In our brief survey in the Swedish Startup market, we observed that:
- The market is crowded with Startup innovation and business park centers or institutions. Most of them focus on local Startups funding, incubators, soft services, and collaboration with mainly local institutions.
- Most of them focus on a network of membership and local business park services
- Funding is either government, academic, or private sector, and mostly involving small funding of SEK100K-2M range, or crowdfunding portals for micro-funding.
- The sponsorship and funding process is usually slow, competitive, and bureaucratic in nature. Many projects are left unsponsored or poorly funded.
Support and promotion institution for Startups are a lot in Sweden. This is a
reflection to the market size and the opportunities that both market offer.
- Sweden tops Innovation Union Scoreboard, an index published by the European Commission.
- Sweden is home to Europe’s largest tech companies, Stockholm is second only to Silicon Valley
- Between 2000 and 2014, Sweden produced 263 exits valued at $23.7 billion.
- According to Tech.eu, there were 120 exits of Swedish companies in 2017, up from 55 in 2016. That 2017 figure topped Germany’s 112, the U.K.’s 77, and France’s 44.
- The UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi, Jordan, and Egypt have developed strong innovation institutions for startups, the collaboration opportunities exists for both governments and private institutions.
- For instance, The National Fund for SME Development and Fikra Program in Kuwait ($15 B. fund) offer excellent opportunity for collaboration for co-funding projects.
- Also promising is a collaboration program with Qatar Development Bank (QDB), Qatar Business Innovation Centre (QBIC), In5 innovation center in UAE, Oasis500 business accelerator in Jordan, MEVP, ILA group, and many more.