Klarna's CEO Loves Walmart, Vibe Coding With Cursor, And 'Succession' Drama
Upstarts interviewed Klarna co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski at NYSE during its drama-free IPO week to talk his visit to Sam Walton's grave, stablecoin adoption, his own Cursor use and much more.
The Upshot
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski is excited to go public when Upstarts meets with him at the New York Stock Exchange this week. Just not as pumped as he was to visit a cemetery a few years ago.
“People ask me about the IPO and ringing the bell. I’m sure all of that’s going to be really cool and a fantastic experience,” he says. “But for me personally, emotionally, after being this kid from this small city north of Stockholm, to actually stand in Bentonville at Sam Walton’s grave — and to realize that I will now have the opportunity to work with the biggest retailer in the world, that I’ve always been the biggest fan of — that to me is emotional on a different level.
This is not a Halloween season obsession; the son of Polish immigrants, Siemiatkowski has long looked up to the Walmart founder for his business acumen, alongside IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, Virgin Group co-founder Sir Richard Branson and even Sir Terry Leahy, who turned around Tesco.
That inspiration has helped him build Klarna, the fintech company he co-founded 20 years ago, and which raised $1.4 billion in an IPO on Wednesday and traded up 15% in its first day (it’s set to open on Friday just above its list price of $40, with a market cap of about $16 billion).
Primarily known as a pioneer of ‘buy now, pay later’ financing for consumer purchases, Klarna has since expanded its offerings in Europe, where it’s used for product discovery, too.
It’s been a bumpy road over 20 years, including major glitches, a co-founder departure and an existential crisis about Klarna’s impact in the world, but on the other side of it, Siemiatkowski is a thoughtful, open-book interview.
(Additional reading: Fellow Substacker and friend of Upstarts
published her own interview on Klarna’s business comeback this morning, too. Check it out!)
As an experiment, Upstarts collected questions from our readers last week to pose to Klarna’s CEO. The full interview is now live on our YouTube channel — please give it a like and subscribe, like you’ve never heard that one before.
Paid subscribers can keep reading for our cheat sheet of highlights, as well as our two favorite clips. As a reminder, we are a subscriber-driven, bootstrapped operation here. I spent most of yesterday teaching myself Descript’s AI tools just to get this done, and am proud of the results. If you don’t subscribe yet, please support our work.
An immigrant kid dreams of Walmart
Our first reader question asked how Siemiatkowski’s fascination with Walmart and IKEA has helped in building Klarna’s business.
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