00:00:00
He'd had a discussion with me. We're sleeping in the street dead scared. Like be careful with who you're listening to.
00:00:05
Have they really contributed to success? Have they really built success? Or have they simply been in a company that was
00:00:11
successful? Afterwards, I've heard from journalists that like a ton of emails were coming from banks cuz they simply,
00:00:17
you know, they're threatened by our existence. And so the kind of articles and and the writing about us shifted from they're here to screw customers
00:00:24
over to do bad things. And that was tough. I went home, I had dinner with my wife and we talked about it and then I
00:00:31
was like, "No, this time around I should probably help him." Uh, I decided and I tried to call him and he didn't answer
00:00:37
and I emailed didn't answer and morning my mother called and said he was dead.
00:00:43
[Music]
00:00:49
Sebastian Sheami Kovski. He's the CEO and founder of Europe's most highly
00:00:54
valued fintech privately held company. His company is worth $45 billion.
00:01:02
Sebastian isn't a guy that comes from a stable household or a silver spoon. It's very much the opposite. The stories
00:01:09
you're going to hear about his home life, his family, his father might just bring you to tears because that's the
00:01:16
effect they had on me. He came from incredibly, incredibly humble beginnings. And he's built a company in
00:01:22
an industry where he was not qualified, where he didn't have technical expertise, where he couldn't code. That
00:01:29
has completely revolutionized an industry. He is humble, he is honest,
00:01:34
and he's willing to tell you the truth. And that's why it's such a pleasure to sit here with him today and uncover what
00:01:40
it takes and who it took to build such a revolutionary pioneering business. So
00:01:46
without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then
00:01:53
please keep this to yourself. [Music]
00:02:02
Sebastian. Um, one of the things that I've come to learn from speaking to a wide array of guests on this podcast,
00:02:08
from sports athletes to, you know, really successful CEOs, is is how often our our childhood and our early years
00:02:14
shape our adult foundations. And whenever I meet someone like you that's achieved um really remarkable things in
00:02:21
any, you know, in whatever discipline they're in, my first question always becomes um what
00:02:26
was it that made them remarkably unique in their early years? what what was the experience the cauldron that shaped them
00:02:32
into who they are today? Right. It's kind of funny you asked that because like I don't necessarily feel that I was
00:02:38
remarkably unique in my early days. I um a friend of mine uh their son turned out
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to be blind. Uh but he has perfect perfect pitch and he's now 8 years old
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and he's sitting and playing the piano and singing and um that is to me
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remarkable like and I I was thinking about that like that was me when I was a kid. Uh look, I I mean my parents were
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from Poland. Uh they moved to Sweden uh about a year before I was born. Um I was
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born in the northern part of Sweden. Um they were you know basically immigrants
00:03:12
because they didn't see a future in the communist Poland. Uh at you know which was the case at
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that point of time and so um so you know they came to Sweden but obviously as as it was back
00:03:24
then it was very hard to integrate into Swedish society. you know, English wasn't as profound as it is today and
00:03:30
and there was, you know, a lot of language barriers at that point of time. There was also like a lot of, I would say, skepticism about people with Polish
00:03:37
name and Polish backgrounds. Was hard to get a job if you had a foreign sounding name. There was a lot of these biases.
00:03:43
So, my parents struggled quite a lot to integrate. My my mother was an early retiree.
00:03:49
uh and my father kind of jumped from job to job, was unemployed for quite a long
00:03:54
period of time, drove a cab for multi- years, did a lot of different things, right? And so I think that like I do
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think that there's something to the fact that as an immigrant kid with parents that still like intellectually had
00:04:07
academical backgrounds and, you know, had studied at universities and stuff like that and never basically were able
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to live up fully to their potential. I do think that that kind of creates some kind of like you feel like that's unfair
00:04:20
and you're going to like try to fix that somehow. And I was growing up among Swedish friends
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who just had better economical standards than we had and I was obviously longing for what they had. Um,
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you know, I remember that in with my mom like there were weeks when, you know, we
00:04:40
were eating pancakes every day and I thought that was great, but now I realize it was because there was nothing
00:04:45
left. That was the only thing we had like flour and and milk and so forth. So like
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so I think that like uh I I do think that that kind of setting and there's obviously some research that suggests
00:04:56
that in Silicon Valley more than 50% of the companies are you know started by immigrant backgrounds. I do think that
00:05:02
that kind of setting of you know having a lot of the intellectual capacity and
00:05:07
and all these things and then the kind of prerequisites potentially to do something different and at the same point of time this kind of drive of like
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you kind of almost feel like it's unfair life isn't necessarily fair but like you feel like this is not fair we should
00:05:19
have like been able to have something different than this and and maybe also to some degree you I don't know to what
00:05:24
degree that's on an emotional level I don't think on a rational level but an emotional level also like your parents really sacrificed their lives like I
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Because it's hard for people that are not have are not immigrants to understand the consequences of not
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having the friends from school, not having the you know the understanding of how society works, which school is
00:05:44
better, which is worse, how do you interact with government, you know, how does the system works, all these things like that that total lack of
00:05:50
understanding of a specific society that it means to shift like my parents did in
00:05:56
their, you know, uh late 20s, early 30s. uh and how difficult that means for your
00:06:02
own ability to kind of you know do something with your life. I think that's something that's underestimated. So you have the kind of emotional thing that
00:06:08
you want to you know you feel that they did a massive sacrifice in some due regards for for your behalf, right?
00:06:13
Yeah. And that feels like a tremendous privilege. I Yeah. I wanted to ask you um cuz I I can relate a lot to that. I'm an immigrant
00:06:19
myself. Came born in, you know, Africa in Botswana and my parents came over here. My mom can't read or write.
00:06:25
Fantastic country by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful place. Um, but I moved to the southwest of the UK where I
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was in an all-white school of 1,500 white kids and it was was me and I and we were also like
00:06:37
the poorest people in a middle class area. So you have I felt different all the time.
00:06:42
Yeah. And um did you feel that way? Absolutely. Very much so. I mean, um, even the fact that we were Catholics.
00:06:48
Now, I'm not a very religious person today necessarily, but we were Catholics and my, you know, my parents, we went to
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to, uh, to church every Sunday and stuff like that. In a very non-religious society like Sweden, that was in itself
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very odd. Uh, and I remember people like saying, you know, Jesus wasn't, you know, the son of God and stuff like
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that, which at that point of time, now today, I wouldn't necessarily, but coming to that, at that point of time, it was like, you know, somebody was
00:07:12
like, you know, saying things like that. And then also the Poli like the view of Poland at Proan was that there was this
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country behind the Iron Curtain that was spewing out you know uh toxic waste into
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the Baltic. And so there was a lot of like you know Polish and jokes about Polish people and stuff like that. So I
00:07:29
mean all of this like I took heart. I wouldn't say I was bullied. That would be in my opinion taken too far because people I know people have been bullied
00:07:36
for real and I I don't think I was. But there was like that you know the sense of being different of not necessarily um
00:07:42
you know both not having the same prerequisites but also getting some like quite a lot like sometimes getting quite
00:07:47
hard time over these things. Right. And when you were a kid because because I know I did I developed a very naive
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thesis as to how I would escape this scenario. What was that? Money and success because it was the pain in
00:08:00
my household the lack of. So I thought well that will fix it. Did you develop your own thesis of how to No. I think yes. very similar to yours,
00:08:07
right? Because also what happened in my my in my life was that my parents divorced when I was about 8 years old,
00:08:13
right? Um and so and they had a lot of conflicts, right, on different topics and and I think to your point like as a
00:08:20
child an interpretation of the reason for that conflicts was the lack of money like because that was what they were
00:08:25
talking about all the time. You were hearing that. Now, I do today probably have a slightly different view of
00:08:31
whether that was the only explanation for their inability to, you know, to be a couple and and and be together. But,
00:08:37
but at that point of time, I agree with you. That was like one of my interpretations was like, yes, it would be nice to um to have, you know,
00:08:44
monetary success in life and that would solve some of these problems. For sure. For sure. I do agree with that. But but I also in at least in in my life there
00:08:51
was in addition to that something else which I cannot really explain which was that I was always I was always intrigued
00:08:57
and like thought it was interesting to kind of do business like I it's very nerdy and I I can't explain it like I
00:09:04
remember reading like Richard Branson's book when I was like 13 years old like and I think it was like super interesting or the founder of IKEA Ingva
00:09:11
Camprad who was a big big thing in Sweden obviously because it's a Swedish guy. So like I remember reading up on these stories and I also remember like
00:09:17
trying to start businesses very early. So I had like I did a lot of different things in like trying to start it was
00:09:23
everything from like gathering some of my friends and we would go to the apartments where we were living the kind
00:09:28
of the the story buildings. There was this bus stop where all the people were coming and we would go there and like offer us to carry you know groceries and
00:09:35
stuff like that return from like all that kind of stuff like just finding different ways of like you know trying to do things. So is there there's
00:09:41
something really intriguing about that in my mind because um as as you've highlighted immigrants tend to be more
00:09:47
entrepreneurial generally um and in the situation you brought up in and I reflect on my own situation because of
00:09:54
the circumstance I had made this connection that if I was to have anything or become anything it would be a direct consequence of my own actions
00:10:01
and then I think maybe entrepreneurship appealed to me because it was I knew I wasn't going to do great in the
00:10:06
conventional route but then this bit it was this really nice route to potentially huge success.
