Co-founder Andreas Grape talks about the journey to launching Nordic Angels, the largest investor network in the Nordics, with a mission to rebuild trust in social platforms and foster cross-border collaboration by connecting business professionals and start-ups. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
You're listening to Eureka on Monocle Radio.
Brought to you by the team behind the entrepreneurs the show, all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business.
I'm Tom Edwards and I'm pleased to say I'm joined on the show this week by none other than Monocle's editor, Josh Fennett.
Welcome to the show, Josh.
I feel like the billing at the beginning of the show doesn't add up to the guest you got.
Oh well, listen, I'm very confident that we've got a real treat in store because you and our illustrious colleague Andrew Tuck were recently in Sweden as I understand it, Josh, and that's what you're here to tell us about.
You're at an event hosted by the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce.
Indeed.
Tell us a little bit, what were you and Andrew doing there and what did you find out whilst you were there?
Well, we had a great trip.
This was late August and it was the last flush of summer.
The event was organized for 325 business leaders, 20 industry leading speakers from across the Nordics and two rather haphazard journalists who turned up to cover it.
So Andrew did a brilliant panel discussion.
But throughout the day we heard from the CEO of sas, the Scandinavian airline, we heard from the Prime Minister of Sweden and there were lots of interesting layered stories about the opportunities of doing business across the Nordics, why a bit of closer integration between those countries matters and also some of the challenges ahead.
We heard about the problem with illness related leave in Norway.
We heard about the issues of corporate neutrality.
Can a company today ever be totally neutral when you know the countries that host it and its products are abroad?
So we're trying to bring to life some of those stories across the radio schedule and across the magazine.
And that brings us to the gentleman who we're going to hear from today.
Well yeah, and I wanted to get you to sort of introduce the interview we're about to hear on this week's program, Josh, because you heard from a co founder and a CEO of, I don't know, a platform that does something really interesting I guess in the business funding in the startup sort of ecosystem space.