Yesterday, after three consecutive startup meetings, my colleague Anders Hallin blurted out in our office: “The last company I talked with was number three among the startups I met today, but it would have been one of the top five startups I met in 2022.”
Anders’ comment captures something important about the AI startup wave: the quality of Swedish pre-seed and seed-stage startups is at a completely different level in 2026 than in the pre-AI days of 2021 and 2022.
Today’s startups are building better products, solving more complex problems, signing more customers and growing revenue faster than the previous generation.
But being better than the past is not enough when the competition has also gotten better. It is no longer enough to build the proverbial 10x product to raise venture capital. In the fall of 2026, I think a startup needs both a 50x product and a faster go-to-market motion to attract the funding we read about in the headlines.
This is important to keep in mind when discussing startups getting higher valuations today than a few years ago.