This year's winners Zanna Metzer and Kristina Grahn, Sisters in Law, run one of Sweden's biggest wedding blogs. In the motivation for the award, the winners write that the two female entrepreneurs have shown great drive and are very good and inspiring role models.

- With our shared belief that we need to highlight more good role models who inspire others, we felt that we wanted our own award that we could decide on and set the criteria for. With the award, we want to reward young, driven and talented entrepreneurs who we think are good role models and well worthy of being credited for their work," says Kerstin Edvardsson, BIC Factory.

The prize was established three years ago by the Umeå incubators BIC Factory and Uminova Innovation. This year's prize was presented in connection with Prince Daniel's and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences' participation in Young Startup Day on 19 September. The Prince presented the award at a lunch at the county residence of County Governor Magdalena Andersson.

- It feels great to end a very inspiring morning with this award ceremony. It has been mentioned several times today by various inspirers and entrepreneurs, the importance of celebrating successes as it is a rough road that requires a lot from a startup, especially to keep up the energy and drive during setbacks, says Maria Olofsson, Uminova Innovation.

The sponsor of the prize is the company Aptum, which will reward the winner with SEK 10,000 in prize money.
Previous winners of the award are Tom Xiong (2016) and Fredric Lindström (2017).

Text and photo: Mikael Hansson