Headline: Slightly insane Finn decides to drive all over the Nordic countries looking for startups.
“The Travelling Salesman” aka Kristoffer Lawson, Co-Founder of Scred.com, is setting out on expedition through every single Nordic city with a computer science department and a startup scene. So that’ll be over 30 cities, over 10000 km of continuous driving, through 5 countries in temperatures as low as -30C and in almost total darkness much of the time. It’s his replacement for a holiday, he says.
“Things will go wrong, but my mission is clear: to learn about the weird, wonderful, crazy and ambitious people setting up companies and working on new technologies in such a unique area. Along the way I hope to discover tales of success and failure, to inspire and to learn, and to locate the world’s most northernly tech startup,” he says.
I hate to tell him that certain northern European countries like Finland and Estonia actually invented technologies like Dopplr and Skype so you didn’t have to get in a car to find people – but that might spoil his fun.
The tour will begin from Helsinki in late October, at the great digital art festival and demo party, The Alternative Party (and also appearing at the prior Slush Helsinki event), and continue onwards to Lappeenranta, Jyväskylä, Kuopio, Oulu, Tromsø etc.
Good luck Kristoffer! You can follow his adventures here.