00:10:13
Um um and it was all kind of centered on what I did. It was going to be me. M and I think you
00:10:20
know from hearing about the scenario you were in with your parents and your upbringing and being an immigrant
00:10:26
entrepreneurship uh was something that maybe you could control if No, but I think you I think you're right in the sense that like I think
00:10:31
definitely in that environment growing up in that setting you know that like
00:10:36
there's nobody who's going to help you like there's nothing you're not going to get anything from anyone right it's just going to be either you do it or it
00:10:42
doesn't happen those are the two options like it doesn't happen or you do it yourself like those are the options I think if I look at my own kids there's
00:10:48
a lot of things that happens in their lives that fit into a third category, it happens because dad and mom helped out
00:10:54
and you know whatever. There's a lot of other things that happen. Uh but here it was like you know if I want to have an
00:10:59
adventure, if I want to go and see the other part of the city, I bike there. I have to go there myself. Nobody's going to drive me like you know this like and
00:11:05
I do think that there's some some lack of like healthiness to that as well, right? Whereas like it it it kind of educates you and I haven't thought about
00:11:11
it but now as you're saying it actually kind of thought about it that it does help you. But I would also say on the
00:11:17
immigrant side what you said like they are more commonly among um entrepreneurs. But I also think that
00:11:23
like when I look at like you know when we have problems in neighborhoods with a lot of immigrants and so forth I think that to me it's almost like I wish that
00:11:30
society would realize that like there's going to be a lot of frustration a lot of people with like you know energy.
00:11:36
They want something different. They want something a change. They don't want things to be the way they are. That's
00:11:42
kind of where you're coming from. And then it's just society's ability to try to showcase that that energy can be used
00:11:50
to become Slath and Ibrahimovic. It can be used to become, you know, a music artist. It can be used to become an
00:11:56
entrepreneur. It that energy or if we fail to offer those opportunities or
00:12:01
showcase that those alternatives, they may come out as burning cars and doing other things that are less less, you
00:12:08
know, less productive, right? So I think it's the really that you know to me today I would just like wish that society would really see it as like how
00:12:14
do we help showcase and show that there are these great options for that like
00:12:20
buildup energy of wanting something to be different right and for that you need sort of great empathy and to understand that people
00:12:26
are different shapes and sizes and that kind of brings me nicely to the the education system and your your personal
00:12:32
experience with the education system and do you think it it did you served you well or did it fail you? Well, I think it did. One thing that to your point
00:12:38
which you were describing as well in your own history is that I I one thing that I do worry for today compared to me
00:12:45
was that I was in a school with mixed I would still say 70 80% were Swedish 20%
00:12:52
at that point of time were had different immigrant backgrounds. If they would been only immigrants in that I would not
00:12:58
have anything to compare to. Right? So I do think that the school system at that point of time was less segregated than
00:13:04
it is currently at least in Sweden. I'm not that familiar with the UK current situation but I think that was that was
00:13:09
a case so in that case now were the teachers that amazing and like you know like you know there was a mix like some
00:13:16
were good some were bad right um so and I remember like you know I I was one of
00:13:22
the kids who had very easy at school I learned to read quickly and and so forth right and I believe to some degree then
00:13:28
I became slightly bored because at the Swedish school system at that point of time was very much set up as like
00:13:34
everyone equals So if you were like ahead in math or in head in reading or whatever I I I literally still remember
00:13:41
from like you know second grade which is 8 years old in Sweden when you're 8 years old you know um we were having
00:13:48
like reading which meant that everyone was reading from a book and like some kids unfortunately for them like they
00:13:53
were still struggling really right and I had already read the whole book so I was quite bored sitting there listening to
00:13:59
the story that I had already read and then I started disturbing the lesson because that was kind of so I became I
00:14:04
became person that was quite problematic for the teacher because I was just like I was so underststimulated and that I
00:14:09
think is a little bit sad that I hope that like schooling has become better in like you know actually you know understanding that all pupils are
00:14:16
different and need different support and you know can get a different challenge because you all need to have like a continuous challenge right
00:14:21
and those that lesson there you learned about that need for challenge you're now the headmaster of a
00:14:27
great school that has thousands and thousands of employees in it. Yeah. And that that point about making sure that the people that attend your
00:14:34
institution are also challenged must must uh still sort of be important to you, right?
00:14:39
Absolutely. I think it's like actually you know and in a way especially in
00:14:45
Swedish society which I you know the Swedish culture is very much just saying that alasad which means that everyone
00:14:52
should join like everyone should be part of this and and that's a fantastic
00:14:58
ambition and vision for a society that like no no man left behind is kind of a different translation of it or or no
00:15:05
women left behind. Um but and and for a while that was that was creating a
00:15:10
conflict because Clana as a company we have very high
00:15:16
aspirations. We want to do something very different. We want to you know really as I say sometimes play in
00:15:22
Champions League and then you know the problem is that's not true for everyone in the work world. some people are fine
00:15:29
with playing kids league and and and so forth, right? So, so it took us some time to dare to say that CLA is not for
00:15:37
everyone, that Cla is actually a company that wants to attract um people that
00:15:43
want to make a real impact, make a real difference, that want to learn, that want to be challenged. And that took
00:15:48
some time, and it might sound odd, but for us, at least in in the Swedish culture context, it took some time to
00:15:53
get to that where we started saying, you know what, Cla isn't for everyone. Not everyone is going to enjoy this environment because not everyone is will
00:16:00
like a lot of people would say it's amazing to climb Mount Everest. Did you climb Mount Everest? They're fantastic.
00:16:05
That's one thing but it's a very different thing that like how many people are really willing to like freeze their fingers off train for four years
00:16:12
like all the things that you need to do to climb that mountain then like the number of people that like check the box
00:16:18
and say I want to do that becomes massively smaller right and so I think the same applies for companies like a
00:16:23
lot of people would say I want to I want to work for a successful growth company doing things that's really cool
00:16:29
like climbing my nervous but then the question is like are you willing to do all these things like that that that that means that you need to do in order
00:16:36
to be able to accomplish that, right? And and um so so yeah, to your point like I think the challenge today I
00:16:43
always tell that people like when they you know when I interview them or just like just be like be aware like this is
00:16:50
you're going to be very challenged here. This is not going to be a place where like it's just going to go easy. You're going to have you're going to be very
00:16:55
very challenged here. What's the perfect balance of challenge between being too challenged that they, you know, they end
00:17:01
up in burnt out or something or underchallenged that they lose motivation like you did as a kid?
00:17:06
It's super difficult, right? And I think that's why it has to it has to be about encouraging them uh and and and seeing
00:17:13
like each individual by individual where they are, right? Think about a great personal trainer, right? when you go to
00:17:19
the gym um you know how do they find the balance of you know how how much to push
00:17:25
you and when to kind of hold off a little bit let you you know breathe and so forth right actually I you know it's
00:17:31
kind of interesting because um my kids have this swim teacher her name is Petra and and I I can sometimes just sit and
00:17:39
watch her in when she's training my kids swimming because she has that perfect balance I've never seen a teacher that
00:17:46
finds that perfect balance as well as she does. So, she pushes my kids exactly to the point where they're are like dead
00:17:53
scared, like almost like they're almost there where they're like going to want to they want to give up and get out of the out of that, but they're doing it
00:18:00
and then they're proud of what they accomplished and and that to me to your point like that's almost like a piece of
00:18:05
magic that a teacher has. Like the best teachers can spot that in their pupils can spot that and really find that
00:18:12
perfect balance, right? But it's very difficult and it's obviously difficult in a company with 4,000 people like how do you try to put mechanism in place to
00:18:19
ensure that you that you find that balance right and that that that you really uh allow people to get to that
00:18:26
perfect spot u where they develop heavily but at the same point of time doesn't move you know ahead and just bang their heads to the wall and and
00:18:32
feel give up or you know to your to your point then as well about um it took you a long amount of time to
00:18:39
realize that you wanted to just say to the world and to anyone that was considering joining your company. We're not for everyone.
00:18:45
Um the pandemic happened and what I saw was um leaders were kind of forced in
00:18:50
this wave of virtue signaling to say everyone can work from home forever. If you didn't say that now you're a bit of
00:18:56
an [ __ ] company and as as I reflect on that and as it as it went through I started to reject that
00:19:03
narrative because I think that the culture of the company should be determined by the mission. And um also the other thing was I actually think
00:19:09
that companies as you said should have really clear communication at all stages about who we are, how we work and what
00:19:15
our culture is. And allowing it to be kind of you decide I actually think is it's it's for me
00:19:21
super weak as leadership. But I also think it will have an adverse effect on the ability for the company to to
00:19:27
achieve its mission but also the company culture. People knowing like what's expected of them. But now it seems to
00:19:32
have become really like ac politically acceptable to just say our employees will do whatever they want.
