. If they on the other hand are engaged through a consulting company or similar, that will not be the case, since then the contract is between two companies. If the consulting agency does not have other contracts available, they can downsize.

llamataboot• 10 years ago

Iterating quickly doesn't always have to involve treating people like a disposable resource. You can often iterate on product with the same core team.

collyw3• 10 years ago

Indeed, you will likely iterate more quickly.

kxyvr3• 10 years ago

Not really. It depends on a number of factors, which I'll try to recall and ballpark here. For reference, I've lived and done business in both countries as a small business. Though, I've very much an American perspective.

As a small business in the U.S., I'm registered as an LLC, but file for taxes as a sole-proprietor. That means that all business income is pass through and considered personal income. Though, income brackets as graduated, much of my income falls into the 25% tax bracket. Next, since I make less than the FICA tax ceiling of $118,500, my entire income is subject to FICA (payroll) tax, so I pay an additional 15.3%. If you work for someone else, you pay half that, but that's the joy of being self employed. After that, my state income tax rate is 4.9%. Yes, it's graduated, but not by much. Finally, I have a state gross-receipts tax of 7%, but I typically offload that onto my customers. Adding that all together, I pay 45.2% of my business income on tax, which is everything minus business expenses. If I count the gross receipts tax, this would be 52.2%. Also, since I'm self-employed, I have to pay for my own health insurance. Let's just say that the health care market place isn't all that we hoped. I did receive a discount this year, but I had been paying $500/month or $6000 a year. Yes, there is cheaper health insurance, but as someone who has had complicated dealings with hospitals in the past, I refuse to use an HMO and will always use a PPO. Do note, health insurance premiums are not tax deductible and until we meet our yearly deductible, we pay 100% of the expenses. Generally, I budget $8000/year for health insurance premiums and expenses.

In Norway, business structures are slightly different, but the closest thing to a sole-propietorship is an enkeltpersonforetak. I don't believe you get quite the same benefit as an LLC sole-propietorship in the U.S., but they're similar for tax purposes because its also considered a pass-through entity. Now, I'm not completely up to date on the current tax situation. Looking at my current tax card, it says that I would pay 47%, but I don't currently live there and my taxes were messed up enough where I required an accountant. When I was living there, my tax rate was somewhere between 34-36%. However, that included a few percent tax discount because I was a skilled, technical worker who just moved to Norway and was in my first two years of work. Next, I'm required to pay VAT on my contracts, which is 15% of the total. However, like gross receipts tax, I pass this on to my customers. Like the U.S., business expenses are deducted off the total.

Now, certainly, I'm more familiar with American taxes. However, in the last year, concretely, my American tax rate was 45.2% and my Norwegian tax rate was 47%. That's pretty much a wash. However, in Norway, I can access their health system, which saves me $6000/year in premiums and, I'll estimate $1800 in other medical expenses. It depends on the exchange, but I recall paying 200NOK for a doctors visit, which is is about $30. Now, certainly, cost of living in Norway is higher than where I live now. It is lower than living in many major cities. I just checked finn.no and a decent one bedroom runs about 8500NOK, which is a little over $1000/month.

As far as getting access to money, I don't know the investor scene, but I do know something about the grant scene. In Norway, Innovation Norway is supposed to give out good grants with few strings attached. In terms of strings, my impression is that it compared to the SBIR system in the U.S. Though, dear god please, check the details.

Look, the biggest thing about doing business in Norway is that although its western, living and doing business in Norway is very different than the U.S. Until you get a handle on the nuances of janteloven and learn to speak fluent Norwegian, things are tough. You're also living in a small environment, which has advantages and draw backs. However, candidly, Norway is very isolated compared to the U.S. That being said, I do not believe that Norway has a hostile environment to business. To the contrary, if you're making less than $200k/year I contend that it may be cheaper to live in Norway when factoring in taxes and health care. If you're making more than that, then the equation probably shifts with how money can be funneled through an S-corp or C-corp and dividends in the U.S. Though, Norway has its own tax structures that businesses use to shelter money.

Anyway, TLDR, doing business in Norway is fine and, in terms of taxes, not that different than the U.S. Doing business in Norway is done in the Norwegian style. It's not that hard to learn, but do not expect to just show up and operate and usual. Personally, I think it takes 1-2 years to figure out the culture and by year 3 to be fluent enough in language to really start working the system.

vkou• 10 years ago

Context: "If you work for someone else, you pay half that, but that's the joy of being self employed."

For those not aware of the intricacies of this, if you work for someone else, your employer pays half of that 15.3%. (And reduces your salary accordingly.)

In this respect, the self-employed don't pay more taxes then anyone else. The rest of us simply don't realize we are paying it.

xiaoma3• 10 years ago

How would most Norwegians look upon an American trying to learn their language and assimilate (at least on a professional and social level)?

jacquesm3• 10 years ago

Alternative title: The situation is improving, 5 start-ups from Norway

dang• 10 years ago

We were going to go with "The Norwegian Startup Scene", helpfully provided by the URL slug. (Those often contain a more neutral title, as if they feel guilty for the clickbait excesses of the headline writer). But your phrasing is more concrete, so let's try that.

doktrin3• 10 years ago

Speaking as a Norwegian living abroad, I feel like one of the most important barriers (more important even than capital) to domestic startup success is a failure-averse culture. We have a ways to go before we're on par with the US in this regard.

freekh3• 10 years ago

Same situation and same sentiment here.

mrec• 10 years ago

Where's "here"?

digi_owl4• 10 years ago

a failure-averse culture

huh?

Jommi• 10 years ago

It's a weird phenomenom in the nordics that people seem to be afraid of failure. Atleast in Finland this seems to be true from anecdotal experience.

xiaoma3• 10 years ago

Import Icelanders?

doktrin3• 10 years ago

I know this is a tongue in cheek remark, but it's not about the individuals - it's about how society at large (and importantly, potential investors) views past business failure.

danielskogly• 10 years ago

Cool to see some focus on the Norwegian startup scene !

We just delivered a new site for Oslo Innovation Week, and are currently working on the new Staaker website, who is mentioned in the article.

I'd say Flare (http://iamflare.com) and Unacast (http://unacast.com) is worth keeping an eye on as well.

reitanqild• 10 years ago

Work in a startup around here. Will try to be back to this thread a couple of times tonight if anyone has general questions. (it's 17:24 around here now.)

diyseguy• 10 years ago

What will they call it? Silicon Fjord? Silicium Dal?

bhouston• 10 years ago

Toronto last week -- so a new plce featured each week: https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/12/toronto-is-poised-to-becom...

wangchow• 10 years ago

Honestly, the "startup scene" for tech companies is everywhere. You can start a company anywhere so geography isn't wholly relevant.

PhillyPhuture• 10 years ago

TechCrunch has become the in-flight magazine of technology. How many of these marketing pieces are meaningful for anyone involved in the technology community? Moving on...

lervag• 10 years ago

Leveraging the luxury of having a small startup scene — necessarily so, the whole country only has a population of 7m

Not quite: The population is closer to 5,215,000 [0].

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

Five startups from Norway

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