I went to Stockholm with my friend and colleague Bohdan at the end of April 2026, mostly for a Y Combinator event. Sweden became the 7th country I’d visited, and one of the few I came back from thinking: I would love to live here one day. At least for a while.

I took plenty of photos and notes. Now I’m finally trying to put them together just to unclutter the list of “unfinished projects”.

Before the words, a little of what the trip looked like:

Stockholm vibe and some thoughts on the city

Overall, I liked Stockholm. I would even say I loved it! Transport was convenient, the streets were clean, and there were bicycles everywhere (yeeah!). We spent a lot of time walking, which I believe gives you more of a feel for the city.

At around one in the afternoon, when we were walking through the centre, I was looking at all the people outside and wondering why nobody seemed to be working.

Not sure it was a fair question coming from someone who was also outside, also not working. I guess I don’t usually walk through the centre of a city at that hour, so my comparison wasn’t very scientific.

Still, people seemed happy, though we only had two sunny days to judge by. I also remember a group of twenty men travelling together because one of them was getting married. Twenty! I’d love to know how long they’d been friends and how often they saw each other. It made me curious about what social life there looks like when there isn’t a wedding to celebrate.

Looking at the pictures now, I understand why I wanted to come back (because of the frogs!). And also: the waterfront around Kungsholmen, boats at Klara Mälarstrand, views from Riddarholmen, the streets of Gamla stan, walks around Djurgården, cherry blossoms in Kungsträdgården… okay, visiting these places was easier than pronouncing their names…

One of the things I left unexplored was Swedish food. I know much less about it (well, actually nothing) than I know about Italian or Japanese food, and that made me curious about how a country’s cooking becomes familiar to people who have never been there. Why do some cuisines travel so far? I’ll explore it next time.

I saw Paul Graham in Stockholm. I’m not sure he saw me :)

The main reason we went there was the YC event on April 29.

For anyone outside the startup world, Y Combinator invests in young companies and runs a programme where founders work on their products with advice from partners and other founders. I work at AiSDR, a YC-backed company, so this world already has a place in my heart. But some of the people in it still felt very far away.

Paul Graham was one of them.

I knew him through his essays. It felt a bit strange to suddenly see him sitting on a stage in front of me. I knew some of his ideas, but this was my first time seeing him in person.

There were also other cool people: Jessica Livingston, Gustaf Alströmer (we also got a signature from him for AiSDR’s Lviv and Warsaw offices! Fun fact: he was a YC partner during AiSDR’s S23 batch), Max Junestrand, and Christina Gilbert. I wrote a lot notes during the event, though some of those now require an “archaeological” effort to understand (luckily, I can rewatch those talks here and here).

A few insights from Max Junestrand of Legora (from YC to $100M ARR in 18 months):

- During YC, he and his sales colleague took calls from 1 a.m. to 10 a.m., slept for a few hours, then went to YC. Later, while fundraising, he packed around 80 investor meetings into a week. That’s how working hard can look like.

- “Make sure you’re talking to someone who can actually make the decision.”

- The product wasn’t that good yet, but customers wanted to work with him and his team. His excitement about what they were building mattered a lot!

And a few from Paul Graham’s talk:

- Make more room for unplanned conversations. He calls them serendipitous meetings, and they can turn out to be surprisingly important.

- Spend more time with people working on similar things. I used to think: aren’t we competitors? Why would we help each other?

- People in Silicon Valley help each other without expecting something back. I’d like to experience more of that - and do it more myself.

- Meeting successful founders makes their achievements feel possible, while showing you how much work they take - “It no longer seems an impossible goal, just a hard one.”

- A question worth remembering: “How is it different than you expected?” Much more interesting than asking what something was like.

- A quote from PG about Stockholm that I agree with: “everyone looks like upper middle class”

Also the place was so loud. There were around 1,300 people spread across two floors, and I could barely hear someone standing 30 cm in front of me. Not the best setup for networking. Maybe the good conversations were happening outside. Still, I came back from the trip with one cool new connection (hi Uli!).

I still remember one conversation in Stockholm. A guy told me that his friends kept starting companies and it made him think it might be a good time to start one himself. I guess if people around you keep doing something, your own attempt starts to feel less unusual. And with companies like Spotify, Klarna, Lovable, and Legora coming out of Stockholm, I can see why starting something feels normal there.

Paul Graham has an essay called “Cities and Ambition”, about how places influence what people strive for. He describes how the people around us, even the conversations we overhear, affect what we think is worth doing. I guess Stockholm is slowly becoming one of Europe’s main startup hubs, and YC is helping to boost it.

Vasa Museum + James Cameron exhibition

The next day, we visited the Vasa Museum and happened to discover that they also had an exhibition called James Cameron: Challenging the Deep.

Cameron is the director behind Titanic and Avatar, but this exhibition also follows his work as an ocean explorer. The exhibition shows objects used in his films, underwater videos, and equipment from his expeditions (I loved the sketches the most!). The connection between making films and exploring the ocean becomes much more interesting when you can see some of the equipment involved (his team built HD cameras smaller than a soda can to film the deep ocean in 3D!).

I found the space almost meditative. The rooms were dark, with blue lighting, underwater images, and calm music playing in the background.

The part of Cameron’s life I want to understand better is how far he follows his curiosity. On March 26, 2012, he made the first solo descent to Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the ocean, in the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER submersible. That journey took years of work by him and a team of engineers and scientists.

That’s a lot of effort just to follow your curiosity. I’d like to learn more about him and write a separate post one day.

And here is Vasa itself.

Vasa sank on its first trip in 1628, after just 1,300 metres (that’s basically the main reason it’s one of the few ships in the world preserved in its original condition). It stayed underwater until 1961, and bringing it back up took years of work.

It’s strange to stand next to a ship built almost 400 years ago. I kept wondering how they built it (it is very beautiful!) and how they got it out of the water centuries later (yeah, there was a short documentary in several languages showing how they did it, but still it was a crazy challenge!).

I’d like to come back to Stockholm and stay longer one day.

PS. I almost forgot, but that’s also where I got my first pink panama hat 🥰