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

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

FlightStory

Society & Culture, Business, Education

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2021

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ 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. Follow Sebastian: Twitter - https://twitter.com/klarnaseb Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sebastiansiemiatkowski Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	He had a discussion with me, we're sleeping in the street, dead scared, like,
0:03.0	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.
0:12.6	Afterwards, I've heard from journalists
0:14.1	that a ton of emails were coming from banks
0:16.6	since they simply, you know, they're threatened by our existence.
0:18.8	And so they're kind of articles and the writing about us
0:21.3	shifted from their hair to screw customers over to do bad things and that was tough.
0:28.0	I went home at dinner with my wife and we talked about it and I was like, no, this time around I should probably help him I decided and I
0:35.6	tried to call him and he didn't answer and I emailed it an answer and morning my mother
0:40.5	called and said he was dead. Sebastian Schamiakovsky, he's the CEO and founder of Europe's most highly valued FinTech
0:56.2	privately held company. His company is worth 45 billion dollars.
1:02.3	Sebastian isn't a guy that comes from a stable household or a silver spoon.
1:07.0	It's very much the opposite.
1:09.0	The stories you're going to hear about his home life, his family, his father might just bring you to tears because that's the effect they had on me.
1:17.6	He came from incredibly humble beginnings and he's built a company in an industry where he was not qualified,
1:24.8	where he didn't have technical expertise, where he couldn't code that has
1:29.2	completely revolutionized an industry. He is humble, he is honest, and he's willing to tell you the truth.
1:36.2	And that's why it's such a pleasure to sit here with him today and uncover what it takes and who it took to build such a revolutionary pioneering business.
1:46.4	So without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett and this is the diary of a CEO.
	...

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