From Reuters, August 10:
As Klarna's billionaire founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski prepares to stage one of the biggest-ever European fintech company listings, a feast of capitalism, he credits an unlikely backer for his runaway success: the Swedish welfare state.
In particular, the 39-year-old pinpoints a late-1990s government policy to put a computer in every home.
"Computers were inaccessible for low-income families such as mine, but when the reform came into play, my mother bought us a computer the very next day," he told Reuters.
Siemiatkowski began coding on that computer when he was 16. Fast-forward more than two decades, and his payments firm Klarna is valued at $46 billion and plans to go public. It hasn't given details, though many bankers predict it will list in New York early next year.
Sweden's home computer drive, and concurrent early investment in internet connectivity, help explain why its capital Stockholm has become such rich soil for startups, birthing and incubating the likes of Spotify, Skype and Klarna, even though it has some of the highest tax rates in the world.
That's the view of Siemiatkowski and several tech CEOs and venture capitalists interviewed by Reuters.
In the three years the scheme ran, 1998-2001, 850,000 home computers were purchased through it, reaching almost a quarter of the country's then-four million households, who didn't have to pay for the machines and thus included many people who were otherwise unable to afford them.
In 2005, when Klarna was founded, there were 28 broadband subscriptions per 100 people in Sweden, compared with 17 in the United States - where dial-up was still far more common - and a global average of 3.7, according to data from the World Bank.
Spotify allowed users to stream music when Apple's (AAPL.O) iTunes was still download-based, which gave the Swedish company the upper-hand when streaming became the norm around the world.
"That could only happen in a country where broadband was the standard much earlier, while in other markets the connection was too slow," Siemiatkowski said.
"That allowed our society to be a couple of years ahead."....
....MUCH MORE
