Author Archives: Emiliabjornfot

Today I attended the UK Startup Conference 2022 along with Svea Fredriksson. The event was held via zoom, therefore we decided to attend together to enable a discussion in order to gain a deeper understanding.

The funding has increased for startups and there are million startups in the UK at the moment. They started off by talking a bit about why the UK is such a good place for startups. According to the speakers the UK offers a benign environment that supports startups with good networks that give support to startups. They have a good regulating framework especially around data and so on, which guide the startups. It is also very easy to open bank accounts. I wanted to compare this to Sweden where it is apparently (according to Serdar) quite hard for foreigners to open bank accounts. The process of actually registering a business on the other hand is, according to Drivhuset, relatively simple.  

Lastly it is also a very ”mixed” or diverse country where many different perspectives meet and mix. This is a very important point, as different perspectives, I belive, can find different hidden possibilities.

When asked about interesting sectors to look out for is fintech as well as lawtech. They referred to the excellent and world-class Universities which help strengthen that platform in the UK. This is really interesting, showing how the whole society acts as the basis for how the startup market will look like and how important it is to not only work with investment opportunities, but also have a well functioning society.

Next, Valeria Vahorovska talked a bit about one of the challenges about startups. She talked about priorities and balancing the group. This I believe resonates very well with the challenges we are facing in class. Our group works very well, but everyone has quite a big workload and trying to prioritize can always be difficult. 

Some other founders also talked about scalability. They talk about very early understanding the customers in order to attain the reach they want through the optimal value proposition. They also talked about always iterating and always improving. My main takeaways from this is that you are never done, you constantly have to convince your customers 

All in all, the conference was very insightful and there were an abundance of speakers who all shared their views. I’m happy I attended!

The 12th of april was an active day. For one, I attended a zoom-event, hosted by Drivhuset, about how to start a business. The speaker gave some “soft” tips on how to start your business, like how to find a direction, how to come up with an ide etc. But there were also a lot of practical tips on how to actually register at Skatteverket or how to actually externalize your passion or idea. I found the early stages most interesting and will be going through some of what I learned during this event. 

The event was very linear and brought the listener along for the journey of starting a business and it started with the idea. One thing that was mentioned and underlined was effectuation and starting with what you have – a concept we have previously studied. The concept of the opportunity map was explained and they also pressed that you have to be agile and not expect it to go smoth and as expected – things change. 

The steps that followed were finding a target group, learning from them and loop! They discussed the importance of connecting and receiving feedback from target groups very early so as to not waste time and money on developing an idea that no one wants nor needs. The next step was prototyping and again, this has to be done early in order to avoid extra costs. They also talked about using a lean map.

Then they went into specifics on registering and taxes etc. 

My take away from this event was that I had already heard this from my teachers and I already knew this. I did however feel that this event put it in a more tangible way whereas in lectures I haven’t felt that this is information I may use myself rather than something that others have used. 

Right after this zoom-event, I went to Accigos office in Stockholm with I-sektionen. They had organized an interesting night where we got to learn more about Accigo and mingle with the cofounder and some coworkers. I found it interesting listening to the cofounder briefly talk about his journey wanting to be a CEO but not really wanting to take a huge risk and start something completely new. Accigo was founded when the sister company Centigo already existed. The founder also talked a bit about how he stepped back as vice CEO, wanting to eradicate the traditional organizational structure of having a distinct management team and giving more responsibility to the employees. 

It was nice listening to Drivhuset and learning tips on how to start your own business and then hearing someone talk about their actual journey.