Stockholm start-ups’ leadership in sustainable business
Stockholm is one of the leading cities for start-ups in the sustainability space. While the definition of sustainability can be vague, sustainable businesses generally focus on having a minimal negative impact and/or a positive impact on people, planet, and profits. According to UN World Commission on Environment and Development: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Because I have lived for 7 years in both New York and San Francisco, I can compare Stockholm’s start-up ecosystem to both of these major players. Stockholm proudly claims the world title for the “most unicorns per capita” although its population (2.2M) is relatively small compared to NYC (8.55M) and the SF Bay Area (7.15M.) While Spotify, Skype, and Klarna have become global companies with household names, many more Stockholm start-ups founded and market-tested in Sweden have also scaled and achieved global impact.
STHLM TECH FEST has become a staple of the Stockholm tech scene. Founded by Tyler Crowley, a former business partner of Bay Area VC Jason Calacanis, this annual conference draws over 4,500 people for 3 days of conference, job fair, and many side events scattered throughout Stockholm.
This year, Tyler added a hackathon which turned out to be Europe’s largest female hackathon with over 800 participants. Stockholm’s mayor, Anna König Jerlmyr, kicked off the event, which was at the start of conference and corporations like Nordea Bank, McKinsey Digital, and Microsoft sponsored various challenges. The winner of the contest was an app called “Lucy,” which collects and curates information on women’s sexual health subjects like post-menopausal sex, sex during pregnancy, and even reviews of sex toys.
During the conference, Andre Heinz, a Venture Partner at Obvious Ventures, and I co-moderated a panel discussion on “The Future of Impact and Energy.” Here’s some background on the panel’s speakers and companies:
• Tomer Shalit, CEO ClimateView, spoke about his company’s data driven API for governments to measure their climate impact.
• Funda Sezgi, COO Norrsken Foundation, which was founded by one of Klarna’s founders has the mission to invest in impact startups and also operates a co-working space in downtown Stockholm for 350 impact entrepreneurs. She spoke about the opening of their new Kigali project and their upcoming Impact Week.
• Peter Carlsson, CEO Northvolt, an ex-Tesla engineer who just raised over US$1B to create a Gigafactory in Sweden to produce rechargeable electric batteries spoke about the need for Sweden to develop the capabilities and skill sets that reside largely in Asia today, which is the current market leader in electric battery manufacturing.
• Anders Forslund, CEO Heart Aerospace, recently completed the Y Combinator program, spoke about building the next generation of commercial electric airplanes, which could be as soon as 2025.
• Giovanni Fili, CEO Exeger, one of the first Swedish companies to receive direct investment by Softbank, explained the technology his company uses to create “artificial photosynthesis” from natural light sources to power consumer electronics via the materials that case them.
• Inna Braverman, CEO Ecowave, whose technology harnesses wave power to generate electricity and raised 122M SEK (US$12.8M) on First North, a Nasdaq-owned exchange for Nordic countries, discussed why she moved her company from Israel to Sweden.
The following week I attended Norrsken’s Impact Week Demo Day where another 24 companies pitched their start-ups in 3 minutes before a group of 75+ investors from the Nordics, Europe, and the US. The investors judged which company would “make the most impact in the next 5 years.” The winner was Re:newcell, which has developed a technology to repurpose cotton and viscose from old clothing into a Circulose pulp, which can be used to make new clothes. H&M took a minority stake in Re:newcell two years ago as a step towards making the fashion industry more sustainable.
Another audience choice winner was Pantapå, a consumer app that incentivizes recycling by scanning a bar code, which deposits points into your smartphone, whose monetary value can be donated to a charity or deposited into your bank account. Over 70% Swedish households already use this app and a 1,000 households become new users each day. They are working on a pilot with Mondelez in the US to create the first generation of trashless consumers.
From Stockholm, I flew back to the US coincidentally during the UN Climate Conference in New York where the Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg, led her Climate March. Interviewed by Trevor Noah on The Daily Show, “Do you feel any difference in the conversations in Sweden and America around the topic of climate change?” Greta said “Yes, because here [America] it feels like it [climate change] is being discussed as to whether you believe in or not believe in it and in Sweden, where I come from, it’s a fact.”
No surprise Greta is from Sweden from what I have experienced of the culture, which is very forward thinking about issues of climate change and sustainability. I have been impressed by the start-ups I’ve met in Stockholm and their focus on not just growing their revenues, but also on making a positive impact to the environment and society.
