Sweden produces more billion-dollar tech companies per capita than any country outside Silicon Valley. Cherry Ventures general partner Sophia Bendz joined TechCrunch's Equity podcast to explain how a country of 10 million people built one of Europe's most productive startup ecosystems.
The structural reasons matter more than the mythology. Bendz points to specific policy decisions, early Spotify and Klarna network effects, and a cultural tolerance for failure that most European markets still lack. These are not soft factors. They compound over decades into a repeatable founder pipeline.
Read the full interview for Bendz's breakdown of where the next wave of Swedish startups is forming, which sectors Cherry is actively watching, and why the ecosystem's next test is whether it can scale impact beyond Stockholm.
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