00:19:38
How do you feel about all of that? It's a very complex topic but but I think look I think that the
00:19:44
look I give you an example right is that um previously which you might found odd
00:19:51
clana was not really uh following kind of agile work tactics. Um and then a few
00:19:56
years into um cloners development, we realized that some aspects of agile like
00:20:03
daily standups, weekly retros, working as small teams on specific topics, there
00:20:09
were some aspects of these that are very productive and really hope help productivity help achieve our goals and
00:20:14
so forth. Um so then what we did is we said like okay now all teams within CLA
00:20:21
should do daily standups should do weekly retros and I think currently when
00:20:26
we look at it uh our data about 50% of teams are following this right so then
00:20:32
the question is like how do you then approach that because you feel yourself very convinced that for example the idea
00:20:38
of daily standups is helping to be productive um but if you enforce that if
00:20:46
you simply go and say everyone has to do this period like check the box the problem is like you can do daily
00:20:52
stand-ups in very productive ways where you're engaged the whole team is engaged you're discussing what can we do how can
00:20:58
we move faster etc etc or you can do daily standups only to check the boxes like there are different ways and and
00:21:04
that applies to almost all such rules and concepts within companies so I think
00:21:09
that like what I'm still I still I don't feel that I entirely figured this out but But there's a balance in an
00:21:16
organization around like when are we prescriptive and mandate mandating things and when are we suggesting and
00:21:23
highlighting because in the end the reason I believe in daily styles so much
00:21:29
is because of my own experience of that but there was also something that I see up myself. There was a a willingness to
00:21:36
I I was interested in trying to find out better ways to working. I learned about this. I saw it in practice being done in
00:21:41
a good way and then I my conclusion was that this was that. So if you think about my learning process, my personal
00:21:47
learning process in that situation, it was driven by my interest, my passion and then I accomplished. That's a very
00:21:53
different thing to if my board suddenly would have dialed me up one day and said everyone has to do daily standups period
00:21:58
because it didn't it would not have given me the opportunity to learn and and and reflect on it. That's when I so
00:22:04
a lot when I think about learning within an organization I think about like the karate masters and the Japanese and kind
00:22:11
of like remember all this like karate kid and everything like how they learn in those environments. It is like
00:22:17
obviously at the beginning there has to be an interest by the individual self to try to learn but then the master doesn't
00:22:23
always tell you like exactly what to do. They like they provoke you to try to learn yourselves, right? There's a
00:22:29
excellent example from the Toyota way on that topic where like some of the like masters of Toyota way within Toyota
00:22:34
would like take a lot of their senior managers and they would draw a circle on the factory floor within a Toyota factory and then the the managers would
00:22:42
have to stand there and observe uh the manufacturing of the cars and then by the end of the day you know the totally
00:22:48
silent teacher would come and say okay so tell me what have you observed and then the the senior managers within the
00:22:55
circle have been standing there the whole day had to say well we saw this we saw that and then the he would look at them the senior you know senior kind of
00:23:02
shenzen like senior he would be like no another day you know so they have to do
00:23:07
another day so like and I like provoke them because I think that's the you and and it's very learning is such a
00:23:14
difficult thing right because you don't as much as we we we think that learning is sitting in a room and listening to
00:23:19
somebody um that is you know a very inefficient way of learning we learn by
00:23:24
doing uh by doing things ourselves right uh that's really u that's the truth and I think that co is such a good example
00:23:30
of that because we had a lot of experiences that we've never had before and they taught us a lot about our life
00:23:36
our priorities a lot of people talk about that today because we were forced to do things differently not because we
00:23:41
read about co and we read about you know how things can be different because suddenly we had to experience it and when you experience that's when you
00:23:47
truly that can impact your behaviors can change your ways so the the kind of it's a very difficult balance in these
00:23:53
companies consistently from a culture perspective like how do I how do I encourage encourage and kind of push
00:23:58
people to go and find out like you know try to experience that and learn for it but but not trying to enforce it too
00:24:05
much and and that's a balance game right you cannot be entirely without rules to your point because like if you join a
00:24:10
soccer team like there are some rules like you come in to exercise every morning if you just don't come to exercise when like okay look uh you know
00:24:17
maybe you have a different philosophy about how you're going to become a great soccer player but like I just don't believe in your flu like like it's not
00:24:23
going to work so like if you want to go and believe that you never have to exercise to become a great soccer player Hey, you do that but you can't do it on
00:24:28
it. Like right. So there is obviously some selection criteria where you have to decide within our ecosystem within
00:24:34
our company these are the rules that will apply and because we just feel that they're so fundamental and so important
00:24:40
but once you be on that level then it's more like how do I intrigue you? How do I challenge you to develop that insight
00:24:47
for yourself so that you really come to embrace those ways of working and really make them
00:24:53
your own and really expedite them. I think and I haven't solved all of this to be very you know honest I think we
00:25:00
have lots to learn still with cla but I think that that just uh is a very interesting int sorry it was a long answer
00:25:05
no it's amazing it's really really thoughtprovoking and I was I was thinking yeah I don't think a lot of people would have given that answer but
00:25:10
I I feel it's the the right one for so many reasons especially as it relates to the process of learning I think the things that I was most successful at in
00:25:16
all facets of my life were things that started with with interest and the things that I had an allergic reaction
00:25:22
to in terms of topics in school were the things that there wasn't fundamental curiosity. So I was kicked
00:25:27
out of school but in if you look at business and psychology like I was I would have gone to more
00:25:33
lessons I was 30% attendance in these other subject and that's and that's so true. So it's um it it provides a
00:25:38
different way to I think and I would say one more thing on your specific like work from home thing which is also another thing to take into
00:25:45
consideration is that what ends up happening and this is not a problem when you're 10 20 people in the startup but when you start becoming 4,000 people
00:25:51
the what what ends up happening is you have obviously um unfortunately that's the only way to describe it layers of
00:25:57
management and then you have the people actually doing it and that's just how most organizations are are structured. But what ends up happening is okay how
00:26:03
are we going to do with this work from home? what are the rules that going to be set and there is a tendency for
00:26:08
people to go and say management team the top people have to tell us what the rules are and if you write those rules
00:26:15
the problem is like look at clana we're active in like 40 offices across you know 20 countries
00:26:21
each one which will be in a different phase of covid or not and stuff like that right so try to write a rule that
00:26:27
is applicable for each team and then you're going to have individuals maybe some individuals have immune diseases and are extremely worry about you know
00:26:34
moving into that environment are more careful than others. Maybe you're going to have like you know some people that
00:26:39
have religious concerns somehow tied to this. You know you're going to have a flora because you have so many people you have so many different individuals
00:26:46
with different perspectives. So what you then sometimes need to do in my opinion is you need to say look you will decide
00:26:52
for yourselves and what then ends up happening is the uh in my opinion what happens is that the people actually
00:26:58
doing the work they usually find that quite attractive that they can take that decision. So the managers of those
00:27:04
people they may find it's more difficult because to them it's nicer that the top management team has written a policy and
00:27:10
they can say like this is the rules but why why these rules because it was said
00:27:16
so right and so then they can hide behind that right and if you don't allow them to hide behind that they will
00:27:21
actually have to motivate why are we going to do like this we've decided in this team that we're going to work in
00:27:27
office so we're going to do this and that forces them to do that which is good for them they need to do that they
00:27:32
need to promote about that. But there's always a risk when you write too strict rules on the top is that they're being used and then there's just management
00:27:39
said so and that is just so bad for the culture and everything. You want to provoke an environment where people feel
00:27:44
like the rules are there they were well intent they had a good purpose but they also need to be challenged if if they on
00:27:50
a specific individual and a specific situation do not apply. There needs to be a mechanism where those rules comes
00:27:55
back and say let's what if we were in this and in the end rules can never be an excuse for not thinking for yourself,
00:28:01
right? That that never happens and they always have to be there's going to be exceptions in a large company. There has to be exceptions because those are
00:28:08
healthy signs of the fact that people are thinking for themselves and judging by themselves and not just hiding behind
00:28:13
the rules. I always reflect on the um that that made me reflect then on the example of the someone told me certain
00:28:19
country I think it might be Germany where pilots were having a huge amount of crashes and it was because the the culture was
00:28:26
you don't challenge the pilot. So even when the co-pilot knew there was I think it was South Korea. Was it South Korea? Yeah. Yeah, I think
00:28:31
it was. Yeah. The planes were crashing but because the co-pilot didn't feel he could challenge and I think that's sort of analogous to
00:28:37
what you were saying there. I talk about hu a lot in this podcast because of the transformative impact it's had on my life. Um, but there is
00:28:43
such thing as the hule bug. And the reason I started my hule journey and became a huligan as they call it was
00:28:48
because of a guy called Mike in my office back at social chain who would evangelize about it all the time. And
00:28:54
then once I tried it one day and I saw the impact it had on me, I became the same type of evangelist. And even here
00:29:00
at the diary of a CEO studios, we have now three people that are stood currently in this room with me that have
00:29:06
caught the hu bug. Dominic Murray, Jack Sylvester, and my assistant Sophie Chapman. They're all now working out and
00:29:13
they're all addicted. I I think addicted is a strong word. Um they're all heavily reliant on hu to plug that gap in their
00:29:20
diet and their lifestyle that um a busy lifestyle and uh convenience food
00:29:26
options sometimes create. So I want as many people listening to this to try
00:29:31
Hule. And if you catch the Hule bug, then I genuinely believe it will change your life. I I have to go back and and
00:29:36
and hear about the start of of CLA because you know one of the things that really intrigued me and made me feel a
00:29:43
lot of respect towards you was that you're not technical as a co-founder. Unfortunately, no. Built this mega tech company but you're
00:29:49
not technical and I know I tried when I was 18 that was my first failure. Um but I found that really just horrifying and
00:29:56
respectful. Yeah. So tell me so how did it start and um and and where did you find the courage?
