The Swedish Mobile Internet: A Study of Entrepreneurship during 1998-2005

This paper addresses entrepreneurship in the emerging Swedish mobile Internet industry. Entrepreneurship is defined as the creation of a new venture. The unique data set underlying this work consists of 249 ventures that were active in the mobile Internet industry during 1998-2004. The entry/exit pattern and their performance in 2000-2004 were studied along with VC involvement in this industry. On a population level, exits were surprisingly few, sales were growing and the number of employees was decreasing. Concerning profits, the population loses enormous amounts of money each year. Venture capital appears to have a rather negative impact on performance initially. However, the VC-backed ventures displayed strong performance improvements at the end of the investigated period.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: ICMB
• Authors: Carl Sandstrom, Tori Yu-wen Huang, Stefan Sanz-Velasco, Sven Lindmark
• Keywords: ICMB 2006, Mobile Internet Industry, Paper Addresses Entrepreneurship, Swedish Mobile Internet