Fredrik Hjelm: Why Sweden Is Winning Right Now

In this episode of The Northbound Show, host Ken Villum Klausen sits down with Fredrik Hjelm, co-founder and CEO of Voi — and, as Ken puts it, if not the king of Swedish tech, then at least its crown prince.

The two go deep on the question Ken keeps circling back to: why is Sweden exploding right now, and can Stockholm really become Europe's Silicon Valley? Fredrik makes the case that it all starts with culture — a builder mindset that runs from Sweden's industrial past through Skype, Spotify, and Klarna to today's wave of AI companies — backed by network density, risk-willing capital, and a healthier relationship with both success and failure.

Along the way, Fredrik unpacks how Voi became one of the only scaled micro-mobility companies to make it through the brutal "scooter wars" without restructuring, bankruptcy, or wiping out its cap table — and why focus, frugality, and discipline are the boring details that compound. He also opens up about Pit, his new venture turning human business operations into digital labor, freshly backed by a $16M round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Plus a running campaign to reinstate the Kalmar Union.

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Hosted by Ken Villum Klausen, The Northbound Show brings together Nordic founders and leaders for long-form conversations about how small nations consistently build companies with outsized global impact. Because the Nordics' greatest export isn't a product. It's a mindset.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If he's not the king of Sweetie Tech, he's at least the crown prince of the spiriting boy for many years, also now engaged in pit. He's my uh brother of arms for reinstating the Kalma Union. So hey Fred, how's it how's it going?

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Hey Ken. Great, uh, great to be on the show. I also think we should uh just reunite uh the Nordics and do a Kalma Union uh 2.0. I'm doing really well. I'm in uh uh Paris today, so I'm sitting in the boy office. We have a lot of boy bikes uh behind me, just enjoying life, working a lot, as one should.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

You've been all over the media the last couple of weeks. Um so first of all, congratulations on the launch of Pit. Um, you were like co-founding uh partner, and or how was the structure?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

It's uh me and my technical co-founder from VoI, Adam, who are the main co-founders of uh of Pit, and then our third co-founder from uh VoI, uh Sito Philip, and two guys from Klona, uh the guys who led AI at Klona are founding engineers, and uh then Frederick, my childhood friend, who was the first employee at VoI. Uh, he's uh founding designer. So it's uh it's a team that uh knows each other for a long time and uh works really well together. So very low cultural risk uh in the founding team. Ah awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

And and maybe since it's brand new, can you just educate us on what the like what's the ambition of Pitt?

SPEAKER_00 1:29

So Pitt's ambition is uh that to turn uh human business operations into digital labor. So we we built a uh platform, a product uh that basically is an AI product team as a service, so it genetically does uh what a human product and software development team would do. Uh, so from gathering context and intent from business users uh in an enterprise into taking that the whole way uh to internal enterprise grade systems uh that performs work. So we only focus on internal custom software that performs work to unlock time for humans. So humans can be their best and spend time on more value-creating things than doing mundane, repetitive, manual uh business operations, uh, which is uh yeah something we I see a lot uh in all my companies and my friends' companies and so on. So it is really based on downloads from Voy and Voy and Clona, uh, where we did things like this for two, three years.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Does it download more time for you? Because I don't know, man, how many hours to does your day have? It feels like you have 50 hours per day, where the rest of us only have 24. How how how do you manage all of the activities?

SPEAKER_00 2:42

I mean, I've I turned uh quite AI native uh for myself, my personal productivity over the last uh say what is it, three, three and a half years. Uh so I've thinked a lot. Like at why I'm the person who has tried most tools, uh yeah, know how to spin up the models and things like that, which has helped me a lot and unlocked a lot of time. But then also uh it's very much about the people. Uh now I start to be kind of at the stage where I know what type of people I like to work with, uh, I know people who like to work with me, and then everything is of course much, much easier than the first time when you found something, uh, when everything is new. Uh you do everything for the first time, you hire for the first time, you fire for the first time, you uh put principles and values and company culture uh on the wall uh for the first time. Now uh for me it's definitely much easier. This is the fourth company uh I found uh than the first one. The first one is obviously the most difficult. So tell me about it. You have some uh interesting news from this week, yeah?