00:30:01
Sure. No. So, look, as I said previously, like it's kind of ironic. I always had tons of business ideas. And I
00:30:08
even remember like when I uh when I was like probably 13 or something. Uh in
00:30:13
Sweden was the first time we had private radios, private radio stations. And I thought the one in my home city of GPS sucked. So, I kind of wrote the business
00:30:20
plan for them how they should change the shows and the internet and actually called them and tried to convince them to change. 13.
00:30:25
Yeah. 13. Like I can imagine they were like laughing their guts. Like this 13 years old is calling us like you should
00:30:31
do this programming instead. you should have a show about this. And I bet they gutted now. I bet they have. Exactly. So, for whatever reason, I
00:30:38
always had this like in inclination to wanting to do something. And then um I did two years at Stocken School of
00:30:44
Economics, which is one of the like top schools uh in Sweden around if you're, you know, want to study at an economical
00:30:50
direction. Everyone at that point, this is 2000, everyone wanted to work at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Mckenzie.
00:30:55
That was really the the vibe. It's actually interesting because they had this survey where they said like at that point of time when they asked students
00:31:01
7% wanted to start their own company. Today it's 70%. So it just gives you like how much of a shift there's been
00:31:06
during that period of time. But anyways and then in 2002 because I went directly from college to university. I was like
00:31:13
okay I just got to do something else. I mean every all my friends had like backpacked and stuff like that. So um
00:31:18
ended up me and actually what became my co-founder Nicholas. We went backpacking which at that time because we always
00:31:25
wanted to do something that was a little bit different. Uh we ended up going around the world without flying. Uh which was a lot of fun. So if you want
00:31:31
to go to YouTube, you'll find the videos when we were like from the YouTuber. Yeah. Because we had this idea that we
00:31:36
were this was just at the beginning of all these like you know big brother and all these like you know do documentaries
00:31:41
and stuff. So so we thought we were going to like we we recorded the whole thing and we did we thought we were going to like air this as a TV show.
00:31:48
That's very funny. I need to ask you one question about that. How did you get to Australia without flying? Um, yeah. So, you had to u we took a a
00:31:55
cargo ship from Singapore to Brisbane. Ah, okay. And then we had a cargo ship from Sydney
00:32:01
over New Zealand up to Mexico. So, that's how we and then we actually took the QE to Q Elizabeth second uh between
00:32:07
New York and um and Southampton. So, so that was kind of how we did that that those were the expensive parts of the
00:32:12
trip. I mean, we we did it on an extremely low budget. I think on average we spent like $10 a day. Like we spent,
00:32:18
you know, we're sleeping in the streets. I actually slept on Piccadilla Circus on the street uh when we were in London
00:32:23
that night and uh while we're passing through London and then I went we went to hide park when when the sun had risen
00:32:29
and and slept because you don't sleep really well in Pika Circus at 4:00 a.m. I tell you.
00:32:34
So like you can imagine how you know the vibe there at that point of time. Um but anyways so we came back and then I
00:32:41
missed to start my semester and so instead I was like on the second
00:32:46
sbatical year that I hadn't expected and it was 2003 and I was looking for a job in my home city of Upsala and I couldn't
00:32:52
get a job. I was actually on welfare for a time because I just couldn't get any it was a low economy was very hard.
00:32:58
Eventually ended up working at this account receivables factoring firm which was like the last place in the world I
00:33:04
ever thought as a sales guy. Yeah. and and I was like okay but now I'm here I'm gonna do the most out of this right so I started calling and
00:33:10
trying to sell these services and then I it was very difficult to sell such services to companies because they're all like yeah you can save me £400 a
00:33:17
year but I don't really care because we work with this other company for 15 years and they're great and whatever but then I started talking to entrepreneurs
00:33:23
and these entrepreneurs were starting small e-commerce companies because some of them had figured out at that point of time you could buy Google AdWords super
00:33:29
cheap because no one was buying them and then you can get some traffic and you can sell some stuff and like it was like it was all kinds of stuff right so we
00:33:35
started talking Um, and they were really keen like, "Oh, I can save £400 a month a year. That's awesome. I'm going to work with you guys." So then I started
00:33:41
like thinking about payment services and I was asking them, "What are your problems? What are the things that you would like to be solved?" So that was
00:33:46
kind of where the idea came from. But then a year had passed and I want to go back to school. So I came back to the
00:33:52
stock school of economics to start my third year. I left my job and um but
00:33:57
there was an incubator at the school and it was very early at this point of time. Now everyone has an incubator but time it wasn't that common. So I went to the
00:34:04
CEO of the incubator and I said, "Hey, you know, I have this idea. It's kind of payments offering buy now pay later
00:34:10
services. It would look like this and you know, whatever." And she was like, "This is awesome. You have to do this."
00:34:15
And when she said so, I was a little bit like now I can't just like give up on this, you know. So, so I was kind of
00:34:21
looking around and then I stumbled into one old friend of mine, Victor, uh, who I knew a little bit and he was like
00:34:28
because I was sitting in the cafeteria of the school and I was telling some friends like, "I want to do this company. I was going to do this." And everyone was like, "Yeah, good luck to
00:34:33
you, man." Kind of like patronizing. Is it patronizing and like kind of like fake support? You do that and I'm going to go to
00:34:39
Morgan Stanley and make all my like that's like that that was like kind of the the the perception. So So that's kind But Victor then was the only one
00:34:45
who was like, "Wow, that's awesome. I'm with you if you do it, right?" So I was like, "Okay, that's cool. Let's do it together." We didn't know each other that well. And I had Nicholas who was an
00:34:51
old friend of mine who I did the trip around the world with. So So we kind of joined forces. But then but it was still like a huge decision to us like starting
00:34:58
a company at that point of time felt like wow crazy. Are we giving up on careers? What's going to happen? You know, so it was only when we came to the
00:35:05
conclusion we're like, okay, you know what? Let's not think about this as a lifelong decision. Let's think about this as a six-month decision. I often
00:35:11
tell this to people today. Like we said like we're going to do this for 6 months, but if we do it for 6 months,
00:35:18
we're going to do like all of our energy, all of our time is going to be this for the next six months. So we even
00:35:24
had like a rule. We had to eat breakfast in the office. We had to be there. We were counting the hours who everyone else was there. So it's fair. So we were
00:35:30
like we were living in the office for the first 6 months and we were just like focused on that and nothing else and and
00:35:36
but it was when we decided it was going to be a 6 months and then we're going to evaluate then we kind of was easier to take a decision because you're like yeah
00:35:42
six months whatever that's fine right um so so we got off uh and then what we did
00:35:48
we realized that we couldn't code to your point right we couldn't code we needed a system right so we're like how are we going to solve that so are we
00:35:53
going to raise money try to pay some engineers and hire them what are we going to do and eventually we ended up
00:36:00
the the incubator we're in, they had this um like Christmas drinks thing uh
00:36:05
where they invited some business angels and they invited the companies that were in the incubator to pitch. And so
00:36:10
Nicholas, my co-founder, did like a 30 secondond pitch. And after that, a woman called Yane Valerude uh kind of
00:36:17
approached us and and and she was like, you know, she almost like pushed me up to a corner. She's like, "This is awesome. Tell me what you're going to
00:36:22
do." She was like, she just heard that pitch and she was like, "I like this business idea." And she told us, "Look, I have these engineers and they're like
00:36:28
the best engineers. They're amazing." Cuz she had actually done one of the few really successful exits during
00:36:36
era where they had sold a company for 150 million pounds. Um, and so she had money from that and she had the
00:36:42
engineering team from that. So she said, "I'm going to connect you with those guys." And so we sat down with those engineering guys and they were much more
00:36:48
senior than us than were like in their 40s and you know we were 20s and and there unfortunately a misunderstanding
00:36:55
arose right where our understanding was that these five engineers or four
00:37:00
engineers they really were they were going to join us full-time and work on this and continue developing the company
00:37:06
with us. Right? Their understanding was they were going to give us some source code some code and a system that works
00:37:12
and then they're off and doing something else. And so, uh, but you know, as it
00:37:18
is, and I now try to tell other founders this today, like if you found friends and you want to start a company
00:37:23
together, don't only talk about all the amazing stuff you're going to do and everything you're going to accomplish. Also sit down and ask like, how many
00:37:30
hours per week are you going to spend on this versus because you love exercising and you love, you know, hanging out with
00:37:36
your friends and so forth. Just so like not that, you know, you can do it on 30 hours a week or you could do it on 80,
00:37:42
but just so you're aligned. There can't be two big misalignments. It can be one person doing 30, another one doing 80.
00:37:47
Make it super concrete exactly what expectations you have on each other because otherwise there's just such a big risk of like misalignment and
00:37:53
conflict. Resentment comes quickly, doesn't it? Right. So then what we did so we we brought those engineers on board and they started coding and they were
00:38:00
excellent. They were amazing engineers. So they started coding the system in December. In in April, four months later
00:38:07
we launched with the first customer. So it's four months and they put together a lot of the fundamentals that actually
00:38:12
still you know today are part of what clon offers as a service. So they were super but then you know after that they
00:38:19
were like good luck guys see you later and we were like no no no that's not what we agreed and then we looked into
00:38:25
the contract and we had given off 37% of the company to them for the technology.
