Small city, large companies
Spotify, Klarna, King, Skype, and Mojang all started in a city of 2.4 million people. Stockholm has more billion-dollar companies for its size than anywhere outside Silicon Valley.
Locations / Europe
Stockholm
Spend a year inside a Stockholm-based startup while taking entrepreneurship classes at KTH. You learn how a country of ten million builds products used by the entire world.
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Partner uni
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
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Format
Full Year -
Intake
January -
Audience
Undergraduates only
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Ecosystem
Consumer & web -
Cohort size
~25 students per intake
About Stockholm
Rearrange your view of normal.
Sweden has ten million people. That is not enough to build a company on, so founders here design for other countries from the first week. Spotify, Klarna, King, and Mojang all came out of a city of 2.4 million people, and Stockholm now has more billion-dollar companies for its size than any city outside Silicon Valley. Singapore has the same small home market and can adopt many lessons.
The way people work will surprise you. Teams are small and flat, so you get real work in your first month and you answer for it yourself. Nobody stays late to be seen staying late. You will spend the year watching a company get built in a way that may challenge your assumptions about startup culture and what is necessary to succeed on a global scale. That is the part of the NOC Stockholm experience you cannot read about beforehand.
The KTH professors teaching entrepreneurship courses have started companies of their own, built biotech firms, sold telecoms companies, and run KTH's prototype lab.
Why Stockholm?
A small country that keeps building large companies.
KTH, around your job
You take entrepreneurship classes at KTH while you work. Eight of your forty NOC units come from them, and more than one in ten KTH graduates go on to start a company.
Mentors who have built
Anna Frostegård has co-founded five biotech companies. Per Björklund built and sold Efftel. Björn Möller founded KTH's Prototype Center. NOC students are exposed to all of them in Stockholm.
Partner university
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
You take classes on entrepreneurship at KTH part-time while the internship runs. Eight of your forty NOC units come from those classes. The other thirty-two come from the job.
KTH has trained Sweden's engineers since 1827 and more than one in ten of its graduates start a company. The people teaching you have mostly started one themselves, and some of them mentor NOC students directly.
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What our students say
"It's been a month since I left Stockholm, and I'm slowly adjusting to life back in Singapore. Reflecting on my year-long internship at IPercept as a Product Developer, I realize just how much I've grown both professionally and personally. I’ve grown richer in experiences, and I am incredibly grateful to NUS Overseas Colleges and IPercept for this amazing opportunity."
"I’m immensely grateful to NUS Overseas Colleges for giving me the chance to realize just how vast and varied the world truly is. It’s so easy to get stuck in the comfy bubble of routines and the familiar, but this program yanked me out of that bubble and into a world full of endless possibilities (and cold weather)."
Leaving home for such an extended period for the first time can be daunting. Fast forward to my first month here in Stockholm, and let me tell you, I was stuck in my own little bubble. There's so much to learn! I realised that this was my chance to step out of my comfort zone and connect with people from all around the world."
An Cheng Yang
NOC Stockholm Alumnus | 2023 | School of Computing
Kyla Chan
NOC Stockholm Alumna | 2023 | College of Humanities and Sciences
Kerwin Chia
NOC Stockholm Alumnus | 2023 | Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine
Practical info
The things you'll need to know before committing to Stockholm.
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Cost of living [ $$$ ]
$2,500–3,500
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Accommodation
NOC supports housing search.
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Stipend & awards
Most students receive an internship stipend from their host company. NOC awards available via Awards & Scholarships
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Visa
Residence permit from the Swedish Migration Agency. NOC covers the full application cost.
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Language
English Swedish -
Climate
Continental Arctic -
Time zone
UTC +1 (CET) -
Getting around
Metro, bus and commuter rail on one card. A car is not necessary.
Curriculum at Stockholm
Faculty-mapped courses for NOC Stockholm: units, intakes, and academic structure.
All three are submitted via myEduRec → External Study Online Application → Program Application → Supporting Document, before the application deadline.
NOC may withdraw your application if any are missing.
Apply for NOC Stockholm
Rank Stockholm in your application. Note that NOC reserves the right to assign you to any available location regardless of stated preference.
Start your application