In February 2025, Lionwood.software took part in TechArena 2025 in Sweden; our Head of Business Development, Iryna Hanchevska, and head of Customer Engagement, Viktor Yezhov, personally traveled to Strawberry Arena in Stockholm to foster collaborations with our Swedish partners and deepen the already existing connections. Here’s what they have to say about the business landscape in the country.
Europe is a huge place in terms of business, and an especially enormous one in terms of business intelligence – meaning, you truly need to know the corporate culture in each country, even if you yourself are European – but it totally pays off, and our own involvement in TechStep Sweden proved all of those points!
Lionwood.software has a long history of catering to European customers (one that’s about 8 years long, in fact), but no matter how well you think you know the landscape, there’s always a country that will surprise you. Our trip to Sweden was revelatory in many ways.
In the late months of 2024, we applied to TechStep Sweden, a program developed by Open Trade Gate Sweden (OTGS) in partnership with Entrepreneurship and Export Promotion Office and IT Ukraine Association. We were, of course, thrilled to be among the select companies who were to attend, seeing as how the program aims to facilitate the exchange of new tech ideas to help the Swedish market – and we had more than a few.
What comes next is our summary of the experience, and some tips for the European software market – but first of all, we’d like to thank the hosts, as well as Anamaria Delin, Mikael Wälstedt, Regina Summer, Shaena Harrison, and Stephanie Darvill for the experience and the best insights we could possibly get from the event.
What We Love About Sweden
What is there to know about the Swedish business landscape if you’re intending to operate there? First of all, the most encouraging thing about Swedes is their openness and a certain culture of mutual support. Throughout the event, we felt we were in a friendly and productive environment.
At the same time, Swedes appear to be very serious about their local business culture and best practices, and are ready to share the insights with foreigners. Their ecosystem has a very profound identity in everything they do, and you as a partner are expected to be able to respect it. However, at TechStep, we found that people are willing to help out with understanding the peculiarities.
For example, Mikael Wällstedt, a great coach for B2B tech companies, led a session where he shared a lot of valuable tips about the local market, and how to identify if the business is ready for export. Of course, our activities at the event also incorporated an actual Swedish fika, which is a coffee break with pastries where more important exchanges happen than you could imagine, being a foreigner.
Overall, the impression is that Swedes are ready to provide a hearty portion of support to those who respect their way of doing things.
And that also includes their attitude towards innovation. Unlike many other countries, where digital evolution is often hindered not only by regulatory constraints but also by the corporate inertia, Sweden (and Nordics in general) seem to be quite enthusiastic about implementing innovative tech like AI and IoT. For example, we had a chance to meet MobilityXlab and discuss how innovative technology changes mobility world, as well as exchange ideas on how Deeptech and AI is influencing medtech and life science.
At the same time, Sweden does not accept the idea of innovating for the sake of buzzwords or trends alone: the deeply ingrained approach here is one of utilitarianism, which is very evident in the way industries are prioritized. The most talked-about ones are also those with larger social impact, like education, life sciences, and logistics. This resonates with Lionwood.software’s own values and overall mission, and was very heart-warming to observe.
Yet another important thing about Sweden’s business culture is the value they put on connections and mutually supportive relationships. At TechStep, you could meet both tech company representatives, and professionals with business and government background, including the Prime Minister of Sweden, the ex-Prime Minister of Finland, and specialists from the Ministry of Economy of Estonia.
In this context, the ideas of “wing people” – facilitators who broker connections – become very powerful. For example, Shaena Harrison, CEO of Tjena Wing Person, was in that role for us at the evening event at Epicenter, fostering an atmosphere of mutually beneficial networking.
Takeaways and Further Plans
To cut the long story short, we are planning to return to Sweden in May (so if you’re interested in meeting us there, follow our corporate LinkedIn). And we have good reasons for that.
First of all, the general impulse of aligning innovation with pragmatism is pleasantly compatible with Lionwood’s vision; we spent years applying the best practices in digital tech to the areas that have a profound social and economic impact, and that’s where we believe our expertise could be useful in Sweden. We even saw companies that worked along the same general lines as us, offering remote learning platforms similar to NIT, not to mention the thriving logistics and agritech market.
Is Sweden worth learning the nation’s business culture? Our answer is a definitive YES. As long as you are willing to learn about the needs of the users, you will find you have talented professionals along your way who can teach you the “lay of the land” because here, it’s about mutual benefit and growth. Our job is to bring expertise and the right attitude to tech innovation, which we are already doing, and anticipating to see the perfect results.