00:38:31
Uh and then we had given 10% to Jane uh as the business agent but she gave us
00:38:36
£60,000. Right. Mhm. And so um and then so each one of us then had equal so we had 17% each um and
00:38:44
so that was kind of the setup after that and then we had basically given away now all these percentages to these engineers
00:38:49
and they just left us and so that became a quite tough conflict obviously but
00:38:54
legally speaking they had followed the contract so there was nothing for us to go into contracts and say you know
00:39:00
whatever because the contract was we just we we just hadn't talked about this and we were under different assumptions
00:39:05
of what they meant. the contract was just there. Like we didn't think about, you know, this consequence. So, they ended up leaving us. And it was kind of
00:39:11
funny because in that room at one point of time, uh, in the boardroom, one person said, "Well, you know what? Just
00:39:17
so you know, Sebastian, you have to calm down on this topic. Cla is never going to be the size of a company where it's
00:39:24
going to need four great engineers like this." Christ, that's kind of funny. I almost laugh.
00:39:29
It's kind of funny now as I think back about it. Did you ever resolve that? Sorry. Did you ever buy buy them buy it
00:39:34
buy them out or No. So what ended up happening is to some degree I think just because they didn't understand the potential of what
00:39:40
they had built together with us they also sold much too early. So as a consequence I mean they sold at a very
00:39:46
early day where maybe the company was $10 million worth or something. Oh god that's awful. Yeah. So so I mean well it's not awful
00:39:52
in a sense because to me it feels a bit fair because they got the upside of what they did. If they would have participated longer and so forth they
00:39:58
would have seen a very different upside and they would have built the company with us. But you know, but this was a challenge for us as a consequence to
00:40:03
your point because at least what it allowed us to do is very quickly get a system live and get something going. But
00:40:08
then as they left, I needed to figure out, okay, I need to hire engineers and
00:40:14
I have no clue how to code and how do I evaluate a good engineer from a bad engineer? I have no clue. You're like,
00:40:20
architecture, what is that? You know, like there was like zero knowledge, right? you and that is one of the
00:40:25
biggest challenge I think for a lot of people like managing people that do the same thing that you know yourself is one
00:40:31
thing. Trying to manage somebody that does something that you have no clue how to do is very very difficult. How did you I was in the same place. I
00:40:37
was I knew needed to build a website not technical went on Google just started looking at their own website and using
00:40:43
that as yeah this this is cool this animation looks good I will hire them to build you know. So how did you solve
00:40:49
that problem of not knowing what good looks like? Well, first and foremost, I think unfortunately um you know in what
00:40:56
ended up happening in our situation was that um one of the guys from this engineering team stayed on because they
00:41:03
were still shareholders for a period of time, right? So he stayed on as an adviser and we started hiring some
00:41:08
engineers and some of which were better, some which were worse, some you know as
00:41:14
you will always have a mix and we also got a CTO eventually who came in um and the C he he as a CTO was an amazing
00:41:21
programming and developer but he wasn't necessarily the CTO that would you know
00:41:27
hire the right talent build it he wasn't businessoriented he was very much like technically interested and wanted to
00:41:33
build like really beautiful code bases and stuff like that which you know some engineers tend to have more that
00:41:39
tendencies and what was a frustration to me is that for a long period of time and this was a
00:41:46
challenge in Sweden and stock at that point of time the advisors that we had around us
00:41:51
uh none of them had built a $45 billion company like we are in today none of
00:41:57
them had that experience but they were senior in our opinion compared to myself they had done great corporate big jobs.
00:42:04
We had like, you know, advisers and board members that had corporate backgrounds and been in big institutions
00:42:10
and and so forth. And so they were giving us a lot of advice on topics like, is this the system that you're
00:42:16
building? Is this fast enough? Should you be able to build it faster or slower like the progress and things? And so when they were giving us that advice, it
00:42:22
was bad advice. But we were too young and too inexperienced to be able to recognize that. And so unfortunately, it
00:42:28
took us some time and it created a lot of frustration because I was always sitting there. like does does it really need to take this long time to build
00:42:34
something like and is it really unfair of me to expect that the engineers are
00:42:39
like a little bit interested in the product they're building as well and the business side of it or are they only
00:42:44
always going to be interested in the coding itself and the technical challenge like uh shouldn't I be able to
00:42:50
engage with them on the product side as well like and a lot of times we were like they were like oh we want to build this product you need to give us more
00:42:56
clear specifications and I was like but if I write those specifications what's left to do like That's part of the
00:43:01
creative process to sit together and create these. So, you know, you get stuck in a lot of these things and then
00:43:07
and then eventually I remember I was very frustrated because at one day when Seoia invested and that was why Sequoia
00:43:13
was so important to us because in 2009 we got Sequoa to invest in the company. Michael Morris joined our board and one
00:43:18
of the ambitions we had with that was to get get a some kind of contact point to
00:43:24
somebody that had actually seen large tech companies grow had seen real success of a tech company and start
00:43:30
understanding their mindset. And at that point of time I unfortunately concluded that like it was not going to work with
00:43:36
our CTO because he didn't have that right mindset for it and he was interested in something very different.
00:43:41
He's a great guy in many ways, but he wasn't the person that would be able to allow us to build our engineering organization and and bring us to become
00:43:48
a true tech company and be really technologydriven. And and I remember going into the board eventually and saying like and and at
00:43:54
that point of time uh the representative of the engineers that build the original system who was on my board, he had been
00:44:00
telling me all over and over again like I was like I'm a little bit worried. Should it really be this slow? And he was like, yeah, you know, it's
00:44:06
different. It's this and that. And then eventually I came to him one day and said, look, now I've taken a decision. unfortunately I have to change CTO and
00:44:12
he was like good decision and I was like I almost wanted to smack him in the face I was like for four years you were
00:44:19
telling me that this is okay and now you I'm doing this change and you're saying good decision like that's not like you
00:44:24
shouldn't say you're wrong that would be respecting him more right so there was in that setting we were coming up for
00:44:30
there was a it really nowadays I appreciate much more like how I have to really look through a person ask myself
00:44:36
is this a believable person is this somebody I should really take advice from and I think a lot of entrepreneurs ers that will listen to this and startup
00:44:42
people like be careful with who you're listening to. Have they really contributed to success? Have they really
00:44:48
built success or have they simply been in a company that was successful? Like those are very different different
00:44:54
aspects, right? So being very careful about who you get advice from. So but that's kind of how we solve it. So it was just like we had to learn and test.
00:45:01
And then the last piece of very practical advice that we did which was one of the best things I ever did was
00:45:07
because I was so mixed up like engineering whatever what does it mean? And then I said to my CTO a very
00:45:12
practical thing. And I was like, "Hey, can you show me how you fix a bug?" And so we sat down together by his screen
00:45:20
and he basically took one bug that we had and he started searching in the code and then he wrote you know the fix and
00:45:27
then he wrote a test case for the fix and just sitting and watching him do that made a huge difference for my
00:45:34
understanding of like you know how long to so I think as much as sometimes you may feel like very whatever you're
00:45:39
managing that you don't understand you may feel like oh my god so difficult and they're talking about all these technical terms and so forth sit down
00:45:46
next to spend half a day, spend a day, just look at when they're doing it, a designer or
00:45:51
whatever it is, something that you don't know how to do yourself, just sit next to them, see them do it, and that already will at least put you at a
00:45:58
different level of understanding of, you know, the job and so forth. So, there are practical ways in which you can try to gap that,
00:46:04
you know, bridge that gap. So important because again, you comes back to communication and I had the
00:46:09
exact same thing and uh I think in my first tech business, I wish I'd done exactly that. I wish I'd taken the time
00:46:15
to go and um build empathy towards the the role of my my CTO and um understand
00:46:22
what his job was and I guess how I could make it easier but also to I really also should have had a objective outsider
00:46:28
come in and do an assessment on how he was working, how I was working and everything in between. I think entrepreneurs don't do that. They they
00:46:35
they they I think because they don't know what they don't know. Exactly. You don't know that. So that's the biggest curse in business. Not only
00:46:41
entrepreneurs, it's great managers and leaders and people as well. I think to your point, the really tricky thing is
00:46:46
to know what good looks like. Yeah. Right. What does good look like, right? Oh god. Yeah. That's different. Like you judge some
00:46:52
work like what would great look work look like. And it's when you've established that understanding whether it's in communications, marketing, you
00:46:58
know, whatever. You know what good looks like? Then your job becomes so much easier. But but the only way to find that out obviously to your point is
00:47:03
introducing external people, talking to people, comparing, you know. Uh we also did that actually with my CTO at that
00:47:10
point of time which was one of the things we actually did that led me to conclude that I had to let him go was that I said because I was having a lot
00:47:17
of dialogue like should this takes this long time and so forth. So one thing I eventually said was you know what we do we booked meetings with five other CTOs
00:47:25
in five large Swedish companies. So among them were like Ericson the more traditional ones but it was also like a
00:47:31
gambling company that was doing fantastic. There was a gaming company Dice. Oh yeah. Um you know stuff like that. and we went
00:47:36
and had meetings with them and in those meetings I started raising my concerns and stuff like that and I was listening
00:47:42
to the the other company's CTO's answering to the same discussions. Oh wow. Comparing it to the answer of my CTO and
00:47:50
in that conversation I really saw the difference in how they were attacking these problems and what their philosophy
00:47:55
is and the you know and the level of optimism in which they approach problems as well. for sure because that's for me has been the
00:48:00
biggest differentiator between the really exceptional CTOs I've worked with in San Francisco when I was there versus
00:48:06
bad ones is they have a everything is possible attitude right and those people are an absolute joy to work with speed
00:48:11
and optimism in a in a CTO is just makes your life for sure and again I just want to highlight here that like my CTO wasn't
00:48:18
bad he wasn't bad he he was totally fine and okay but he
00:48:23
wasn't the right person to build a $45 million company like that was just like two different things,
00:48:29
right? Many of those. No. No. Exactly. Right. So, he wasn't exceptional and he didn't have the right
00:48:34
mentality. Yeah. To to do what we're doing now. Pain. Yeah. Part of the reason I started this
00:48:40
podcast was because and why it's called the driver CEO is I wanted to show um I wanted to really give a fair impression
00:48:46
of the other side of entrepreneurship. It's been super glamorized. It's probably why you know that stat you shared where it went from seven to 70%.
