Guest: Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO and co-founder of Klarna

Living and working in Stockholm, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski thinks a lot about how he’s perceived in Silicon Valley: “I feel like here I am, I am the small, country cousin from Sweden.” And on top of that, he knew that someone like Sam Altman wouldn’t initially think of a European banking startup as an ideal partner for OpenAI — so, he made up an excuse to fly to San Francisco and meet with Altman.

“I felt like, OK, this is going to be the busiest man in the world very soon,” Sebastian recalls. “When I first booked it with Sam, I think I got three hours in his calendar. By the time I arrived in San Francisco, it was down to 30 minutes.”

Chapters:

(01:02) - Workday and Salesforce
(06:01) - Rolling your own
(08:45) - AI-driven customer service
(15:33) - Automation at scale for business
(19:28) - The Toyota way
(23:40) - Sam Altman
(25:36) - Playing offense
(28:25) - Reinventing Klarna
(31:44) - The startup journey
(35:37) - Common equity
(39:28) - Champions League
(42:24) - Hype cycles
(47:35) - Sebastian’s father
(52:28) - Control and stability
(57:23) - Comfort zone vs. stretch zone
(01:02:27) - Creating resilience
(01:06:23) - Why Klarna isn’t hiring

Mentioned in this episode: OpenAI, Seeking Alpha, Slack, Workday, ChatGPT, Stripe, CRMs, Mark Benioff, Twitter, Anthropic, Waymo, Devin AI, the Collison brothers and Stripe, Pieter van der Does and Adyen, Daniel Ek and Spotify, General Atlantic, DST Global, Anton Levy, Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital, Niklas Adalberth, PayPal, CNBC, “Under Pressure” by Queen, Boris Johnson, Elon Musk, Google, Sam Walton, Made in America, Nina Siemiatkowski, and Snoop Dogg.

Links:

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Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com

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This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

#211 CEO & Co-Founder Klarna, Sebastian Siemiatkowski: Country Cousin

Grit