Introducing The Nordic Startup Media Network

The Nordic Startup Media project is still in its infancy, but holds immense potential in branding and promoting the Nordic startup community as a whole. Oddly enough, this project started as an idea between natural competitors covering the Nordic region.

Various media projects across the Nordics are every day trying to help promote and thus grow that Nordic startup scene. Here is a short introduction to the reasons for focusing on collaboration rather than competition.

A Media industry in crisis

#NordicTechWriters was an initiative that many of the startup media had already thought about for a while before Nordic Innovation made it possible.

“We even had plans to do it ourselves just over a year ago. However, we never came around to do it. Not until Nordic Innovation stepped in and helped us organize it,” admits Dmitri Sarle, CEO of the Finnish-based startup media, ArcticStartup.

The media industry is being disrupted and the industry is rapidly changing. Media startups are emerging with new business models and a new mind set enabling new ways of collaborating.

“The traditional industry is very heavy on competing for readers and getting the news first, but we came together to figure out ways of collaborating. The better we understand how we differentiate from each other, the more we can work together to improve the Nordic startup scene as a whole,” says Pia Ella Elmegård, co-founder of Betabits that runs four niche news media on digital entrepreneurs and startups across industries in Denmark and the Nordics – among others Nordic Startup Bits.

Love for the community killed competitiveness

Across the Nordics, there are a handful of small niche media covering the startup ecosystems in their respective countries or the region. When the representatives from these media met each other in the startup community, they realized that they were all writing out of love for the community and they would be much stronger working together.

“The idea is that we, as Nordic Media, all have the same goals – to promote the region. At ArcticStartup we never felt that we are in competition with other media, and it was great to see everyone agree. We believe in competition through collaboration and we believe that by uniting our forces, we can give anyone a run for their money,” explains Dmitri Sarle.

 

“We don’t try to get the news first – we try to get it right. Because of our shared passion for startups and creating insightful stories there is plenty of room for sharing and collaborating. We make each other better tech writers,” Pia Ella Elmegård concludes.