00:48:53
That's probably why it's now seen as a very sort of sort of glamorous thing. And I wanted to create a bit of a a
00:48:58
platform to share some of the harder parts of business. And listen, you've built a company worth $45 billion. Like
00:49:04
I know that it was painful. Mhm. So talk to me about the the pain and the
00:49:10
unexpected pain that might have put you off starting this had you known it. Had you been had you not been naive enough
00:49:15
to to realize how painful it is at times? But I think that like my a lot of my
00:49:22
pain I would feel equals when I see athletes,
00:49:29
you know, trying to throw or trying to jump and then failing and the frustration that you see in them when
00:49:36
they cannot achieve what they want to accomplish. I feel that's a lot of the pain that I've experienced. So like my a
00:49:42
lot of my frustration and pain has been associated with like oh you know I know we can do this. I know we have the
00:49:48
opportunity to do this and we're just not getting there. We're not getting there. It's not getting through. It's not happening the way it could be. I
00:49:55
think that's a big piece of a pain for me is that lack of like ah so
00:50:01
frustrating to feel like you're so close something could be there but it's not that. Um I think that that's one part.
00:50:07
And I mean another part is obviously um you know
00:50:13
when things go wrong and you're frustrated because you know you wanted something to be better and it didn't
00:50:19
work out and and stuff like that. So you're very like uh you're challenged by those situations
00:50:24
in terms of stress. Mhm. How do you feel that and how have you dealt with that? Um
00:50:32
I am not that stressed to be honest. I don't know why. It's almost like to some
00:50:37
degree I'm almost more stressed when things are good.
00:50:43
No, because like like when we have some crisis or something happens, right? Like you know, we had an incident with some
00:50:48
breach of data uh for example um few months ago, right? In those situations,
00:50:54
as much as it's painful that something's happened and I'm sad about potential consequences for individuals that we
00:51:00
might have made some errors, I feel like it all becomes like execution mode. We bring everyone into
00:51:06
room. It's just like what do we do? What do we do now? And I kind of in a way enjoy that work. It's very concrete.
00:51:13
It's very like you know focused. And you're like there's nothing else. You have to do only this now. Let's see about what can we do about this problem?
00:51:19
How are we going to fix it? Who's doing what? You know, and so forth. In those situations, I don't feel that stressed. Actually, I can even feel an adrenaline
00:51:26
in that situation. As much as it's painful to me to see the consequences, I can feel an adrenaline and like, let's
00:51:32
get this to work. Let's do this now. Let's, you know, let's take on this challenge that has suddenly arised.
00:51:38
Um, it's funny, the best leaders, and I'm sure you'll find this even in your company, all seem to speak to that. They all seem
00:51:43
to be really emotionless in those the the absolute chaos moments, right? And it becomes, you know, a methodical
00:51:49
process of how to solve the problem. Yeah. Versus and and I do think again as much as you
00:51:55
know I don't want to obviously I feel a lot of pain from the perspective of like
00:52:00
if we've done a mistake or done something wrong as a company it might have had implications for our customers or whatever that's very painful but at
00:52:06
the same point of time those incidents or the situations when you gone through something that was very chaotic or very
00:52:11
challenging are the moments that have created the strongest relationships within the companies have shown you know
00:52:18
has shown some amazing talent stepping up to like it's a little bit like you go
00:52:24
on a vacation, it's just sunny, you don't really remember it, but if you had like a, you know, a thunderstorm, you you'll talk about it for for for years,
00:52:31
right? So, like there's something to that. Um, so I think my stress may actually more come from sometimes when I
00:52:36
feel like we're all kind of happy. We all feel it's going well. Like it cannot be true. There must be something that's
00:52:42
wrong. And I think Alex sitting over there will will um we'll kind of smile now because I think you will recognize
00:52:48
this. But like um so I think that that's where I actually more get stressed from
00:52:53
like are we doing fast enough? Is this good enough? Like that's really interesting. I it come also relates to your point about bit
00:52:58
needing to be challenged. you talked about in school when you'd read the book and you got bored and that it's funny because I I was
00:53:04
writing my book and I finished writing my book recently and it was published and one of the paragraphs in it talks about how I used to believe that my life
00:53:11
was a um the pursuit of trying to get to stability but in fact when you look at when people arrive at a point of stability everything is fine
00:53:18
when they've won the gold medal then they descend into chaos then they get depression and they get
00:53:23
they lose their sense of purpose and then they they get irritable so I I flipped it and thought you know my life is actually the the the the pursuit of
00:53:29
of staying in chaos because chaos is my stability and if I ever get to stability, completed goals, nothing to
00:53:35
strive for, then I descend into chaos. And it sounds exactly like what you've described there. Aspiring and working for things is so
00:53:41
motivating, important. I think to some degree, as much as Clana had a lot of success in Europe, there's a kind of funny story around this topic because
00:53:47
um you know, we were doing really well in Europe and developing our services, but there wasn't necessarily that much fierce competition from one perspective,
00:53:54
right? And then as we were moving into the US market, there's this company in
00:53:59
Australia called Afterpay run by Nick. Oh yeah. And they're competing head-on with us, right? And they were doing really well.
00:54:06
This is back in like 2018. And I was like, ah, this is so annoying. Like
00:54:12
they're coming in here, they're taking our market share, they're doing our product, they're copying us, you know, all this frustration building up. And
00:54:17
the funny thing is I happen at that point of time to be visiting with Mammud who runs Bhoo, right? Oh, good friend of mine.
00:54:22
So yeah. So I'm sitting down with Mimmude and I'm like complaining to him and I'm like look Mimmude it's a little
00:54:28
bit like you know you know the Olympics when there's this guy who's been like this is his fourth Olympic and everyone
00:54:34
knows like now finally he's going to get the gold matter because he's been training like and then this young guy comes from nowhere and like but that's
00:54:41
so unfair. This is my fourth Olympic and this guy comes in and Mimmude looks at me and he's just like Sebastian shut up.
00:54:49
Stop whining. stop whining and like this is going to make you so much better. You
00:54:55
have been not having proper competition. You now have proper competition and it is so true. CLA in the last 3 years
00:55:02
thanks to the competition with Afterpay in the US has become such a much better company. It has helped us so much to
00:55:08
improve to get focused like and it was just so funny when he was just like stop whining me and I can't you know he will
00:55:14
speak his Manchester. I can't do that. I won't be able to try to to replicate how you express this but I thought it was
00:55:20
really funny. Well, that's my mood. I remember the first time I met him. Um, I was in his office four days that week and he insulted me several times, but in
00:55:26
the most loving way, like you remember him smashing his pen on the desk and telling me how stupid I was because of a
00:55:31
decision I was going to make. And we've been I've been like good family friends with with the whole family for for a very very long time.
