The Nordic startup scene has quietly become one of tech’s fastest-growing hubs

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Long time no see. Yes, I really enjoy last time we met. You know, things were popping at the point and you saw Sony Copenhagen, so I'm excited to see how the things are going to flow today. Yeah, for the listeners, we met a few months ago for Enduring Tech Barbecue in Copenhagen, and it was a sunny day. It was sunny, and we got burgers, Icelandic hamburgers. And then we opened Copenhagen, so we had combo, isn't it? You know, I was expecting burger. I was like burgers are so American, but not Icelandic ones. No, they were great, they were great. Good conversation as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going to touch on some of the things I think we spoke about then. What have you been up to in the past few months? Yeah, I think when we met last time, we just announced our first round, which was like three months in building the company, so everything was pretty new and exciting. So I think the last months, which has been super deep in building and working with customers and kind of like going deep into the market, just been hit down. How have things overall in the ecosystem been? I know that you guys just had, not you guys, but like slush just happened, which is another really big tech conference in the Nordic. Did you go? First time in five, six years, I didn't go due to a family, we have family coming over, but I was watching for a far, and then all the WhatsApp groups, and they're still, you know, tremendous amount of energy and hype around the Nordics. You know, this year at slush, I think the many years, it's always big American kind of, you know, startups coming there and speaking their voice, but it's really clear to see that some of the top people now, it's more Nordic or European-based founders, which I think is extremely exciting to see as well. Yeah, what are some people saying the vibe was from there? Like any dispatches you've gotten? I think, I don't know, I usually call slush the Coachella of startups. It feels like it's more like, you know, being in the right place and the right party. I think the general vibe I'm seeing people coming back with is like, you know, EU has this moment, you know, the Nordic has this moment, so there's a tremendous amount of energy. Of course, you know, they were celebrating also, you know, lovable hitting 200,000, which is also crazy because last year, I was at the, you know, I think we were like 20 people in a room at slush, launching, you know, lovable and, you know, doing a small hackathon there, and then, you know, 12 months later, doing 20 million is, of course, creating a lot of like excitement for the opportunities in our space now ecosystem. Anton, founder of Lovable, he's one of your backers, right? Correct, yeah, correct. Yes, and I think during the conference, didn't he say that one of the reasons Lovable's been doing so well is because the company decided to stay in Europe? I think that, I think Victor, for some Thesia and Anton had a small talk at an venue here, and it was all about like, you know, people stay longer in the Nordics, you know, there's a lot about like, how do you build relationships with your employees? And of course, then you do an initial investment of finding people, and they stay longer. He's seeing something similar, but it's also clear looking from the outside that they're building their presence in the U.S., and hiring a lot of people in the U.S. as well. You know, staying with people and working with people in Nordics, this is just longer than 10 years, basically, right? So I think like, you, you hear the story from the other side of the pond, is like, oh, one year is a long time. Well, you're going to have a long time. I think, you know, I have a colleague here who's working with us and propane, who's been his previous firm for seven years, which is, you know, you know, an old-schooler, if you will, at a company. And I think that's one of the value props of hiring in the Nordics as well. Yeah, that was actually going to be somewhat my next question, in terms of for people who don't know. Can you give like a snapshot of the Nordic ecosystem, and how it's different from even other European ecosystems? Yeah, I don't know if I'm like the deep expert, but I'll give my view as a founder at least, right? So I think there's like a few vectors. We've been great at building, you know, consumer brands, you know, if you think about like Karlsburg, H&M, you know, like Volvo, you know, like all these great companies. So I think like the tech scene has been a little bit in delayed effect. But I think there's like this mindset a little bit, historically, that we had what was called a Yendelo. I don't know if you've ever heard about it. It's all like not sticking a neck out. And, you know, me going on to the world's end, I'm going to take over a specific domain, was a little bit like, you know, you know, yeah, yeah, stay cool guy, right? Because I've been in it for like 10, 15 years or more. So it's like, historically, this changed a lot. I think the newer founders, new generations, are being way more bullish and kind of like taking that kind of like ownership. And that has shown that the people are investing more in taking risk, because suddenly they could see capital gains from it. You know, you've seen sauna sell their company, like in the Nordics. Who does from there, which is kind of like an odd place, you know, building in the middle of nowhere. You know, and then of course, Stockholm has this moment. But like, historically Copenhagen has also had a good first ecosystem. You know, send this came from here. You know, a lot of people who were part of unity journey built from here. So I think there are hotpots, but I have not seen in my 15 years anything what's going on right now. I think it's like completely unique timing. Yeah, what has led to this change? I don't know if I have, like, first in my previous firm, 10 years ago, we raised one million Euro seed. And that was like on a front page of like the financial