Daily Archives: September 23, 2016

Sweden has a history whit many successful entrepreneurs. We have many different companies in different segments which are leaders on the market. Sweden is most known for IKEA, the company that changed the way of selling and designing furniture’s. We have Volvo (yes, I know, owners are from china nowadays), leaders of safety and comfort and claims to be releasing the first self-driving car for costumers in 2017. But the sector with probably the most successfully companies is the clothes sector there probably HM is the biggest. Founded in 1947 in Västerås and have today circa 4000 stores and over 148 000 employees.  HM also owns Cheap Monday and a couple other brands that were started of Swedish entrepreneurs.

Two other successful cloth companies are WESC an Odd Molly.  WESC started in 1999 by Greger Hagelin, and has today stores all over the world and had a big impact on the fashion industry. Odd Molly, started in 2002 by Per Holknekt and is today selling clothes in over 30 countries. The list of all the prices Per won for best entrepreneurship is long.

So why am I bringing up those two guys? What does they have in common more than the clothing companies and being successful in entrepreneurship?  The both grow up during the 70’s when skateboarding came to Sweden, both have been really good at skateboarding. Per was professional skateboarder between 1980-1985 and lived together with Greger in California.
Most went well for most people that started skateboarding in the 1970s and many of them became successful in entrepreneurship.

So why is that? There is probably a hundred answers to this, they are smart, have a hug network, know the market etc etc but my explanation is that skateboarding is (at least for me) one of the hardest things you can do. You need to be fully dedicated of what you do and rise every time you fall. I never spent so much time, on anything, and got so small results. And so I think a startup is too, it going to be hard in the beginning and it’s probably not going be a smooth ride. So when Serdar tells you not to “continue working with a dog that will not hunts”, don’t listen to him, make sure that dog will become the best hunter instead.

Are you interested in those guys and Swedish skateboard and entrepreneurship history I recommend you to see the documentary “Hooked for life” by Staffan Hildebrand.

This blog post came about after an interesting lunch with Oskar Malm Wiklund, an entrepreneur highly involved in the start-up scene in Stockholm.

Oskar Malm Wiklund has been into entrepreneurship since he runned a business in high school, part of a course named “young business”. When he moved to Stockholm he got involved in “Start-up Grind”, a community arranging events for entrepreneurs. He realized that the start-up scene in Stockholm was huge with infinite with possibilities, but that it was hard for a stranger to find out about the range. The idea about the Start-up guide took shape.

The start-up guide is a book gathering answers to the questions where, what, how, whom that entrepreneurs in Stockholm face. Today you can find Start-up Guide for Stockholm, Copenhagen, Aarhus, Berlin or Lisbon – but they are planning to expand the concept to even more cities around the world.

Thanks to cooperation with incubators and start-up communities the book is sold at a lot of places to Stockholm. The biggest challenge Oskar and the Start-up Guide face today is how to reach people not yet introduced to the start-up scene – particularly students that are thinking of starting a business but haven’t taken the step yet. This is where he needed my help. As the information flow to student are quit intense, I emphasized that it is crucial whether you succeed in making an impression. The tip I gave him was to choose a time when the students are new, not yet replete of information. Therefor I suggested that they should try to get involved during the freshmen weeks, as part of some kind of challenge or competition where the freshmen need to run a one-day business. They could “sponsor” by participating as mentors, and give away copies of the book as price. This would make the students remember them and, most important, know where to turn to if they get an idea later during their studies.

I truly hope, and do believe, that the lunch was helpful for Oskar in their continued work with marketing their book. I also wish them good luck in the future, as I think that the book is a truly contribute to the Start-up Scene!

Want your own copy of the book? Find it on their webpage: http://startupguide.world/index.php

Or maybe you want to do a little sneak peek to know what you get? I’ll bring my copy to the next class. 🙂