How Swedish startups can run faster – and save the world

At the beginning of the 20th century, Sweden was characterised by its ingenious industries, which gave us solutions that fundamentally changed society. More than a hundred years later, we can still boast of our ingenuity. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) ranks Sweden as one of the two most innovative nations in the world. Statistics show that we have the most unicorns - companies worth a billion dollars or more - per capita.

"If Silicon Valley were a city, it would be first and Stockholm second. We have a very vibrant start-up and scale-up scene in Sweden and especially in Stockholm," says Henrik Bagewitz, Head of Marketing at RISE.

Swedish start-ups are developing innovative solutions for energy storage, creating breakthrough medicines and exploring new technologies to feed a growing world population. In short, these are companies with disruptive ideas. Some of these companies have been taken under the wing of the Sting incubator. And Sting, which has been voted the best incubator in the world, has joined forces with RISE.  

"We and RISE share a common 'why'; like us, they want to help innovation succeed and get to market faster. Both Sting and RISE work with heavy technology and deep tech. We also share a very clear focus on sustainability, particularly the planetary aspect of sustainability. We saw that by working with RISE we could strengthen our offering to our Climate Tech companies," says Karin Ruiz, Business Developer and Climate Tech Lead at Sting.

"Difficult to find the right funding tools" 

An important part of the collaboration revolves around so-called soft funding, i.e. public support and grants.  

"The Sting companies are sitting on private funds that we can use when it comes to the next stage of development. Every private krona can be converted into two development crowns with the help of the public support system. This way we can inject more capital into the companies," says Leif Lyckebäck, a business developer at RISE with a special focus on innovative start-up and scale-up companies.

According to Leif Lyckebäck, many companies make the mistake of applying for the wrong type of grant, or submit incomplete applications that do not go all the way.

"There is a lot of public funding and national funding from the Swedish Energy Agency, Vinnova and similar organisations. But it can be difficult to find the right funding instruments for your company. That is why we are available to advise the Sting companies and other companies that want to work with RISE in their development. We can ensure that the application meets the criteria, and where the companies themselves have capacity gaps, we can provide expertise and test and demonstration environments," he says.   

Bridging the gap between idea and full commercialisation 

The Sting companies working with RISE are primarily in the climate tech sector, using technology to address climate challenges, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to the green transition. Two examples are Enerpoly, which develops rechargeable zinc-ion batteries for energy storage, and CelluXtreme, which has developed a new bio-based composite material.

"In addition to providing answers to major societal challenges, this type of company has the potential to create a large share of Sweden's jobs and export earnings. RISE acts as a bridge between the idea and full commercialisation, where we reduce the risk and shorten the time to market. It's all about facilitating the development process," says Henrik Bagewitz.  

Over the past two years, he and Leif Lyckebäck have had around 600 meetings with more than 200 companies. This has resulted in almost SEK 200 million in funding for about 50 of the companies. About the same number have used RISE's test and demonstration environments and experts.  

"Many of our companies need to test completely new materials, while others want to take their product from laboratory scale to the next level. Having access to RISE's infrastructure is very valuable," says Karin Ruiz.  

Building infrastructure for small and medium enterprises 

RISE's 130 or so test and demonstration facilities are constantly evolving to meet new needs.  

"We are constantly trying to improve the position of our test and demonstration infrastructure. If we take the battery sector as an example, it is a market that is exploding. In order to be relevant, we need to invest in both people and infrastructure. It would not be possible for each individual player to build up this kind of capability," says Henrik Bagewitz.

Collaboration with incubators such as Sting is crucial for getting close to innovative companies. The aim is to play a central role in the innovation system, bringing together different interests for sustainable transition and increased competitiveness - and to complement incubators that share the vision of saving the world through innovative companies.

"If the companies that have the greatest impact on climate and humanity succeed, we all succeed," says Leif Lyckebäck.