Editor's note: Accel Partners' Sonali De Rycker and Kevin Comolli are publishing a series of blog posts this week to highlight the 'Nordic way' of building scale-ups. We liked it, so we're republishing the interviews on tech.eu.
First up: Supercell founder Ilkka Paananen
Brave, bold, or even brash – founders need to be pretty fearless, but the line between audacity and arrogance is a thin one. We think there’s another way to do things, and we’ve actually seen it play out time and time again in the Nordics. The region is the source of some of the best and biggest tech businesses in Europe – its share of multi-billion-dollar exits is the highest in the world, relative to GDP. What has been distinctive is the remarkable way they lead their teams, and we’ve had conversations with three of our founders to try and lift the lid on this very Nordic way of building billion-dollar tech businesses. Our first is with Ilkka Paananen of Supercell.