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Yeah, I I kind of retired. So um I think yeah, I think VoI came a couple of years after us. Fine, you're from 17 or something, 16, 17. Yeah, 17, 18. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, look, so we've been at it for 11 years, and I think um I've I have given it a lot of thought. I think as a farm where you're always waiting for that next next thing to arrive. Oh, let's just hit you know profitability and then let's just go into Finland and then let's do an IPO, and what about Germany? And then suddenly and look at and I I think you you you probably share my uh my thoughts on that. What better time to be alive and be working in technology and maybe considering something else than right now, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:30

It's yeah, it's a unique time in history. And uh, I mean uh AI makes it possible to just do things instead of waiting. You can get rid of a lot of coordination tacks uh that you otherwise or pre-AI uh would have. You're waiting for someone, you can't do it yourself, and so on. Uh, these are really the days for people who just do things and know what they want to do and know what great looks like.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

What's your productivity hacks? Do you have any uh like special open clause set up or agents trolling your uh X account or any any any quirky advice you can pass on?

SPEAKER_00 5:07

I have a lot. I have a lot. So I have a guy at Boy, his name is Gustav, he's uh uh he's running product and uh uh and so on, who's kind of the most structured and productivity obsessed person I know. Uh so I've learned a lot from uh from him. Just like his starts really starts with how do you spend the most scarce resource uh that you had, which is your time. Uh so um overall quite structured in how I spend my time. I kind of control my calendar fully myself. I have a person helping me with some logistics around it, but I control it fully myself, and I have a lot of uh free space uh in my calendar. Sometimes people think like, yeah, you probably have 80 hours a week back-to-back meetings, but I typically have probably during the weekdays half of the calendar is empty. Uh, and then I have blocks for doing certain things in my calendar. Um and uh I want to keep it uh as empty as possible so I can focus on the most important thing for that day, for that week, for that month. Uh, because uh if you have back-to-back meetings all the time, then you uh become like hostage of your uh of your meetings and calendars.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

What's uh so speaking of AI, what does VoI have a like clear path into just the present or the future of AI? What's happening at VoI?

SPEAKER_00 6:29

I would say Voice probably among the more advanced uh companies that are not AI-native companies when it comes to yeah becoming more AI-fluent and uh enabled uh by AI. And the beautiful thing with Voja is say four or five years ago everyone hated the business model. You know, it was hardware, it was software, it was operations, it was regulations like I'm in Paris today. Convince the city of Paris to work with you in a time where everyone wanted the SAS B2B SAS. Now that has changed to some extent. We have real assets out in CDs, regulations, kontrakt, licenses, all of that. So it's a very AI-defensive business model. While we can benefit a lot från AI in everything from the customer experience. How do we personalise the rider experience so if you are well behaved, you should get a different user experience than someone that is not that parks poorly everything to how we run the company, you know, semantics and context around structured data and structured data so you can crawl over the whole companies context into what we're doing at PIT. Map out processes, uh, human, heavy, manual, labor-intensive processes and make them into software. So I would say voice voice voice in a good place, and we run it as a proper change management project. Technology is one piece, but change management and education and um expectations and so on.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

And and Frederick, speaking of that, that you said like voice in a great place, you um you were one of the first innovators on that uh on that segment and vertical as a whole. How did you make it through the scooter walls and everything that happened and investment climate and COVID and whatnot? Like it it must have been a hell of a journey looking back. How did you pull it off when so many other scooter companies or micromobility companies are not here anymore? What's the what's the what's the magic source at uh at Voy?

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Yeah, a funny fact on that. As far as I know, VoI is the only scales micromobility company that uh didn't go through restructuring bankruptcy or wiped out their cap table, which says something about industry. It's uh difficult, complex business model with the vehicles out, with the operations, regulations, software, and all of it. In them, I think why we made it better than anyone else was uh focus uh on the things that mattered uh for that moment. Uh there was so much capital going into micro-mobility 2018 to 21, really. And too many of our peers did too many things at the same time, but we stayed focused. We started with scooters in Europe. Uh we made that profitable, then we added on bikes. Uh, we cut cost early, uh 21-22, uh, while others just continued as a as a as if uh capital was you know zero interest still. Uh so a lot of those small things like focus, frugality, discipline, and so on, uh which sounds boring, uh, but in the end, uh karma works and uh those small details compounds.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

It must have been quite the journey. And look, I I you know as a Dane, and Dane tends to be somewhat direct. I couldn't help notice there's been a few uh social media pictures recently about a potential acquisition. I think you were really swift in fencing it off, but like where where do you think it came from?