time of Denmark, you know, and there was like one or two venture capital funds. Now there's like 20 or 30 or more. And then a bunch of angels as well. So I think like, of course, capital has changed. Way more younger people took on the entrepreneurial hat. I didn't have, you know, in my mid 40s, you know, doing the entrepreneurship. When you were 25 in my age, it was like a little bit weird. It was not a standard. Now it becomes more like an aspiration for most people. So I think that drives a lot. And then I think like the risk taking in the Nordics. I don't know how people look at, you know, there are a lot of political views. They're looking at the Nordics from the US side. You know, the social state and all that stuff. But just look at transparent to all the listeners. Like I can take this risk and my kids are still getting health care and school and taking their law degree without me putting all on red from like the family side, right? So it creates a little bit of a opportunity for younger people to take a massive risk without taking like long term effect to it. So I think those are kind of like different ignition points to kind of create this like perfect goal. Opportunity like technology is one place. A lot of capital, you know, really like good stability in the social risk point of view. All of that kind of gives us, you know, kind of a perfect store moment for for the Nordics to evolve. You mentioned a little bit about why the Nordics are really good in terms of hiring. Which kind of makes me think about kind of just like people in general. And what are the cultural the values of that ecosystem that touch on like trust and like long term thinking and like that make people like really good working with each other? Or even just like the collaboration aspect of it. Like what are the values that the Nordics have that make it really good in this way? I think there's like it's like a little bit of a double-edged sort, right? So I think like in one way, you know, we respect that people need, you know, there's an extra amount of time, you know, like five weeks of vacation paid, you know, with paternity leave, like all these amazing things. And that creates a, you know, a culture where we all know the standard value we're bringing in a society. So even though I'm building this company, I'm also part of that kind of like building the society around it. But it has some defects around it. You hear in the US and somewhere else like, oh, we worked 20 hours a day to get it done. I think you see that here as well. Like I'm not saying it's not there. But there's a little bit more social stigma to it, right? And it's like, oh, you really like 20 hours a day? That's like, you know, why are you sure? You should call you boss. So there's kind of like that balance of it. But I call to the wise, we body a lot of transparency, with a lot of ownership and all these other things that you often see people talking about. I think we've lived it more as a society than ever. And I think that creates more long term tenure as well, because people feel like they're a part of, you know, the journey in a different way. Yeah, I was going to ask, what is that trend that, what was his name Harry Stevings was talking about in terms of working? Has that not? Yeah, I can't remember the. I do think it exists. Like to be honest, and I think I've reflected a lot about it. And I've had founder friends like, oh, like what's he's on about? And I think that maybe with the way, sorry, with the way he frames it can come off a little bit like Roth. But if you really think about it, you know, I'm spending 10 hours on my Sunday thinking about my business, you know, writing an email, you know, reading my LinkedIn post. And if we're doing it all, what's the expectation is as a founder, at least, is that we need to do everything we can to be able to grow this business. If that expects, you know, nine hours a day, we're doing that anyways, right? I think that's happening, right? So I think, but it's like everyone to do it and expect it. It can be tough in the Nordic to pitch that for sure. You said consumer technology was one thing, like a few years ago. Obviously, AI has become this really big thing. What are some other industries and sectors that are coming out of this moment? I can, Denmark, and if you take Denmark as an example, even that the government, you know, we invested a lot in quantum computing. I think we did one of the biggest investments from a sovereign state point of view. So I think there's a lot of interesting, deeper tech opportunities that's happening at the moment, which AI can, you know, infuse and help within that kind of sector. But if we look at it, I think the biggest success of very still kind of B2B or consumer type of AI, and we just see some trends of healthcare as well. But I think we're still in my point of view in the early stages. I still think we're trying to figure out how to utilize these tools at scale, even though we see massive companies doing 100 million to 100 million. I think we're still on a very early breaking point. But it's very interesting to see what's happening in healthcare and down to even quantum computing is seeing how we can leverage that as a region, as much as the companies as well. Yeah, that is so interesting. Why quantum? Like, what advantages does the ecosystem have in terms of being able to access such deep tech and quantum? It's not really like my full expertise of quantum, but like we bought this extremely crazy computer set up together with Nvidia and the Danish state and stuff and was funded by the Nova Nordic Fund as well, which is of course, you know, part of the kind of health tech ecosystem. And as a founder, I could actually get free compute. I can apply for free compute to train my own models within that infrastructure. That's a unique opportunity because it's not really privatized, like offer to the public if they have a proper case for it. Which could be for academia or for business development as well. So that's you kind of quite interesting ways that at least Denmark is looking at it. But again, like