00:55:38
Just on that point then, what was the toughest moment in your cler journey? A moment you think that was that was the
00:55:44
worst [ __ ] day. Similar to there's been some media scrutiny of us in the UK. We had a similar experience in in Swedenbird a
00:55:51
few years earlier which was in around 2012 and 13 and and like it started off
00:55:57
with this like media inquiry about what we were doing because we were you know first just like oh it's an amazing successful company and then where was
00:56:03
people like oh we're actually doing credit and what does that mean and stuff like that and so there started to be quite a lot of like and it actually started with a
00:56:10
mistake that we had done internally it was an operational mistake we had done a stupid thing um and and that had
00:56:15
resulted into a lot of customer complaints and stuff which was our own fault. But that was the beginning of it. And and I think through that process
00:56:22
when the paper started writing about us in a negative way, um I kind of jumped
00:56:28
in and it's kind of funny because I was actually at that point of time they had comments fields on the articles. So I would go into the comments field and
00:56:33
write my responses in real time and then other consumers and readers would answer and I would answer them and even the
00:56:40
newspapers started writing about like look Sebastian CEO is on our forum discussing the topics. So I was very
00:56:45
engaged. She was sitting like working 24-hour and I was thinking about like how do we give because quickly the media
00:56:51
went you know out of control and there was a lot of bias and and you know inaccurate reporting and not just like a
00:56:58
lot of things some were accurate and some was fair but a lot of it was also like out there and then obviously the
00:57:03
banks because we are a big threat to the establishment banks so even you know
00:57:09
afterwards I've heard from journalists that like a ton of emails were coming from banks saying like oh you know
00:57:14
they're bad they're this and or whatever cuz they simply, you know, they're threatened by our existence. And so, um,
00:57:19
so there was that going on. But I remember what was the hardest thing to me to point is that that situation
00:57:25
itself was fine, but at some point of time the um uh the kind of articles and
00:57:33
and the writing about us shifted from they're bad, they've done these mistakes
00:57:38
to they have bad intent. They're here to screw customers over, to do bad things,
00:57:44
right? And that was tough. That was really tough because I know that wasn't true and I know that we have good
00:57:49
intentions and we're trying to do that. We have done mistakes and we can fix things. But being judged and questioned
00:57:55
on your intentions of what you Yes, that hurt a lot and I took that very hard and I took that to heart. Um, so that was
00:58:02
very very challenging to cope with. When those things happen, what kind of partner do you become to your your
00:58:08
romantic partner? your wife. You got a wife. Yeah. Yeah. She knows that I'm like extremely
00:58:14
passionate about Clana and the company and and I think that she's um she knows
00:58:20
that like a lot of my thought process will be here all the time. Right. So I think that but but you know I'm very lucky in the sense that Nina is an
00:58:27
amazing uh person herself. She's done amazing things and now she's running a startup with 30 people. Um so that helps
00:58:35
because she has her own like things and and and actually we can come together at dinner table and we can you know um we
00:58:42
can talk about the challenges and the things that we um um that we face
00:58:47
and we can exchange thoughts about that. So it it we have three kids as well right I have a four-year-old and a six-year-old and a seven-year-old. So um
00:58:54
so I actually you know as much as I live my life I try to work really hard and then come home turn off the phone be
00:59:01
very present with the kids and then they go to sleep and then I get to work some more and then me and my wife has a very
00:59:07
like which is I think maybe most families with kids our age but you have a very strict you always thought that
00:59:12
that was going to happen. You're going to stay spontaneous and all that you end up having an extremely strict calendar where it's like Wednesday is dinner
00:59:18
night me and Nina have dinner together Tuesday we're working like nights and so forth. There's extremely strict
00:59:23
calendars to make that work. Quick one. As you probably know by now, I'm trying to make my life a little bit
00:59:29
more sustainable. And I consider myself to be on a bit of a sustainability journey in the same way that I'm on a health journey. And it's a privilege to
00:59:35
be able to share that with all of you. And you you all know if you've listened to the last podcast that I traded in my Range Rover Sport in for an electric
00:59:41
bicycle, which is now my only vehicle. And next year hopefully I'll have my electric car too if Tesla hurry up with
00:59:48
a Cybert truck. And that's where my energy comes into my life and my sort of sustainability journey. It makes your
00:59:53
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many many more. You you're grew up from a very humble beginnings with an immigrant family as you've said and
01:00:46
because of the success of Clana that's now made you very wealthy and it's something wealth beyond probably you
01:00:51
ever imagined. I don't know don't know how ambitious you were but um what role does that that play now in your life in
01:00:56
terms of your relationship with money? It was the thing that as you say you thought might have been liberation from
01:01:02
a lot of pain and heartache and what role does does the financial um side of it success can play play your life? I
01:01:09
think it's an interesting topic and and you know I've been asked sometimes like the classic question like does money make you happy right and and you know I
01:01:18
I I understand why some people try to say no it doesn't because to some degree
01:01:23
like you're the same person even if you have a different income level and wealth than you used to have. So you're the
01:01:30
same person. You still get angry at things and sad at things. You know, still things happens. You you lose a
01:01:35
relative or something happens in your life, you know, you go up and down. So from from one perspective, I can
01:01:40
understand why people But I've stopped saying that because I actually think that it's slightly out of touch. I mean,
01:01:45
there are elements in my life I don't have to worry about. Like I mean I can still remember the feeling of like you
01:01:53
know I used to go into 7-Eleven and I would be like I would just love to have orange juice but I can't afford it or I
01:02:00
would just love to have a Snickers or I would just like like and I remember the day coming in into 7-Eleven like it
01:02:06
doesn't matter. I can buy whatever I like in the store. It will have no impact and that is a difference and I I
01:02:12
just you know I think it's a little bit like out of touch to say that that doesn't impact you. I don't have to worry. I never worry about finances.
01:02:19
Like it's all taken care of, right? And that obviously creates a different life.
01:02:24
It gives you a different then I'm not a big like I'm I I don't like have 10 cars or anything like that. I'm not a big
01:02:30
interested in cars. I don't like I'm not necessarily the person I I have a couple of things like I have for example my I'm
01:02:35
very very proud that I bought a Steinway piano that is selfplaying. Oh, perfect.
01:02:40
Yes. So you actually have this like app like Spotify and you can go in and select. Perfect. And you can sit there do the
01:02:45
video. Yeah, exactly. Pretend that I have learned to play piano as well. So like I have some like luxuries that I've really
01:02:51
afforded myself that I think we have in a beautiful house and and and things like that. But but you know, but I still think that
01:02:57
like the key thing is I don't worry about it and I know that most people and I remember myself worrying about it,
01:03:03
right? Worrying about next month, end of you know, end of these things and and that is a difference in life obviously,
01:03:09
right? So that has changed. I read something which was um was quite difficult to read actually which was about your father
01:03:15
and his response to your success. Yeah. Not being not being particularly proud
01:03:20
necessarily of your success. Yeah. But that also comes back to alcoholics like because so what ended up
01:03:27
happening in my u my life right is that u my grandpa unfortunately drank himself
01:03:33
to death and then when I was growing up my father was very conservative and I never saw alcohol in our house. he
01:03:39
barely had a bad glass of wine and unfortunately that started changing in my like teens. So I started discovering
01:03:47
bottles of vodka at home and so forth. And then over time uh there were instances where I would come home and
01:03:53
dad would be quite drunk and and act in a very irrational way and he became more aggressive and and so forth. And and and
01:04:02
this was at a point of time where I was still out partying and drinking and so forth. And it was interesting because at
01:04:08
that point of time as and that just tells you about you know the problems of alcohol uh um addiction I never
01:04:17
reflected that maybe I have a problem as well right that was like out of course not like there was my father who
01:04:24
had an issue right and but he unfortunately found himself in a spiral
01:04:29
in his life where and I think it's almost like people find themselves in a positive spiral negative spiral the
01:04:35
posit also spiral is like you know what I can actually affect my own life and now I'm going to try it a little bit oo
01:04:41
things got better you know what I can maybe do even more I can do even more and then some people are on that
01:04:46
positive part what other people find themselves in a negative spir like I have found myself in this it's not my
01:04:52
fault it's everything else's fault and then you know things get even worse and then look and they just found himself in
01:04:59
a very negative spiral and obviously I'm simplifying people are different in all these situations but there's something in that and and dad found himself in
01:05:05
that spiral where it was everyone everyone else and alcohol tends to extrapolate that and make it even
01:05:11
stronger that you you basically blame everything else and you take not don't take the responsibility that's the
01:05:16
beginning of the 12 steps of the anonymous alcoholis is actually to take responsibility for your own actions and
01:05:22
so unfortunately and it it it went as far as as um you know he he lost his job
01:05:30
he he lost his apartment and uh and I found myself in a very tricky situation because at simple my economical
01:05:36
situation was improving heavily and I was trying to figure out what what do I do now because
01:05:42
he could call me and he would ask for money and I would be like well of course I want to help my father and so I would
01:05:49
help him and then if I did that I didn't hear from him for a couple of days and then he would call me super drunk or
01:05:54
text me something very you know nasty and so it was very difficult because and then I started seeing counselors and
01:06:00
understanding that like maybe actually in this situation I needed to put like limits you know, and and ask him to not um uh
01:06:09
to to say, "Look, I'm not going to do this unless, you know, you do this and stuff like that," which was kind of the right way to deal with it. But very very
01:06:16
obviously tricky. And unfortunately, in my situation, it didn't uh didn't work. So, at the end, there was a
01:06:22
situation where, you know, um he was um uh he was about to lose his apartment
01:06:29
and he'd had a discussion with me and I was very like ambiguous. Should I help him, should I help him or not? And um
01:06:36
and then I was it was an evening in in the office and suddenly I see my phone's phone number. He's calling me on the
01:06:41
phone and I was like I don't know yet what the right answer is. Should I help him or not? What should I do? It's
01:06:46
difficult. So I was like I'm going to call him later. So I didn't answer the phone. I went home. I had dinner with my
01:06:52
wife and we talked about it and then I was like no this time around I should probably help him. Uh I decided and I
01:06:58
tried to call him and he didn't answer and I emailed he didn't answer. And I was like, "Okay, fine. Maybe you just,
01:07:04
you know, whatever." And then in the morning, my mother called and said he was dead, right? So it was a so that was
01:07:10
like a very very obviously dramatic moment in my life and very difficult like uh you know from that perspective.
01:07:17
So um he he was so smart. He was so thoughtful. He had gone to the places
01:07:25
where he had worked. He had tried to do things better and so forth. He had been in normal places where if you know I
01:07:31
remember him working for the municipality for example and he integ like he created some Excel systems that would rationalize everybody's work and
01:07:38
nobody wanted to rationalize their work because that meant that they would have less to do and then maybe somebody would lost their jobs. So he's doing all these
01:07:44
things and nobody was showing gratitude to his attempts of trying to fix things and things similarities to what I'm
01:07:50
doing. I could see him having those things, but because of his background, because of his situation, and to some
01:07:55
degree probably because of his ab, you know, addiction, he just found himself in this negative spiral rather than the positive spiral that I found myself in.
