On Friday, December 8, B-Hive and Stockholm Fintech Hub signed a Memorandum of Understanding that will allow them to collaborate and cooperate through areas of mutual interest.

Fabian Vandenreydt, Executive Chairman of B-Hive, signed the MoU alongside Matthew Argent, CEO and Founder of Stockholm Fintech Hub, which states that both hubs mutually agree on the expediency of further cooperation in several areas, including a mutual exchange of trends, research and more.

Slush and Connecting with Stockholm

Collaborating with Stockholm Fintech Hub was a natural next step in our relationship with the Nordic region. Since B-Hive’s mission two years ago to Stockholm, we have been actively linking to this community. One of the ways we have connected to the Nordic region is through conferences—including Slush. Visiting this “tech conference of the year” was actually an invitation from the Flanders Investment and Trade department to make sure the Nordics are on the map of B-Hive. 

Managing Partner Jurgen Ingels was a speaker at Slush 2015 and since then, B-Hive has brought Belgian investors and corporates to Swedish companies for growth capital and smart money. With that said, there were several touchpoints and contacts in the past, which made us more than happy to return.

Our focus now was to get to know Finland, the event’s host city, more and also link to the Baltic states. The number of technology companies at Slush was amazing, with top-quality speakers and set-up. It was tech celebrated with music and DJs—a true party of entrepreneurship, inviting weirdos to step in. The visit for B-Hive was business driven, looking for more innovation and progress, as well as linking the Nordics and the Baltic states on a global level, spearheaded by our executive program manager, Ellen Thijs. 

B-Hive is very proud to become part of the community. We will continue building on this visit and set up even more international business missions to the region to get the interaction open and active in 2018. Stay tuned!

Stockholm at the Forefront

According to a Stockholm report, Sweden alone has accounted for 50 percent of the Nordic exit value—and Stockholm plays a significant role in this activity as it is an internationally recognized innovation engine and prominent technology hub that performs way beyond its size. For example, within recent years the city has produced five unicorns, or startups with a valuation exceeding $1 billion. These unicorns are Skype, Spotify, King, Mojang, and Klarna.

According to research by Atomico, Stockholm has the 5th highest number of unicorns globally and is in 2^nd place with regards to number of unicorns per capita, surpassed only by a small margin by Silicon Valley.

The first benefit of this strong collaboration is Stockholm Fintech Hub’s member Covr Security, who is planning to visit Belgium and learn more about B-Hive and its network.

This MoU will further strengthen both of the hubs’ networks, knowledge pool and innovation endeavours—we greatly look forward to working together.