> Stressed and unhappy employees are not going to perform well

I like the sound of that. But I wonder why aren't there more startups then?

Maybe because starting a startup itself comes with the baggage of stress and unhappiness - so people, in general, are less inclined to take it up in the first place?

I work at a startup in India and see how the founders are always busy and manage just 4-5 hrs of sleep at best and I've heard it was way worse in the beginning. So this doesn't paint a rosy picture. In fact I gave up on doing my own start up dream just because of this - I figured the stress and pressure isn't something I can handle or is worth the sacrifice for me. (By the way, my friend and colleague started the venture with two other people and it's doing "okay" - it's been just two years. PS - I don't regret it, from what I saw I knew I would not have been able to handle it; add the cash issue for almost 9 months - they literally lived on shoestring)

So if for someone (and I am not alone of course) who is from a country where work life conditions checks, rules that ensure a healthy work-life balance, or ensure work place safety[0] are non existent - and pretty much zero employee rights for all practical purposes, it would be even more unappealing to someone from a place like Norway where people take these things for granted. Now, what I am talking about is the general, I am sure there are exceptions everywhere.

[0] Yes, for e.g. pretty much every tech park building I have worked in in Bangalore if there was a fire either a lot of people would die in stampede, jumping from the windows, or actually in fire. Such safety checks were a joke 10 yrs ago and they still are.

> so people, in general, are less inclined to take it up in the first place?

Yeah, the dark side of startups is that many fail, people are laid off, funding dries out, etc. VCes swoop in and try another startup and so on. That helps grow unicorns as they say, but it also based on quite a bit of pain and uncertainty for workers.

Hum, I think there are many factors to that. Just a couple who come to my mind: -The population is way smaller than USA even if you regroup all countries of the Nordic area. It would be nice to have a number per capita which would paint a better picture. -I believe the right conditions for a tech scene to emerge were recently met in most of those countries. I see a lot of nordic fintech and fintech is a relatively recent phenomena. -I think that there were not many VC around a couple of years ago. Even though it is better now, it might not be as easy to get founding than it is in the Valley. -Regulation is way more restrictive in those countries. You can't just arrive and break what I would call the social contracts (like Uber is doing for example). - etc etc

Thanks for replying and for your perspective.

> I see a lot of nordic fintech and fintech is a relatively recent phenomena.

Yes I have seen that too. Talked to someone in a fintech startup. They were even using Erlang to do all the math, which surprised me, but it totally made sense after they explained their use case.

So perhaps maybe there is a startup culture and but maybe the focus is on slightly different market and not necessarily on the same old social / messaging / uber for X problems that are common in SV startups.

> You can't just arrive and break what I would call the social contracts (like Uber is doing for example).

Unfortunately I think at lot of the conditions to make startup appealing are predicated on breaking social contracts. The concept of a "company" > "individual" basically. A startup can hire quickly, try something, fail and lay everyone off, within a year. Or playing in the gray area like Uber with regards to its markets. "Is it a taxi, is it a limousine service, etc."