most of the stuff we're doing is still very much in the application layer. So I think we're again trying to figure out how to utilize this in the end of this possible way. What's also been interesting is seeing how sustainability is more baked into the culture. Then I mean, I'm just thinking about the US and kind of what we're going through at the moment. And so I definitely wanted to talk to you about the difference of the way you approach sustainability in building these companies both from like a societal level but also like on a personal level. Like what is the meaning of making a business sustainable and making sure you're giving back? If we take kind of like, you know, the actual climate point of view, I think that has been a big investment. I think that has been a kind of a different counterweight. Even then we have just had a local election like you have had in New York recently. We used to remove a lot of parking spots to have more, you know, non-cars. Now the debate was like, not too much. So there's like that side of it. The other side of it is that I think most deans, at least in terms for a deans point of view, but I think Sweden and New Egypt has a kind of similar mindset is that, you know, we want to pay our taxes back because we think it has a good impact on, you know, the next generations is because we feel very obligated to it. Even though we still want to make a big profit and, you know, you know, create a, you know, like some sort of an outcome of that in the long term. But having a kind of a mindset of like, okay, we don't need to over invest. We know to pay the highest salary. We still need to pay back to the society. We need to be really clever about it. I think that's somehow still very ingrained into the way we operate. That's so funny because it seems like not American at all. Like the no-high salary. No high salary. Nobody's like, if you, I don't know what, I haven't looked at the last numbers, but, you know, I think average income. It's quite, like if you take specific roles, you know, within STEM or whatever, and if you look at the comparison, I think we're, I don't mean only a little bit lower. We're like really, really like a lower element. And we're still paying that high tax. Then it depends on how you measure it, right? Because like, you know, my kids go to free school. My son can be a lawyer without me paying a dime, you know, from the best lawyer school in Denmark or or doctor or whatever. So it depends on how you qualify, you know, your income. That's also a big complicated debate, right? But I do think that by default, you know, it's not really the salary is equally as much as the ability to build the ability to learn, the ability to be in a right ecosystem to have that part. It's also monetary. And again, we have to have in mind, it's like most of us, our baseline is quite high. And then, you know, when you're in other countries where baseline is quite low, then you need to high income to increase your base, right? So it's kind of two different ways. And it's hard to measure that in monetary value, but that's created different perception of salary, and compensation, and stuff like that. Even though people want to make good money and drive a nice car and be in the right locations, and all that stuff that's still part of our DNA. JP Morgan supports businesses on their journeys from seed to scale. Whether you're in early days or strategizing your exit, JP Morgan has tailored tools to provide personalized guidance at every stage of growth. And with unmatched reach across industries and markets, JP Morgan can help founders scale with confidence. Find out how JP Morgan helps founders at jpmorgan.com/growwithoutlimits. It's also really interesting kind of of having that robust social safety net that lets you take all of these risks. Did the government, I mean, sure the government didn't like set out to kind of create these, or you've always kind of had these safety nets. So it's not like it was like, oh yeah, this is going to help people become founders and entrepreneurs and start up people better. So we, again, I'm not a political historian, but most of the stuff we have has been built by social Democrats since the '60s and '70s. And I think it was actually more driven to the way of having more equality across the board, more average pay. And I don't think anyone's set there at this point and be like, oh, okay, this will totally fund the next level of entrepreneurship. I don't think that's how it emerged somehow. I think it can be as an outcome of it. But of course, there are other side effects of getting like, how do we pay back and capital gains? How do you, can you give equity? All these things has over the last few years been a bigger debate. How do we figure that out to make it a track to for everyone to participate? But I don't think there was like an intention. Okay, hey, if we give free school for everything, that means everyone can build a business. I don't think that's not how they thought about it because they probably want more people to work for the government at this point than they want for the private sector. But they created a little bit of an interesting dynamics of that. So I think even our socialism now, I would call it a kind of like a social capitalism if that's even a term, but like there's some level of it for sure. Yeah, I know I was thinking I was like, that's kind of funny having all these social measures that help with like capitalist ideas actually. So where is the government right now in terms of making the environment even friendlier to startups? Because I know the EU is thinking about it as a whole since it's become such a thing now. But how are like the governments in your region thinking about how to make the environment more friendly to startups? I think Sweden is now, again, this is not my, you know, the where I'm all expertise in every corner of it. But Sweden has some more benefits, but they have some other issues with their economy. Like if you look at Sweden in all way, their economy is not doing as great as the Danish economy is doing. So we're, you know, we