In the three years the scheme ran, 1998-2001, 850,000 home computers were purchased through it, reaching almost a quarter of the country’s then-four million households, who didn’t have to pay for the machines and thus included many people who were otherwise unable to afford them. That’s the view of Siemiatkowski and several tech CEOs and venture capitalists interviewed by Reuters. Sweden’s home computer drive, and concurrent early investment in Internet connectivity, help explain why its capital Stockholm has become such rich soil for startups, birthing and incubating the likes of Spotify, Skype, and Klarna, even though it has some of the highest tax rates in the world. It hasn’t given details, though many bankers predict it will list in New York early next year. Fast-forward more than two decades, and his payments firm Klarna is valued at $46 billion (roughly Rs. Siemiatkowski began coding on that computer when he was 16. ![]() “Computers were inaccessible for low-income families such as mine, but when the reform came into play, my mother bought us a computer the very next day,” he told Reuters. In particular, the 39-year-old pinpoints a late-1990s government policy to put a computer in every home. ![]() As Klarna’s billionaire founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski prepares to stage one of the biggest-ever European fintech company listings, a feast of capitalism, he credits an unlikely backer for his runaway success: the Swedish welfare state.
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