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Yeah, so for context here, it was yesterday and the day before uh news came out that Uber is acquiring Voy for $1.2 billion. And uh we went out and uh uh said, no, we are not selling Tubber for $1.2 billion or had not accepted any offer at any other price. And then we did some digging. Uh we found the root source was perplexity. So it was uh root source was A AI generated, and then it just spanned through various sets on the way, and the source referral was of course lost. Uh so then uh it became uh it became real news. It's wild. That downside of AI, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, so yeah, I'm not a seller at those uh uh levels. We think the potential is much, much uh larger.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Well what what's the future then for Void? Like are you are we seeing uh self-flying drones or uh or um you know uh avoid cybercap or anything coming up over the next coming years? Like what's what where do you see the future? I mean you never know.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Uh we're built yeah, we are built and building uh some what I think is how some very valuable assets. Uh so we're built the whole technology platform, the software data uh platform on which we can add different uh hardware modes. So it's really a vehicle agnostic uh platform. But we started with e-scooters, now also e-bikes. We could add on other vehicles to meet the needs of customers and cities and so on. Uh we have uh yeah relationships with uh cities in close to 200 cities where we're live and operating, so building deep relationships there. Uh we have uh millions of users, uh riders uh every month, uh which is of course also very valuable. And over time, uh I think micromobility has never been as small and non-important as it is today. Uh, fast forward five years more, uh, we will see much more micromobility in in cities, and uh Boy will be the clear leader winner in Europe and perhaps outside of Europe as well.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

And how's that been like navigating to regulation and parking spots? And it it seems like uh it must have been a wild transformation going from the wild, wild west of micromobility and then into a whole new rule set.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Uh yeah, when we started, there were no regulations pretty much anywhere, uh, which was uh Wild West and so much capital, and uh the products were immature, operations was immature, uh so that led to uh complicated uh situation in many many cities. Now we're much more mature as an industry, so uh typically we win contract a license with a city, we can operate over a couple of years. Uh there are SLAs and rules and so on around parking and other things uh in that contract, so that has fixed a lot of things, but also on our side, we're of course much better at operating the business, the products are much better. Uh, we can take action on that parking, we can take action on twin riding and antisocial behavior and so on. Uh so it's really about serving a lot of different stakeholders: the riders, the cities, the non-riders, uh, you know, the people living in a city don't use the service, but they are exposed to the service every day because the vehicles just stand there.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

I'm curious, I and I've been there for a period of time to understand what's the most popular ride now? Is that is an e-bike small than it's the scooter, or is it different from country to country?

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Yeah, very different. Um I'm in Paris today. In Paris we only run bikes. Um in Copenhagen we will only run bikes, while if you go to a city like Stockholm or Berlin, the scooters are much more uh popular. So it really differs per city. Okay. But we'll be believers in um um in electric bikes as an older transport uh for the uh for the coming uh say decade because there is this uh macro trend, yeah, that uh cities are making it more expensive and more difficult to drive your own car in the city centres. Almost impossible. Well yeah, yeah. Like in our city, Stockholm and Copenhagen, it starts to get impossible or extremely expensive. Uh people still need to get around uh to and from work, in between meetings, to the gym and things like that. And for that, micromobility is really good, and e-bikes for slightly longer distances than e-scooters that are typically for slightly shorter distances.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Look, Frederick, so so there's and there's one thing that um I'm really keen to uh pick your brain about, and that's the whole um like the explosion of Sweden right now. And I think you know the whole idea about this part was to speak about you know everything in regards to the Nordic, not just what not just per country, but you know, the Nordics as a whole, trying to bring us a bit more together, right? And I think I think there's many ways where both Denmark and Norway and probably also Finland can and Iceland and else can learn from Sweden. But like what like what's happening right now in Sweden? How come the explosion is just insane uh currently? Yeah, we're going for the win, yeah? For the global win. Yeah, yeah, it looks like uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

