Month: February 2023
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Swedish households not net borrowing for first time in 21 years
I don’t know what the impact of higher interest rates will be, but according to Nordea one impact is that Swedish households have gone from net borrowing 15 billion SEK per month to actually amortizing more than they are borrowing. For the first time in 21 years. On an annual basis this means ca 180…
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Björn Jeffery goes podcasting
My good friend, Toca Boca founder, board professional and SvD analyst Björn Jeffery has been interviewed in Loungepodden. Well worth a listen.
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US growth driving Klarna
Sebastian Siemakowski, Klarna CEO and co-founder, has expanded in an interview with TechCrunch on his earlier tweet that the US has passed Germany as Klarna’s largest individual market. In Q4’22 Klarna’s gross merchandise value (the value of products purchased with Klarna) in the US grew 71 % and it has 34 million users. Credit loss…
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Being boring
Today Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway released its full year report for 2022. His letters to shareholders are classics among a group of investing nerds, but I found this year’s a bit underwhelming. What is not underwhelming is Berkshire Hathaway’s annual returns of 19.8%. Especially on the very large sums of money he invests (easier to…
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Ecosystems are good
In world where many people can work from anywhere, there is still a lot of value in being based in a geographic ecosystem like Silicon Valley or on a smaller scale Stockholm. Physical proximity to employees, peers, partners, experts, universities and investors increase access to knowledge, capital and talent. Which all are very valuable. Somewhat…
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Employee equity pt 2
The fact that employee ownership is not a straightforward thing, even if it should be, can be seen that only 17 % of European employees at late-stage startups have employee ownership this year. A caveat that I haven’t checked if that is both options and shares or only shares, but regardless 17 % is a…
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Founder pay
Sifted has an article about founder pay, based on data from the UK, France and Germany. According to the article pre-seed and seed founders’ median pay is €88,000. It is higher than the Nordics, as shown in the report by Creandum/Slush. The striking thing in the pay data from Creandum/Slush is the significant difference in…
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Employee equity
A core part of building a company with venture capital and in the Silicon Valley tradition is employee stock ownership. Most often employee ownership in private startups happens via stock options (in Sweden most often QESO, ESOP or warrants). But using options is not straightforward way to get the results you want, as Carta’s latest…
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Investor coherence
There are many type of individuals and organisations that invest into startups. They share the same label, “investors”, but the way they think about how a startup should be financed, growth vs profit, acceptable levels of risk, if the startup should be aiming for a small or large outcome etcetera can differ a lot. I.e.…
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Pay for convenience
Twitter has decided to remove the text message option for two-factor authentication for non-paying users, who will have to use an authentication app or a security key (like YubiKey by Yubico). The big difference to Twitter is that it costs money to send SMS, while the use of apps or keys are free to Twitter.…
Henrik Torstensson's Weblog 