Nordic startup jobs

If you're considering a new job, take some time and review available positions at the following companies. Disclosure, it's companies where I work, have invested or have friends running the companies and not a exhaustive list of all the cool places to work in the Nordics. Feel free to add links to other Nordic tech startups in the comments.

• Spotify. Music service. This is where I work. Stockholm, London and more.
  
• Videoplaza. Online video ad serving. I'm on the board. Stockholm and London.
  
• Stardoll. Online game/community. This is where I spent 4.5 years. Stockholm.
  
• This is not our name. Online consumer services, still in stealth. Good friend with founders/management. Gothenburg.
  
• Burt. Online advertising techology. Good friend with founders/management. Gothenburg.
  
• Grey Area Labs. Develops Shadow Cities location based MMORPG for iPhone. Good friend with CEO. Helsinki.
  

IPOs and company building

Bill Gurley has written a good post on the perceived (and possibly) actual value of IPOs for technology companies.

I think entrepreneurs, early employees and investors create better companies if they have the ambition to build companies that will go public as opposed to being acquired by a larger company. A focus on going public (in 5, 6, 10 years time from founding) creates the need to build a strong company (as opposed to a great product) for the long-term. I also believe it creates and reinforces a predator instead of prey mentality. And that's a very good thing.

Obviously there are opportunities that warrant building a VC-backed company around a product with a trade sale in mind, but in the online services space one should be wary of raising too much money (likely not more than a Series A) if a trade sale is the goal. A strong company that could go public would also become an acquisition target for large technology companies and it can make sense to sell rather than go public, but that should be an effect of and not reason for building a strong company.