Klarna ogłasza uruchomienie centrum technologicznego w Warszawie. Firma do 2025 roku zamierza zatrudnić w Polsce ponad 100 inżynierów, chce także włączyć się w tworzenie rodzimego ekosystemu AI. O strategii Klarny, a także pomyśle na polski rynek rozmawiamy z Sebastianem Siemiątkowskim, co-founderem i CEO firmy.
Questions asked in this interview
7
0:07Maybe let's start with this: what idea does Klarna have for the Polish market and for this technological hub that they are announcing?
1:44From this slightly more international perspective, in which area are Polish innovators particularly good?
2:30The Polish technology ecosystem to develop even more dynamically?
5:35What do you tell about Poland, I don't know, to foreign partners, foreign clients with whom you cooperate?
7:28Is Klarna, for example, open to this type of initiative to get involved in building our Polish national strategy?
11:45... in any other way, for example by investing in interesting Polish startups, examples of foreign companies that started to develop globally then, for example, develop in Poland through acquisitions or through investments in young companies?
12:42To what extent do you think it will change the fintech industry?
Hello, good morning. Kuba Dobroszek, monthly magazine My Company Polska. Beautiful weather, wonderful views, and a special guest because Sebastian Siemiatkowski, co-founder, is with me. And what a special occasion, too, because Klarna announces the creation of a technological hub in Poland in Warsaw. So there will be an opportunity to talk a little about it, and about artificial intelligence and other technologies. I'm very pleased that you're with us. Thank you very much. Sebastian, to begin with, just such a question. Maybe let's start with this: what idea does Klarna have for the Polish market and for this technological hub that they are announcing?
It's becoming less and less, and I think we are one of the companies that have taken that further. But with that said, we still at the same time are in desperate need of very specific and extraordinary talent, and that is engineering talent that has curiosity, willing to learn new things, and wants to lean in and explore how to use AI to build extraordinary stuff. Once we were looking around in Europe for where we think the best opportunity to find that talent is, we concluded that Poland has extraordinary talent.
This is a very good description for Polish specialists, because I also often hear that Poland has great specialists in artificial intelligence, other innovative technologies, and Poland has great specialists in the fintech field. From this slightly more international perspective, in which area are Polish innovators particularly good?
You mention one of the cers open to Polish background, and I think in general there is always a strong engineering culture here. In the last few decades, we have accelerated and we have also seen more success of local Polish companies. I think there is a very positive trend.
So we have great specialists, we have good prospects. What does the Polish startup ecosystem need? The Polish technology ecosystem to develop even more dynamically?
Not only a company or I could do something almost. The gut reaction is never ever forget about it, it's not going to work. I wish sometimes that there was a little bit more of that American 'everything is possible' in Poland. A little bit more of that going on, so that people would actually dare to do this, because we could see even more amazing Polish companies built out of Poland with a little bit more like that.
That's how they touch on a very important issue, because a lot of young people we talk to emphasize that in Poland there are no examples of entrepreneurs who actually founded a large company in Poland, a large startup, and started to expand globally. Very often, the path is such that to achieve international success, we have to go abroad. So I'm very happy that there are investments like the one Klarna is planning now, or Eleven Labs, who also announced the construction of an AI hub in Poland a month ago, to show these young people that to achieve global success, you don't have to leave Poland. You can build it here.
Not necessarily certain benefits. Shareholders will be happy. I'm happy that we have been able to extract talent that has done amazing things when they left. But I think maybe we can inspire people here locally as well in a higher degree to be amazing. My Polish is not the best, I'm always embarrassed to speak Polish, but I feel very Polish. I have a lot of Polish emotion.
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Siemiatkowski, S. (2024, November 26). Szef Klarny o Polakach: "Jesteście kluczowi". Ekskluzywny wywiad z Sebastianem Siemiątkowskim [Interview transcript]. My Company Polska. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/562581/
MLA
Sebastian Siemiatkowski. "Szef Klarny o Polakach: "Jesteście kluczowi". Ekskluzywny wywiad z Sebastianem Siemiątkowskim." My Company Polska, 26 Nov. 2024. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/562581/.
BibTeX
@misc{siemiatkowski2024_562581,
author = {Sebastian Siemiatkowski},
title = {Szef Klarny o Polakach: "Jesteście kluczowi". Ekskluzywny wywiad z Sebastianem Siemiątkowskim},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, My Company Polska. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2024},
month = {nov},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/562581/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
