On June 30, 2014, in Almedalen, Sara Magnusson received the first Göran Bredinger Scholarship and a check for 50,000 kronor. Nine months later, she is in the final stretch of her studies, and her company, Experimentfabriken, is poised to expand. She is now encouraging others to apply for this year’s scholarship.
“When I applied for the grant, I didn’t think I’d get it, because I didn’t feel I’d gotten very far with my idea. So my advice is this: apply! Because if you don’t apply, you have no chance of winning. You get better with every application process, so you just have to dare to take the first step. The important thing is to clearly articulate your vision for the idea,” says Sara Magnusson.
Sara’s vision is to give young people in Sweden the opportunity to pursue science and technology as a hobby. Since receiving the grant, she has continued—through her and her colleague Adam Scheid’s company, Experimentfabriken—to offer children and young people the chance to take courses in robotics, chemistry, and programming, among other subjects. At the time of writing, they have reached 1,200 children, and recently they have also sold their courses to companies, which have, for example, organized family days where employees and their children have been able to conduct experiments together for an afternoon.
Sara is currently in her final semester of the Industrial Economics program at Linköping University and will soon graduate with a Master of Science in Engineering.
Greater focus on the business
– The Göran Bredinger Scholarship allowed me to focus more on the company. For example, I haven’t had to take on any side jobs to make ends meet. The grant has also given me a broader network than I had before, which has been just as important. Many of the people who approached me and spoke with me in Almedalen and who reached out afterward gave me new ideas, which we have since developed further. The grant has also given me greater self-confidence and increased faith in both myself and the company, she says.
Since receiving the Göran Bredinger Scholarship, Sara has been awarded several other scholarships, including one from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), which gave her the opportunity to travel to an entrepreneurship conference in Guatemala, where she presented Experimentfabriken to a global audience. She has also attended conferences in Dublin and Zurich.
“The Göran Bredinger Scholarship has given us at Experimentfabriken a different kind of legitimacy than we had before, which in turn has led to many new contacts and new opportunities. It was important that we had someone who believed in us and our idea right from the start,” she says.
This spring, Sara will complete her studies by writing a master’s thesis commissioned by the startup Aqwary in Linköping. As for her own future plans, exactly what happens next is still unclear. When it comes to Experimentfabriken, however, she knows exactly what’s in store.
Seeking investors
– We are currently considering bringing more external partners into the company. We are also looking to attract more investors so that we can expand to additional locations.
Even though Sara doesn’t know exactly what she’ll do after she finishes her studies, she has a clear long-term goal:
– In 15 years, I want to be the world’s best CEO of a tech company.
She doesn't limit herself to thinking within Sweden, but thinks globally—or even beyond that:
“If there’s an exciting mission to the moon, I’d be up for that too,” Sara concludes.