About Silicon Vikings

About US

The Silicon Vikings is a collaborative business networking organization for the technology sector. Silicon Vikings operates in the intersecting worlds of Silicon Valley (California) and the Nordic Region (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) to help members succeed in their professional and personal endeavors.

Silicon Vikings accomplishes this by providing lunches, mixers and events that are of professional and personal value, and by effectively communicating valuable information of interest to its members.

Silicon Vikings is a California 501(c)(6) not for profit networking organization

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Great events, great networking

A wide range of business and technology topics are presented at our many events. The exciting topics presented and debated by business and thought leaders often attract large audiences, while many people attend for the networking. The opportunities for networking and meeting new professional and personal contacts make our events very valuable.

When Silicon Vikings was started in 1997, the main activity was getting people together for lunch. But as the membership has grown, so has the number and types of events; In recent years Silicon Vikings has arranged some 15 events per year; The events range from our continuing one speaker monthly lunch series, via business mixers and pub mixers to large panel discussions with global business leaders.

A nationality-related network is an invaluable for making the overwhelming aggregate of Silicon Valley successfully manageable. Silicon Vikings is strategically positioned to connect the innovative high technology development of the Nordic Region with Silicon Valley. As one Valley veteran puts it: “The enormous concentration of entrepreneurship and capital here is built on contacts and on networking. Silicon Vikings works in that tradition.”

Silicon Vikings open doors in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is geographically small, but almost everybody in high tech is here: entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, big companies, startups and service providers. They all know each other, but to compete and succeed in a highly competitive market Nordic entrepreneurs need access to established business networks. There are many doors in Silicon Valley, but as those who have tried to enter know, without connections, it is like trying to open a door from the outside without a handle. Connections are your only chance to get in and that is what this network provides.

For the entrepreneur, for business, for expanding your global network

Silicon Vikings (SV) has for many years been the natural nodal point for connections between established and recently arrived entrepreneurs and professionals in emerging technology companies. In recent years we have become increasingly active in facilitating for cross-fertilization between industry and academia.

Silicon Vikings Group at LinkedIn

As a member of Silicon Vikings are you also able to join the Silicon Vikings group at LinkedIn which will allow you to leverage the power of the Silicon Vikings network to find and contact other Silicon Vikings members on LinkedIn. For more information about Silicon Viking's group on LinkedIn click here.

Partners

Silicon Vikings has an expanding collaboration with local Nordic organizations such as Innovation Center Denmark in Palo Alto, Enterprise Estonia in Sunnyvale, FinNode Innovation Center in Santa Clara, Innovation Norway in San Francisco, Invest in Sweden Agency in Redwood City, Swedish Trade Council in San Francisco, Vinnova of Sweden at Stanford, the Stanford-Sweden Contact Center and Wallenberg Hall at Stanford University. We are also collaborating with other local networking organizations such as SDForum in San Jose and businesses such as Fish & Richardson in Redwood City and Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara.

How many, where and why

The diversity of companies and professions within the Silicon Vikings is impressive with more than 1200 members representing over 600 companies.

80% of our members live in the San Francisco Bay Area with largest concentration on the Peninsula and South Bay (Silicon Valley), closely followed by San Francisco and the East Bay. Remaining members are found in the rest of the USA and in the Nordic Countries.

50% of our members work for U.S. companies, 1/5 are self employed or independent consultants and roughly 1/10 work in leading positions for Nordic Companies operating in the Bay Area, some 5% are at top research Universities in positions from graduate students, professors, program directors, etc.

The topics we cover at events are the areas of interest of our members

Entrepreneurship, IT – Software, Venture Capital, Wireless & Telecom, IT –Hardware, Life Sciences and Biotech. Interested companies are invited to sponsor a targeted event. Sponsoring will help companies to generate awareness of their work, products and services and positioning among key constituents; generate customers where possible; generate interested job candidates. Let us know how you would like to contribute to an event.

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