Where FDS comes from

FDS draws on decades of research — published papers, working papers and dissertations, research projects and industry reports — on practitioner books and blogs, and on the practical experience of its founder, Per Hulthén. It is the mixture that produces the useful insights. Theory alone drifts from reality; practice alone is too local to generalise from.

The research. FDS rests on EVS 1–3, the Exit Value Studies, conducted between 2016 and 2024. Their question was what happens to venture-capital-funded startups in the long run, and what most influences those outcomes. The studies were run jointly by Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, funded by Vinnova, Carl Bennet AB, Västra Götalandsregionen and Business Region Gothenburg. Per Hulthén, industrial PhD candidate at Chalmers, originated and led the projects, working with Professor Mats Lundqvist (Chalmers), Professor Gregory Graff (Colorado State University) and Professor Dimo Dimov (University of Bath). The results are available in Per Hulthén's licentiate dissertation and in the EVS 3 summary report for practitioners.

The practitioner literature. Practitioners write for professionals, and academics often overlook that work because it carries little theoretical weight. For founders looking for hands-on guidance it is gold. FDS draws on the best of the last thirty years, from Crossing the Chasm through The Lean Startup and The Startup Owner's Manual, the venture capital literature, and blogs such as Steve Blank's.

The practice. FDS also draws on Per Hulthén's fifteen years co-founding and running two startups — Illuminate Labs, in computer graphics, acquired by Autodesk; and LumenRadio, in wireless communication and later IoT, since listed on OMX Sweden — and on more than fifteen years teaching entrepreneurship at the Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship, whose two-year master's programme has students build real companies from research ideas. In that work Per contributed to the founding and early development of dozens of startups using the Venture Docs methodology he developed, which is now part of how FDS is taught.

History

FDS began as an attempt to make the EVS findings useful to startups. In 2024 Per Hulthén proposed an ambitious programme to Chalmers and affiliated universities: a range of courses in the practical side of entrepreneurship, from undergraduate to doctoral level, covering venture development, entrepreneurial finance and negotiation.

Chalmers eventually declined. By then much of the content was already written, and there was clear appetite among startup professionals for the courses themselves. Vinnova funded the reorientation of that material into FDS in 2024, with the aim of raising the level of knowledge in the Swedish ecosystem about how to finance and structure startups for long-term survival. GU Ventures volunteered as a development partner, and the content was tested and sharpened over six months with GU Ventures' coaches and their affiliated incubators. In 2025 the European Union's KRAFT project joined the effort.

Per Hulthén has spent more than thirty years in the Swedish startup ecosystem — as a student running Entrepreneurship Day and Venture Cup, then as a founder, then as a seed investor, and for the past decade as a researcher and educator working through his own company, Autlook AB. He remains an industrial PhD candidate at Chalmers.