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The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

E98: Klarna Founder: From $0 to $46 Billion: Sebastian Siemiatkowski

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

FlightStory

Society & Culture, Business, Education

4.613.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2021

⏱️ 78 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sebastian Siemiatkowski is one of the most successful businessmen in Europe. He is the founder of Klarna, a company that is now worth an incredible $46 billion. Sebastian himself is now worth over $3.6 billion, and what’s more, he’s only just getting started.

Sebastian has been incredibly honest with us on what it takes to succeed and the burdens that come with it. Sebastian started Klarna when he was just 23, he hadn’t finished university and he gave up everything when he promised himself that his business would be the only thing in his life for 6 months.

He’s much older and much wiser now, and Klarna has had incredible growth to become one of the highest valued tech companies in Europe. Today he tells all about his incredible journey and how he got there, opens up on the criticism he’s received, and where Klarna goes from here.

Topics:
  • Your early years
  • Challenging your employees
  • The start of Klarna
  • The painful moments of Klarna
  • Your relationship with money as a billionaire
  • The death of your father
  • Becoming a father yourself

Sebastian:

With such a great reception to The Diary Of a CEO live we’ve decided to take it around the U.K. Sign up here if you’re interested in coming - https://thediaryofaceolive.com/

Sponsors:

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

He had a discussion with me, we're sleeping in the street.

0:01.8

Dead scared, like, be careful with who you're listening to.

0:04.8

Have they really contributed to success?

0:07.8

Have they really built success?

0:09.4

Or have they simply been in a company that was successful?

0:12.5

Afterwards, I've heard from journalists

0:13.9

that like a ton of emails were coming from banks.

0:16.5

Because they simply, you know, they're threatened

0:18.0

by our existence.

0:18.8

And so they kind of articles and the writing about us

0:21.2

shifted from their hair to screw customers over

0:25.2

to do bad things.

0:26.3

And that was tough.

0:28.0

I went home, I'd dinner with my wife and we talked about it

0:30.6

and I was like, no, this time around,

0:32.3

I should probably help him.

0:34.4

I decided and I tried to call him and he didn't answer

0:37.6

and I emailed him the answer and morning my mother

0:40.6

called and said he was dead.

0:41.9

Sobastien Shemiat Kowski.

0:51.2

He's the CEO and founder of Europe's most highly valued

0:55.5

FinTech privately held company.

...

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