have the upper hand, if you will. You know, we have a social control government, but a little bit of a mid sector of it. They have some missions to figure out how to leverage this. This is one element to Copenhagen had a vote. We're about almost a million people. I think 20% of those were actually non-dains who were voting, which is quite interesting. So it means like a huge population of people who have expats who've moved to Denmark either for work, or, you know, could also be reproducing that sense. But it just means that we need to find the ecosystem to figure out how we leverage that and kind of build the top of that. So that getting talent here is also important. That has been a part of the big debate. Then there's been more debates about like, how much should a pan-capital gains? Is that unfair versus me making a million versus not personally, not making a million? How do you distribute wealth? That's still a debate happening. But again, like I'm speaking from my own point of view, it's like, it took me a week and a half to create my company. It took me, we can have to get a bank account. So like creating a company and getting funds is not necessarily a problem. I think if you're in a regulatory space, like healthcare, defense, whatever, there are EU regulations. But if you're building basic B2B software, you just need to know your GDPR and a few other things, then you're good to go, right? I don't think it's that complicated. And it's supposed to be framed. Like equity, it's a big problem in Denmark. Like there are some ways we can, we need to evolve on the policy side. But I think we're in a really good trajectory in general. And then we have the sovereign funds. Like half of our funding round was the Danish sovereign fund. And they actually do funds of funds. So you find some of the top funds in Europe have capital from the Danish government through Eiffel and through our sovereign fund. And I think that's also driving a push from the other end of it with capital in a different way. My colleague Becca was at slush this year. And she got this quote, and I want to see if you agree with it. And it was someone saying that kind of the ecosystem, the Europe ecosystem is like 10 years behind the US. But things are moving fast and things are going mainstream. Do you agree that it's 10 years behind? I think in some levels, it's 10 years behind. But I think the speed and acceleration of, if you kind of look from A to B type of movement, we're moving tremendously lot faster. And I think there are some older ways in the US kind of like startup ecosystem, which has more like, you know, I raise a lot of capital and higher valuation. It's just like buying office and like, you know, all these like classical, you know, Silicon Valley HBO shows that we all have like, you know, looked at and seen over the years. I think that is potentially slowing them down. And we can be a little bit more clever on how we leverage that. And I think we know we tend to help a lot locally. So I think in those sense, we are behind. But I think the speed of acceleration we have now is a lot faster. Maybe not capital wise, you know, but still I think there's a lot of stuff going out. If you look at Europe, you know, a lot of old 11 labs. It's easier. Like there's like a bunch of great companies coming out from here and they're the best in the market. And they're not in the US, right? What has been the most interesting difference or change you've noticed in building today versus when you first entered the ecosystem like 15 years ago? Yeah, I think I think coming a little bit back to what we're building ourselves is like, historically, you read, you know, lean startups and trying to figure out if there was a problem and stuff. And then you then you invest in building because we're so expensive. And now, you know, you and I can come up with a great idea in this show and put it into loveable and build an app and deploy it, right? But that doesn't mean necessarily that you can retain and build a customer base in the same way. It just means you can put it into market fast. So I think what we're trying to do more in propane is like, how do we kind of flip the script? It'll be like, how do we accelerate learning about your customer as fast as you can actually prompt and code new products? So I think there's kind of like been a weird kind of moment where like, I'm sorry for all the people have to take it back. There's a lot of stuff coming out that shouldn't have maybe come out because people could just do it, right? It's just like, you know, great. Let's build this, you know, company. And I think that's been interesting to see. So I think there's a lot of people who are going to fail. So I think a new interesting mode could be like, and this is where we of course want to come in. It's like, how do we leverage the new mode? Is it to know your customer as fast as your, you know, as your competitor or faster than your competitor? And kind of figure out how do we leverage that to build better products, a bit of messaging or figure out how we retain and grow the customer. And I think that's historically been like less of an investment problem because just getting to market with a product was the milestone. Now everyone can. So it's kind of like a weird kind of pendulum swing of like, oh, now everyone can like, how does that look like in the future? And I think that's interesting to see differently from when I built 15 years ago, which is like, let's get a million euros and kind of figure out if it could build the product. And now you can actually build something in, you know, in a short period of time and get it out there. But I think that's, that's what's changed the most. And the AI space is especially interesting because I mean, a lot of people are pushing out like a lot of just random, random stuff. But at the same time, they're saying a lot of people have to kind of fail in this space, right? Because they have to see who the winners are going to be. Yeah, I think everything like that has like an interesting, you know, sinus curve. I wasn't felt can I owe, which was like