Author Archives: Erik A, Me2062

Good evening folks,

Last week hosted several start-up meetings and events, and I though I would give a short review of each of them.

Tuesdag was the day of the Sthlm Tech Meetup, at Hilton Slussen. It was really crowded, not a chance to get a seat. The guest companies/investors this time among others included Bonnier Growth Media, a branch within the Bonnier Group relating to transform the editorial material to the new media landscape, briefly explained. Myself being a journalist since many years, working closely with especially Bonnier Magazines Group, it was sort of a nice touch to the evening. One of their main things to start is the KIT digital media platform, co-founded by a friend of mine, Robert Brännström. (Who unfortunately wasn’t present on the event…)

Other than that, there were three pitches presented, two of which included (remarkably similar) dating app services. And frankly, they both felt like less good competitors to Tinder, and not genuinely great ideas, to my mind. The third aimed to be some sort of Spotify service for images, but that also seemed to have a long way to be a worldwide success.

Thursday I attended a start-up event at familiar ground, here at KTH, where the Student Incubator (Student Inc) had a housewarming party in their new location at Lindstedtsvägen. A really nice place to mingle, have a beer and have a chat with one of the start-ups that have come out of KTH.

Oh, and the week before that, which I have forgotten to blog about, the startup event Uppstart, at the castle of Uppsala (my hometown) took place. A bit of a distance to travel, sure, but several of my friends in Uppsala University organisation Entrepreneurs Academy were present. However, not as crowded as the Tech Meetup… but maybe next time! 🙂

Right now, and this entire week, I am away on an industrial design engineering workshop/conference in Värnamo, in the southern part of Sweden. People from several schools, including KTH, Linneaus University and Jönköping University, gather for a week’s work and business cooperation. Hopefully plenty of good ideas will come out of this. Or, wait… They already have.

Therefore, you will not see me until next week. Have a good time back in Estocolmo!

Erik

I started my first own business at the age of 16, which is fairly close to the legal age of doing so. Since 2013, I’ve run a private limited company (or in swedish, Aktiebolag), and in many ways then, I could see myself as an entrepreneur. Not the world’s most extensive entrepreneur, but fairly more entrepreneurial than most of my friends. However, I feel increasingly reluctant to call myself an entrepreneur, even though I like running businesses and transforming ideas to viable futures. And there’s good reason behind this, mainly including the image that is connected to entrepreneurship.

I increasingly often from my friends hear the words ”I hate entrepreneurship”. And by the common meaning of it, I tend to agree with them. The word ”entrepreneurship”, together with ”innovation”, are word that are trending now – but they form a gated community. They come with a vocabulary that is easily noticed, you ”network” instead of make friends, you talk about ”venture capital”, ”business angels”, and a whole bunch of words that doesn’t applies to any other part of the world. And the people are predictably similar to each other in appearance. A friend of mine (who comes from the northern town of Timrå, and for the record also has his own business) put it straight when seeing the profile picture of an entrepreneurship student friend of mine on Facebook: ”He’s standing in sunglasses and backslick on the sailing boat of his father, he would get punched in the face as soon as he entered Timrå Municipality.” The verdict was harsh.

And it’s not only about appearance, I think it all comes down to whether you start a business purely for the money, or if you are genuinely interested in whatever you do within the business. The fact that half of the people I knew at the first lecture within this course quit the course after that lecture probably says the lot. It was a disaster. Confirming virtually all the stereotypes and prejudices related to entrepreneurship. I myself was on the edge of quitting as well, despite my interest in whatever could be described as entrepreneurship. I understand that the lecture of Joakim (if I remember his name correctly) was thought of as an inspirational lecture, but it worked in the diametrically opposite way. I’ve never felt so much as a part of an american presidential election, or, sometimes, a sect. When talking about ”making one million dollar by the age of 25”, or was it 10 or 100 million, I felt really, really out-of-place.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with making money, but the culture of ”entrepreneurship” needs to be more inclusive. Not only open to people with the talks and appearance of the far right-wing, talking in swedish political terms. Open to the people, like me, who would see creating businesses as a way of doing things you like to do, rather than just making money, people who see money as a tool to make good rather than the ultimate achievement. Producing a gated entrepreneurship community where these people are excluded is a drawback for society as a whole.

Erik

PS. While this entry focused more on the core looking and aura of the people involved in entrepreneurship, there is a more serious side to the problem as well, as highlighted by a Techcrunch article that recently drew my attention. Take a moment to read it through, here: Startups, A Rich Man’s Game

Howdy! Good evening!

This will be just a quick, pictureless, blog entry, to get this thing going. A lot of other things are happening right now in my life, so the blogging thing will need to be efficient to work out. Anyway, I’m going to dedicate this inaugural post to give some tips and head-ups of things worth looking at. Also, perhaps, a presentation of some sort could be adequate.

In short, I, Erik, am a 23 year old guy studying the Industrial Design Engineering Masters programme on KTH. I’ve been a journalist and illustrator (to some extent, besides the studies) since 2005, and been running my own business since 2008. In 2013 i started my second company, together with some friends, and as of today we’re just about to launch a Kickstarter campaign, independent to this course. (More on that later on.)

Anyway, I’d like to give some tips and head-ups on different things to have a look at the oncoming days. (And today, but that’s a bit late now, though…)

Earlier tonight, of interest to all you (at least remotely) into design, the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design (Svensk Form) held an evening event at Berns in Stockholm. The event was of a japanese type called PechaKucha, including a larger numer of short, 20 min, speeches. The speakers included Sara Lundkvist, designer, nominee Ung Svensk Form 2014/2015, Mathilda Tham, Professor in Design, Linnaeus University and Johan Molin, CEO Falu Rödfärg, to mention a few. There were also free beer, if that interest you more. 🙂

Also opening it’s gates today were the Swedish Furniture Fair at the Stockholm International Fairs and Congress Centre (Stockholmsmässan). The fair exhibits some great scandinavian design, which every so often is a great opportunity for start-up-business inspiration aswell, and will be open until saturday. I’ll try to swing by on friday or saturday.

On thursday, the fifth of February, the Moment fair (the labour market fair of the machine design section of KTH) is to be held in Nymble. The fair will, amongst other companies, include a stand from KTH Innovation, who act as a helping hand to many start-ups. (Also come by and say hi to me, as I will act as the company host for KTH Innovation, and thus have a limited time to attend that day’s lecture. 🙁 )

Next week, on wednesday the eleventh of February, a start-up meeting called Uppstart will be held in the castle of Uppsala (my hometown). Several of my friends (amongst others Fredrik, the chairman of Entrepreneurs Academy) will attend, and so will probably I. And why not some of you? The tickets are free of charge. The train ride, though, takes approximately one hour (one-way).

So, this became a bit longer than I expected. Duh. But nice to get things going at least. I’ll try to write the next entry shorter.

Erik