Nordic founders are amazing with their exceptional craftsmanship, building a good team and culture, and their logical reasoning. But what I lack most about Nordic founders is ambition, conviction, and speed. Dial them up!
Ambition
I don’t know if it is our culture, the ingrained law of Jante, or the lack of risk-taking investors that makes many Nordic startups aim for too quick monetization and aim for securing the local market at the cost of world domination.
A very common topic I bring up with founders is to find what they can be one of the top three companies in the world doing. And boil that down to a metric. It is hard to win the race on revenue, but you could be the best at predicting if people have a disease, understand a sound, or enabling students to peer-learn. With a “tagline” or cause you get a direction to evaluate further product development and hires.
Naturally, the sector you have chosen can’t be too small or too nascent, so broaden the horizon and dare to be bold.
Rome wasn’t built in one day, but the dear Caesars didn’t just plan to run ancient Italy.
Conviction
Early stage investments are all about the people. And the most attractive thing for investors is someone with incredible confidence. I don’t know if it is the engineering trait of not believing in extrapolation or if it is a general distrust in belief, but conviction is a rare thing here.
I found myself being humbled at the task at building the world’s best user interface technology company with TAT, at the same time I was sure we were doing it. That conviction helped, when doing marketing, when talking to customers, and when in recruitment. We knew that we were aiming for the sky.
Of course, it is a thin line between conviction, arrogance, and madness, so be sure to be a nice person who is working hard at actually being the best.
You should know that the two most common reasons I see a good investment being turned down is either that the founder is an asshole or that they lack the conviction to make the investor feel that they will be the horse to bet on.
Speed
The third part of the puzzle is the need to be perfect. Not understanding that great is the enemy of good. Even if you are aiming to change the world, you have to ship code and get new users every week. Don’t escape by writing plans. Don’t ruin productivity by being a control freak. Make sure things get done!
Way too many startups can’t limit their first product to something useful, so instead of finding the core they add more and bloat or sit in their ivory tower polishing their diamond.
Good is the enemy of great.
So, please Nordic founders with your fantastic design and culture skills, please have greater ambition, stronger conviction, and ship more often. Aim to be number one and make sure that the world knows!