Sunday Swedish Startup News – Plotagon, Schibsted & Swedish Billionares – 10 November
Each Sunday, we bring you Swedish technology companies who’ve been written about, or mentioned by larger international press. This week, Plotagon got a ton of attention based on their deal with Stan Lee, Schibsted expanded further outside the Nordics and Americans pondered how Sweden has so many billionaires?
Type Your Own Animated Movie With This Crazy Software (Fast Company)
“We can’t pretend that Plotagon films look vastly better than a game of The Sims, but the core experience of actually using this software is incredibly impressive. It helps that screenplays, by nature, are a sort of code. They establish a scene (you know, INT. Bar – Night). They say who is around, doing what (John, a typical middle aged man, and Sara, a dragon princess, stand at the bar). Then those people talk and interact, one line and action at a time.”
Schibsted leads investment in p2p lending platform Pret d’Union
“Schibsted, the Swedish media company which owns French classified ad website Le Bon Coin (think “Craigslist for France”), announced today that it has invested €10 Million in peer-to-peer lending platform Pret d’Union in order accelerated their growth.”
Why Does Sweden Have So Many Billionaires?
“No single Swede comes close to the epic wealth of a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffett. But Stefan Persson, the chairman, main shareholder, and former longtime CEO of H&M, leads a roster of Swedish billionaires who outpace the U.S. (No. 14) on a per capita basis. In part this is just a bit of a funny coincidence—it’s a fairly small country, after all—but the fact that a famously left-wing country like Sweden can be so rich in billionaires is telling and important.”
Read the entire article here