01:08:02
And it just made him, you know, more more depressed and and and and that made him also very difficult for him to relate to me because like in one way I
01:08:11
must believe and hope that at some point of time he was proud and and and you know, happy about how things have
01:08:16
evolved in my life. But at the same point of time, it was very clear that he felt frustrated by the fact that what he
01:08:23
had gotten and how his life had turned out compared to mine. As as as crazy it might seem that your father would relate
01:08:29
in those terms, but I think unfortunately that was part of the case. So, you know, it's very tricky and
01:08:34
difficult. Um and uh but I'm very happy at least that I stopped drinking and I'm I'm a I'm a sober alcoholic since nine
01:08:41
years now. So, Oh, amazing. Yeah. Well done. My last question then. Um that was incredibly, you know, incredibly moving for so many reasons.
01:08:47
And I think it's um it's really also inspiring that you have that sense of sort of empathy to be able to look back
01:08:53
at on your father and understand that a lot of his um circumstances came from his own pain
01:08:59
and that was a generational cycle. Yes. One that you you have the power to to to stop. Yes. Per say. And um and
01:09:06
also to kind of it sounds like you've kind of forgiven him for Yeah, I have because look I think you
01:09:11
know people I don't think people still fully understand alcohol uh alcoholism in my opinion. It is a disease. He was
01:09:18
sick. He had an you know he had an addiction. Yes. Was he does that mean that he couldn't cure himself? No. He
01:09:25
could cure himself. If he would have found himself on a positive spiral he might have been able to cure himself. That doesn't mean he wasn't sick. This
01:09:31
the father that I had last years was not my true father. Those are not the memories that I have from my youth when
01:09:37
he would bring me into the forest outside Upsola and we would go on long walks together and we would fantasize
01:09:42
about being space explorers or he would introduce me to amazing science fiction literature or what are these things like
01:09:48
there are different memories of my father that was my true father that was a sick man and and that's just
01:09:54
unfortunately like how things develop right so I know you're a father um three beautiful kids um what matters to you in
01:10:03
terms of the the principles in which you you hope to raise them. And obviously now, as we talked about at the start of
01:10:08
this podcast, um much of the the I guess the the circumstances that created you
01:10:14
were because you you were you went without and you didn't have, you know, things handed to you and you formed that
01:10:19
connection that if I'm going to be then it's going to be a direct result of my actions. So, what do you what's your thinking as and what do you want to
01:10:25
impart on them? And yeah, this it's it's a topic I tend to talk a lot about with my wife and it's
01:10:31
very difficult. Um, I mean it it's a mix, right? Because first and foremost, like obviously my kids are not going to
01:10:38
have the same upbringing that I had. Like there is a massive difference like you know look at our vacations, look at our summer house, look at like all the
01:10:44
things there like there's no way I'm going to be able to ever like recreate any of that. But um but that's you know
01:10:50
that's part of it. And I but I do think also like when it comes to being spoiled like to some degree to be entirely fair
01:10:56
like and I love my mother. She's amazing. But she did spoil me. She had a very hard time saying no. And if we were
01:11:01
in the grocery store and there was some candy and I would be like I want candy. She tended to give me the candy. So I'm
01:11:07
a pretty spoiled person by my upbringing. Even though we didn't have that much financial means. Now she wouldn't buy the candy if there was no
01:11:13
money left. But if there was money left she tended to buy it and then there was no money left for something else. Right. So like she had my my especially my mom
01:11:19
had very hard time putting nos to me and she would say yes to basically everything as long as she could
01:11:25
basically right um so you can spoil somebody without having financial means to some degree right um
01:11:31
now uh so that's one thing but but there is something where you know and it was funny because now it's like my son was
01:11:38
invited to like a you know a party a birthday party with some of his friends like six years old right and you're standing and talking to the parents and
01:11:45
we have this amazing school is not a private. It is a private school, but it's not kind of though like upper class
01:11:51
private schools. It's actually a really nice school with a good mix of people from all types of society and stuff and but very ambitious teachers and and a
01:11:58
good school and and we're starting and the other parents are a little bit like complaining about like, you know, oh
01:12:04
this could be better and this could be better and I it's not like I didn't agree with them that some things were um
01:12:09
couldn't be improved in our school as well as there always can be. But then I told him to I I I like stopped him a
01:12:15
little bit and said, "You know what? I to be honest like for myself if I think about the schools that I went to in the
01:12:20
environment I brought up into I sometimes wonder whether I want my kids to continue going to this very good
01:12:26
school or whether maybe when they're like 12 or 13 I'm going to try to find
01:12:31
the worst school in Sweden and put them in there for 3 years just to create a little bit of resistance like to get
01:12:38
something like a different perspective on like be in an environment where it's very difficult and like I was like
01:12:44
because I really want them to get the resistance. I want them to get to know
01:12:49
themselves and get to know that they can actually fend for themselves, that they can solve these problem for themselves.
01:12:54
I don't want them to be without resistance. And I feel like all of our parenting today is about like remove all resistance and I'm like no no I want
01:13:01
some resistance. And the funny thing is I'm telling this to the other um parents and they're all looking at me like is he
01:13:06
stupid? Is he is he wacko? Like what's wrong with him? Like you know I was like
01:13:11
no no no I want some resistance right? And I remember that just to to round off. Look, when we did that round the
01:13:17
world trip, uh we had very little money on that trip and at some point of time we arrived
01:13:22
from Singapore to to to uh Brisbane and we were going down to Sydney and we were actually supposed to take the cargo ship
01:13:28
the next day to go to uh US already. So we were only going to stay one day in Australia, but we missed the boat. We
01:13:35
had an unfortunate event and we came too late and the cargo ship was not going to wait for two passengers, I promise you. So, they just left and we went to the
01:13:43
firm that helped us find these cargoers ship trips and they said, "Sorry, next boat is in a month." And we're like, "Okay, but we don't have any budget, no
01:13:50
money, and now we're like stuck in Australia for a month." Obviously, quite a nice place to be stuck, honestly. But
01:13:55
but still like, and I remember walking down the street, I think it was Elizabeth Street or something in in Sydney. And I remember
01:14:02
that like I have no job. I have no money. I have nowhere to stay. I have only my backpack. and you were like,
01:14:08
"And we're going to stay here for a month. Let's try to start a life." And we had to find a place to live that was affordable. And we had to find a job.
01:14:15
And we actually started working as uh furniture movers for a company called City Move. Everyone worked there called
01:14:20
it Chitty Move because they had this but it was like and we were and so but the point is that like it taught me I can
01:14:27
fend for myself. I'll survive and like it's only dependent on me and it that
01:14:32
resistance created a sense of like you know I can do this and so forth, right?
01:14:37
And So that's what I hope to give my children somehow. But how would you do that if you pass them your wealth?
01:14:42
Well, that I'm not sure I'm going to pass them the wealth. So I actually have officially said in some interviews in Sweden that I am and and my wife and me
01:14:49
are still not entirely aligned on this topic, but I have actually said I'm not going to give them anything. And I tell them in that um and it was even funny
01:14:56
because you know in Sweden I'm quite well known. So even the fact that I said so on public TV then my kids heard from
01:15:03
their friends like dad you said on TV that you're not going to give us anything. That's unfair. We want like I
01:15:09
know like stuff. No, but I've been telling you consistently like when you're 18 years old, you're on your own. Like and then my wife always but we may
01:15:15
buy an apartment for them, right? And I was like I'm not sure. Let's see. Like I just there is to your point like I mean
01:15:23
I don't I I don't want to like and and in Sweden also it's a little bit provocative for somebody with money to say I'm not going to give anything
01:15:28
because I I don't I'm not saying I don't believe in welfare. I think sometimes you need to support people in in difficult situations and so forth. So I
01:15:34
said look I'm not talking about people in general. I'm only talking about my kids, but for my own kids, I'm not
01:15:40
convinced that giving them all of this is going to make them happier. And I meet a lot of people from family wealth
01:15:46
that have inherited wealth that are extremely unhappy with the pressure and the expectations that comes with that.
01:15:52
So, as much as again, I I'm not saying that money doesn't make you happy. We've already talked about it, but like there
01:15:57
are some aspects of it that are very difficult. And I think that like in general building a person's own
01:16:03
self-confidence and belief in their own abilities to actually have a positive impact on their lives. I still still
01:16:09
think that that is the key, you know, uh path to happiness. I agree. Listen, Sebastian, thank you so
01:16:16
much for your time and your honesty and your humility and um you're a massive inspiration to me for so many reasons,
01:16:21
not least for your business success, but I really do come back to that point about you building such a great tech
01:16:26
company without technical expertise. I hear it all day every day from entrepreneurs. I felt it myself. I think I've told myself that there's certain
01:16:32
industries I can't build in because of that because I lack fundamental expertise there. Um, and I think you you
01:16:38
kind of buck that trend and prove to me and entrepreneurs listening that you can. Um, if you have the drive and
01:16:44
determination and that underlying self-belief to get there. What you've done is just absolutely phenomenal.
01:16:49
Unbelievably pleasant human being as well. And um, you're very sort of very very honest and I think that's um,
01:16:55
that's a gift that that I'm glad you shared with us. Thank you. Um, but yeah, thank you so much for your time and uh I can't wait to continue to
01:17:01
watch your journey. It's been a pleasure. Exciting. Thank you. Thank you so much.
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