 Hello everybody and welcome to the 2008 edition of the Nordic Showcase My name is Jessica I take care of the community at Maria 01 and I'm also the country manager of the growth platform the Nordic Hub And I'm Neil Murray the founding partner of the Nordic Web Ventures And as said we have the honor to take you through Nordic Showcase 2018 but before letting the amazing founders here on this stage Let's just go through some pretty impressive things about the Nordic tech region Going back 10 years even when slush was founded back in 2008 There was really a need to change a few things here in the Nordic region first thing Changing the attitude towards entrepreneurship making sure that even more people here could consider themselves becoming entrepreneurs second one Making sure that there is more international venture capital being invested in the amazing startups and 31 Profiling Nordics as one of the global leading tech hubs If we look at the numbers today, I think they're speaking pretty much for themselves for instance during the last Seven years about one fourth of the tech exits in Europe have come from the Nordic region pretty impressive And that is super super impressive Another thing that makes the Nordics very special is also the collaboration that the Nordics have So whether there are tech event organizers Co-working managers incubators what not we've been for the last years very determined to work together To make sure that there are even more Nordic great success stories and unicorns coming from the region Yeah, and I think people are beginning to become aware of those success stories now And also those impressive numbers more and more people are becoming aware of what is happening in the Nordics And that we are building these special companies But still there are some misconceptions and some myths that still exist And you know some people still think we can only build great gaming companies here or Enterprise sass or health, you know a few verticals that the Nordics are great in yet That is a myth and this showcase will demonstrate that today because we've got companies tackling areas such as Sustainability and loneliness and all of these five are not in those verticals And they are in all of these new different verticals, so it demonstrates the breadth of talent that we have in the Nordics now Previously we've had Kahoot on the stage One of the best the most famous companies to come out of Norway in recent years. We've had beddits Acquired by Apple So, you know, I don't want to put pressure on the Founders here, but they have some high expectations to meet and some big steps to fit into I couldn't agree with you more Neil so as you know Nordic showcase is highlighting the most prominent startups coming from the Nordic region We're not gonna keep you any longer. So enjoy the Nordic showcase of 2018 Thank you