Fortnox is pouring €4.5 million into a decade-long quest to answer a question that sounds almost too basic: what makes a business succeed?
The Swedish cloud software firm announced the funding commitment to the Stockholm School of Economics, where researchers will spend the next ten years dissecting how companies define and chase success. The partnership arrives at a moment when founders across Europe face mounting pressure to track endless streams of metrics.
Based in Växjö, Fortnox began in 2001 as a Swedish accounting software provider. It has since evolved into a major cloud platform serving small and medium-sized businesses plus accounting firms across bookkeeping, invoicing, payroll and financial administration.
That vantage point gives the company an intimate look at how businesses monitor progress and make daily operational calls.
EQT, the European investment heavyweight that took Fortnox private in 2025, backs the firm. Now Fortnox wants to examine whether the metrics businesses lean on actually reveal what leaders think they do.
The money will establish the Center for Responsible Performance Measurement and fund a new professorship at SSE. Research will explore how organizations measure success and what gets lost when management obsesses over goals, KPIs and other performance indicators.
For startups, the stakes hit close to home. Founders routinely track growth, revenue, retention, acquisition costs and margins. Those numbers steer capital allocation, product development, team investments and investor confidence.
Yet measurement can warp behavior. When specific targets dominate decision-making, companies may prioritize what is easiest to quantify over what builds lasting value.
Fortnox CEO Tommy Eklund framed the ambition around businesses of every size, from hair salons in Växjö to medium construction firms in Gothenburg and accounting practices in Stockholm.
SSE Vice-Chancellor Lars Strannegård called the commitment generous and emphasized that the funding preserves academic independence while building long-term knowledge.
Findings will be published openly, potentially offering founders new frameworks for evaluating progress. Fortnox also plans to channel insights into product development for its customers.
For Europe’s startup landscape, where dashboards often dictate fundraising and hiring decisions, the research could reshape how performance gets measured.
