Thanks for hunting us Eric!
Today, The Nordic Web is becoming a members-only community, as shunning ad-based business models increasingly becomes an attractive approach for niche tech sites and we have certainly been greatly inspired by the success and approach of @jessicalessin and @theinformation.
Despite only focusing on the Nordics, a region that has only 26 million people and comprises of just five countries, we have already signed up hundreds of paying subscribers pre-launch and we now have the next milestone of 1,000 in our sights.
We have always focused on quality over quantity and loyal readers over attracting new ones, meaning a membership model both best serves our values and our requirement to run a sustainable business, in order to keep running and growing.
A full-scale membership model will provide us with the resources to provide higher quality, deeper reporting, meaning that we can contribute even more as a useful resource. It will also help us be more accountable, by concentrating on our member’s needs rather than investors or advertisers.
I would love to answer any questions about:
- Our decision to move behind a paywall and my thoughts on why this works so well for niche media sites.
- The Nordic startup and tech scene (In 2016, there were 708 investments totalling $2.7 billion!)
Also, fun-fact, all of these companies originated in the Nordics: Spotify, King (Candy Crush), Skype, Rovio (Angry Birds) Mojang (Minecraft), Zendesk, My SQL, Klarna (and the list goes on....)
This is so much needed!
As most traditional media brands apparently "dont have time" to tell the story in depth and only focus on celeb investors, which car the entrepreneur will buy after the exit or how one will disrupt (aaaarrrr) something, it is so important that someone actually bothers about trying to dwell at the important elements of what is going on the Nordic tech scene!
Most of the companies you mention below now have their headquarters outside the Nordics. Do you think this is a problem, and if, how can we help it?
@simonsylvest Great question! I don't necessarily see this as a problem, however, I think we are seeing this less than we used to.
For example, Trustpilot have built a global company, valued at just short of $1 billion with hundreds of International employees all from Copenhagen, Denmark.
And with the investment in the region continuing to increase, there is less of a need for these companies to go elsewhere to look for capital to grow.
Zendesk, for example, would not have left Denmark for the Valley so early if they founded the company today, due to the more available capital and resource that is available now compared to then.
However, there is a big disclaimer to all of this. There are still some big improvements we need to see in the region to make it more hospitable for big tech companies. Spotify (and Klarna) have made a lot of noises in the last couple of years regarding moving out of Sweden if regulations are not looked at that make it easier to attract and nurture talent .
And with the aforementioned increase in capital, we may begin to see a multitude of Nordic companies who are looking to scale-up and are met with these same problems, potentially forcing them to move their HQ if these problems are not addressed.
And thank you for appreciating our content, we are driven by providing factual and thoughtful analysis in order to produce an accurate and genuine picture of what's happening in the Nordics, meaning click-bait and advertising would never work for us, adding further credence to the move we have made today with our subscriber model.
@sylvainmaretto Hey Sylvain, you can read the benefits of being a subscriber on our 'about' page: https://thenordicweb.com/about/ (which you don't have to pay to read) :)
Happy to answer any questions you may have about being a subscriber!
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