This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on February 19th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.
Nothing but cheerleading and not a critical word uttered. The Swedish tech industry has been struck by the disease of “LinkedInism.” The healthy criticism — and what people actually think — is found in private emails and chat groups.
Rocket emojis, cheers, and paragraphs with far too many blank lines. On LinkedIn, unbridled enthusiasm reigns. Banal observations are packaged as major industry insights.
From being a collection of CVs, LinkedIn has come to be a somewhat unexpected gathering place for the Swedish tech industry. The tone is encouraging: let’s go! Or at least that is how it sounds in public.
When I read private emails and chat groups involving participants from the tech industry, criticism and frustration are often aired.
People talk about entrepreneurs who exaggerate — or even lie. Investors who boast about holdings they barely had anything to do with. But few think it is worth the risk of saying the same things publicly. It resembles the Emperor’s New Clothes more than Silicon Valley: the flaws are visible, but nobody wants to say so out loud.
At last week’s Techarena, people spoke about the area around San Francisco and what is called a “pay it forward” culture. Several on stage stated that Sweden has learned from this — helping others in the ecosystem without immediately getting anything in return. A kind of entrepreneurial karma, if you will. The idea is that when money, insights, and contacts flow between people, the value increases for everyone involved.
There is something in this. Having helpful people around you makes it easier when you want to start new companies. Having newly wealthy friends and acquaintances is an advantage when you need your first round of financing.
But it seems a misunderstanding has also emerged here. This rose-tinted picture of Silicon Valley — or Stockholm for that matter — is not complete. Just because people help each other with introductions and angel investments does not mean the ecosystem benefits most from an absence of criticism. Pointing out risks and weaknesses is something that strengthens, not undermines.
The Swedish tech industry appears to have been struck by the disease of “LinkedInism” — an excessively positive and uncritical stance. Behind the scenes things sound partly different. But the social risk of writing this for public consumption is too great, according to those I have spoken with. And what you might gain from it is far too little.
We are not talking about publishing online hate speech or plain complaining here. It is possible to maintain healthy scepticism about the exaggerations and “fake it until you make it” attitudes within startup culture without ending up there.
If you believe that nothing but positive thinking is the decisive factor in Silicon Valley, you need look no further than a book by its high priest — PayPal founder Peter Thiel. It was not cheering and helpfulness that shaped the companies he was involved in building — Facebook, for example, where he was among the first investors.
In his book “Zero to One,” Thiel describes how a company should try to circumvent all possibility of competition and establish its own monopoly. Only then is profitability good enough to focus on things other than fighting over shrinking margins — which, according to Thiel, is the inevitable outcome of competition.
One example he cites is Google — now judged to be precisely that: a monopoly. Google can afford to dabble in other things precisely because its monopoly on the search advertising market ensures the money keeps rolling in anyway. The outward image is of an innovative company constantly inventing new products and services. On the inside it is a money press operating without any significant competition. Having a monopoly is not just profitable — it is actively desirable, writes Thiel.
The idea that all companies in Silicon Valley are happy, helpful, and collaborative is therefore a myth. If you visit, you might get that impression, perhaps — being bussed around among Swedish employees at tech companies who receive guests in bare conference rooms. That is one image. But it does not say much about how these companies actually operate.
The Swedish tech industry would benefit from reading a few more books about how Silicon Valley actually works. The aforementioned “Zero to One” by Peter Thiel, “Power” by Tim Higgins, and “Careless People” by Sarah Wynn-Williams would be a start. Apple and Meta — two of the companies the books deal with — did not become successful because they encouraged each other on LinkedIn and sent introductions to happy and receptive people. To a large extent they got there through razor-sharp, hard-nosed business sense.
Criticism is a natural and welcome part of that. If the Swedish tech industry wants to try to emulate Silicon Valley, that is where it should start.
