Europe’s biggest fintechs continue to be a strong training ground for the continent’s employees-turned-entrepreneurs, with Klarna coming out on top as Europe’s number one fintech founder factory.
According to a report by VC firm Accel and data platform Dealroom released in October this year, Klarna alumni have now launched a total of 62 startups, pipping last year’s top dog Revolut to second place with 49.
Since its founding in 2005, the Swedish buy now, pay later giant has expanded its horizons to also offer a smart shopping assistant, a checkout solution and banking products, including a personal account for deposits and cashback rewards. In the process, it’s raised $4.2bn in funding from investors including Sequoia Capital and Atomico and turned many of its former employees into entrepreneurs in Europe.
And earlier this week, Klarna made its first steps to becoming a publicly traded company by submitting a draft registration statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
We thought that made it a good time to track down the eight businesses founded by ex-Klarna employees in 2023 and 2024. If we’ve missed any, please reach out.
Nikhil Ninne, Fermapulse
Role at Klarna: Ninne was product manager and accountable group lead at Klarna’s Berlin office between 2018 and 2021. He led a team of around 30 people in charge of building products to enable real-time risk assessments for payments, and was part of the hiring committee at its German headquarters.
Ninne describes Klarna as a fast-paced but collaborative environment where early employees were encouraged to take ownership of specific problem areas.
“The leadership team managed to foster a collaborative culture in such a demanding environment, which meant I got a chance to learn a lot from my peers while making decisions that had an impact on millions of users’ payment experiences,” he told Sifted.
New venture: Ninne founded Fermapulse in September 2023, which provides an Industrial Internet of Things solution for beer breweries. The startup has developed a specialised fermentation monitoring product that optimises production for breweries and is currently a team of two.
Amanda Lindgren and Julia Klyvare, EndoGyn
Role at Klarna: Lindgren and Klyvare both worked at Klarna for two years as brand and PR creatives in the global brand activation team at its Stockholm HQ.
New venture: The duo founded Stockholm-HQ’d EndoGyn last year, a healthtech focused on endometriosis, a disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows in other parts of the body. It’s the first clinic and digital care platform in Sweden focused on the disease and early diagnosis, say the founders.
Endogyn is now in the process of expanding its offering to focus on other common female health issues such as PCOS, PMDS, perimenopause and menopause, fertility and postpartum care. It’s currently a team of 14 and says it is already profitable.
David Schonfelder, Hanah
Role at Klarna: Schonfelder worked as a product analyst at Klarna between 2019 and 2021, according to his LinkedIn.
New venture: He founded Hanah in August this year, a marketplace for “ethical shopping” offering a curated collection of sustainable homecare goods. It currently employs four people, according to its LinkedIn.
Ramon Garate and Prasoon Shukla, Pretzel AI
Role at Klarna: Garate was a software engineer at Klarna between 2020 to 2022, while Shukla was a data scientist at the company for two years.
New venture: The pair founded Pretzel AI this year, “a modern and open-source Jupyter Notebook (a web-based notebook for interactive computing) alternative for data scientists and analysts”, according to its website. The startup took part in this year’s winter 2024 edition of the startup accelerator Y Combinator.
Aurélien Franky, Prompt Studio
Role at Klarna: Franky was a software engineer at Klarna between June 2020 and November 2023.
New venture: He founded Prompt Studio last year, a company building “AI-first interactive notebooks” designed for collaboration. It’s currently a team of four, according to LinkedIn.
Alex Naughton, Qlarifi
Role at Klarna: Naughton served as Klarna’s head of UK, Ireland and the Netherlands for three and a half years, where he oversaw the company’s Ireland launch.
“Klarna has a fast paced, iterative and adaptive culture that demands senior leaders be deeply embedded,” he told Sifted. “This approach taught me how to build and scale businesses with agility.”
New venture: Naughton founded Qlarifi in October last year, a startup aggregating BNPL consumer data to create a complete picture of customers’ borrowing and repayment history across different providers. It’s currently in the testing phase with several BNPL providers and will look to fundraise in the coming months.
Emil Fröberg, Vectorview
Role at Klarna: Fröberg was a senior product analyst at Klarna, working in its Stockholm HQ between August 2020 and October 2023.
New venture: In September 2024, he founded Vectorview, which builds evaluation tools to benchmark safety, risk and performance for LLMs and AI agents. Like Pretzel AI, it was also part of Y Combinator’s 2024 winter cohort.
Alex Lungu and Robin Wingårdh, Wingbits
Role at Klarna: Lungu worked as a software engineer at Klarna for over four years while Wingårdh was a senior business development manager at the company between March 2022 and August 2023.
New venture: Last year, the pair founded Wingbits, a startup building a flight tracking network using blockchain technology to reward network contributors for data collection. The company raised a $3.5m seed funding round in June led by Borderless Capital and Tribe Capital.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/klarna-alumni-founders-latest/
