Over the last twelve months, the head of comms at European venture capital firm Atomico has been quite fond of ‘reminding’ me that I had previously turned down the opportunity to interview Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the founder of European ‘buy now, play later’ sensation Klarna.

The offer was first made in August 2019, shortly after the Swedish company closed a $460 million funding round, giving it a $5.5 billion valuation. ‘The company isn’t that interesting to me at this time,’ I allegedly replied, giving him the typical journalistic brush off.

In retrospect, a more apt response would have been to tell the Aussie spin doctor to come back once Klarna’s valuation had doubled. Because that’s exactly what happened, only this time it was me who did the asking.

The resulting piece – an opus, if you will – saw me spend around 2.5 hours talking to the Klarna founder, after we ran out of time during our original allotted hour. It was a robust conversation and hopefully without any of the star-struck pretence of access journalism sometimes on display when billionaire tech founders are profiled.

In fact, it would be wrong to call the 8,000 word article a profile of Siemiatkowski, although it definitely ventures into profile territory. More accurate, the in-depth interview – along with cameo roles from Skype and Atomico founder Niklas Zennström, and financial campaigner Alice Tapper – serves as the narrative device to delve into Klarna’s history and business model, the ethics of a company that offers easy credit, and Klarna’s challenger banking future.

To read the full feature, aptly titled ‘Making sense of Klarna,’ you’ll need to have an Extra Crunch subscription, which is only £5 for the first month. I know paywalls aren’t for everyone but if you want to support the journalism I do, this is by far the best way. And if you need any more encouragement, TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Matthew Panzarino called the piece an ‘absolute banger’ and the definitive Klarna feature (he may be a little biased, of course!).

Bonus: Which European VC has been spending lockdown in Ibiza?

My final gig of the year was to moderate a panel for Atomico’s ‘State of European Tech Report’ event. This saw me interview two founders – Klarna’s Siemiatkowski again, and Omio founder Naren Shaam – in order to tease out the most valuable lessons they learned this year during the pandemic and any advice they would give to younger founders today. It was a smart lineup: Klarna has had a ‘good’ pandemic as e-commerce has gone gangbusters, while Omio was hit badly by the global halt in travel but still managed to raise $100 million in additional funding. Both were relatively candid about their experiences.

Overall, the virtual event was a stellar debut from the team at Atomico, and not just because I was asked to take part! It also proved a long-held theory of mine: some conferences don’t need to be nearly as bad as they are. Just pick the right people and put them with the right topics and the right moderators. It sounds easy, but obviously it isn’t.

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