our biggest competitor at this point was sprouts social, who's sweet, sprinkler, whatever, you know. And there were like a whole swarm of these like tools dealing with social media. And the benefit of what Falcon does is like we put all of them into one box. So we took like all the the market and put into one. I think we're going to see more of these like we used to call them one trick ponies. So kind of like a range of one trick ponies doing something great for copy or something great for images. I think in a year or so, we're going to see someone who just does like content 360. And you just have to go to one place and you ride your copy, do your videos, do everything. I think you're going to see that again and then at some point it's going to collapse out again. So just kind of be like open up collapse, open up collapse. And I think we're going to see that in the next year or so for sure in different domains. I feel like I have to ask are we in an AI bubble? I didn't think I don't know. I think there is like tons of problem we haven't solved yet. And maybe AI could so I think like we have this idea and like I think you and I in a bubble, right? Like you're reading about it every day. You know, my dad is not. My dad is like still figures. I think we even have that conversation. And I think about our parents is like, they don't even know what this is. Like for them, it's just so new, right? And suddenly could it help him with his illness in some way and like stuff. So I think there's like tons of opportunities which haven't been explored because it was not possible. It was too expensive to do. So I think I think there's going to be a bubble for some. I think some people are putting money into bad stuff and that's just the risk of venture capital to be honest. Yeah, do investors up there? There's always that stereotype that investors up there don't just like throw money like American investors. Is that true in the Nordic ecosystem? I think there's plenty of great funds who I don't like to term throw money but take bits. I think that's a better way to frame it. I think you know, you have really like if you cannot go to the grassroots level, there's a bunch of great angels. We also have great early stage funds like a Nordic web ventures or the new reception fund which were both super early, in loveable, right? So all that before it was really a thing. There is a bunch of people just taking those bets and that is needed. But they also know the risk of it, like that is the game of it. I think I'm more worried about this like massive, you know, money dumps just goes down to the next one into the next one, right? So just like Nvidia in the end and then someone else like it's just like it's quite funny to see how some of these deals which is just, you know, money being floating around. But I think is that different from how it was in the dot com or even, you know, post that? I don't know. I think the the verdict is out in a few years and I think some are going to win and some are going to lose and I think that's just the market of technology. I think that's, you know, we all use the dry forts in Europe and now we don't, you know, now we all drive kias, right? So, so there's a reason for that at some point. I feel like my last question is going to be, I guess it's kind of basic, but just what is one thing you're excited for in the next maybe year or two years, year to half? What is one thing you're excited for regarding technology, regarding the Nordic ecosystem, regarding all the potential that is flowing? Okay, let's just take like from the Nordic ecosystem, I think what I'm excited about is to see a lot of young and I say young because I feel old in that sense, but like, you know, like 18, 20 year olds just taking huge bets on stuff they don't necessarily understand yet, but they think they can see potentials like I'm a jury of a hackathon next weekend. I'm just super excited to see what these, you know, kids are coming up in different ways. I think that's like one vector and then I hope and see, I hope that some of these get funded, you know, I think angels and everyone else needs to really pull up to the plate and start funding these things. Technology wise, I'm super excited to see where this whole agent space goes because I think there's like different opinions and different movements and I actually think I have one interesting prediction is that I'm very excited for this whole like MCP stuff, but at the same time, I find it a little bit of a single player mode kind of design. Does it make sense when I say that? It's like, you can go do stuff, but like, we're actually a team in most cases. So like, how do we leverage knowledge and intelligence across multiple people? And traffic really skills not so long ago. That's great. So I can share my skill with you. That's, you know, that's a way of you not prompting to deep things, but I think some of the traditional software UI could come back a little bit and not be just all about writing text in a box or prompting things. So I think I'm excited to see where that goes, even though under the hood, we're still kind of like an agent land that can think about it, you know, how to get to the results that you're requesting to it. And we're just about out of time. Where can our listeners connect with you or your work? LinkedIn, Dennis Greenleaver, I'm the only out of four people in the world with that last name. So that's my wife and my two kids. So I'm super difficult, not difficult to find. I think that's where I speak my voice the most. Other than that, I, I, I love to share my opinion. And then of course, you should check out my company, a propane. And we're so excited about what we're building in the future. Yes. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I hope you make it to slush next year. Not, I hope to see you again soon. There's going to be another tech conference. For sure. I'll go state side soon. And then we can, we can, we can see what opportunities bring there for sure. And I thank you so much for having me. It was a really interesting conversation. Thanks for coming on.