I think I mean the starting point in uh most things is uh really culture, because most other things uh like regulations and uh what people do with their life and so on uh comes downstream from from culture. And um Sweden has always had uh engineering culture and uh doer culture, uh which I guess the Danes also also had. I think Sweden comes from uh history where we had to build things, uh while Denmark perhaps more traded things, uh which is a difference, of course, in in mindset. And Norway comes from a background where they made a lot of money of uh drilling oil and then selling it. Yeah. So I I guess if you look back, it it come kind of the builder mindset in Sweden comes a bit from that, and then we've had large global and successful in now we call them industrials, but they were tech companies, engineering companies, and they still are to some extent for for many, many years. Uh and that uh has uh yeah trickled down to to this builder mindset, strong engineering, strong universities. Uh, and the last 25 years really, since computers and internet uh exploded, uh we've had a few different cohorts and generations of companies, you know, Southern Wit Sky, then Spotify, then Kazar, and uh Pirate Bay, and those uh those companies, then in Tuclana, the gaming companies, King, Mujang, and so on. Then you had micro auto companies, Boy, uh healthcare companies, logistics companies, autonomous trucks, and so on, like 10 years ago. And now the last three years, three, four years, we have seen this explosion of AI companies. Um and yeah, the energy in Stockholm now is electric. There are so many companies popping up from left and right, first, second, third, fourth time founders. There's a lot of risk-willing capital who's been around uh for a long time and know how it is and how you should invest in startups and what the kind of what the rules are. And currently we also have very supportive government. I mean you've probably seen it, our government is out several times a week and say that uh yeah, Sweden should be the leading tech hub and entrepreneurship hub uh in the world, next to like Silicon Valley. So there's just a lot of momentum, a lot of optimism. I think I think through quickly.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

I think I wrote you at a point in time that I'm applying for a Swedish citizenship because you know we just had an election here in Denmark, and there was no such thing as speaking about neither technology broadly or AI, but more about taxes and uh kind of the the the regular topics. So I think we're we're kind of falling behind you in my home country. Well, like how how can Sweden inspire and elevate the rest of the Nordics? Because you know, it is the largest country and and uh and by default also um you know of of of investment and now of companies, the big brother in our region. What what how can you guys bring us on that journey so uh so so Denmark and the rest of the group of countries follow from Kelma Union, Kelma Union, yeah, let's go.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

I mean we could we could just reunite uh the whole thing and get uh Swedish tech, uh Danish uh farmer shipping and so on, Norwegian oil, uh Finnish also engineering and forests and so on, that would be the easiest way. My feeling is that there is a lot of collaboration between politicians and so on on a Nordic level, but on a people cultural level, there is a larger acceptance in Sweden for people becoming really successful and in business also really rich than in Finland, Norway, and Denmark as long as you don't flash it in Sweden. I mean we love the entrepreneurial success stories as well, similar to how we love our sports stars Slatan or our music stars like Zara Larsson or Abici or Swedish House Mafia, but there is also very high acceptance and encouragement uh to go big and succeed in in business. So I think the other Nordic countries are also amazing uh in their ways, they need to adopt a bit of that. Don't look down upon success, they encourage it because it fronts the welfare system in that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

So a bit less of yander than we might have in the other in the other neighboring countries.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Uh yeah. I mean we had the yanta uh when it comes to be modest and don't flash and be low-key and don't think you're better than anyone else. Um but we also very much encourage uh success out here.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Well what about community? Because like when I'm looking at everything that's happening in Stockholm, it looks like it's a super, super tied in community where second, third, four-time founders are engaging with each other and collaborating and interaction across all levels. Like, can you give a bit of insights on that?

SPEAKER_00 20:14

Uh yeah. The community is very strong. I mean, we get these network effects of geographical proximity that you don't get in Paris or London because they're so large, those cities are so spread out. While in Stockholm, everything is really gathered within, say, uh 20-25 minute walk from central Stockholm, a 10-minute voyage, and then you get a lot of serendipity as well. You go to the same gym, you go to the same restaurant, uh you go on the same walk and so on. So people meet each other all the time. And now, uh given the extreme momentum over the last couple of years, there are also events not only once a week, but several times a day, if you want to get involved in the ecosystem.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

It's uh it's but it is a Stockholm thing, right? I'll tell you a funny story. I went to an event down in Melmour uh a couple of weeks ago, and I met a Swedish BC who honestly told me it was his own first visit to Melmour ever. And this is the Swedish BC who uh who resides in Stockholm, so it's a Stockholm thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah, it is. Probably something like 80-90% of you know the venture capital and company building in the startup tech scale base happens in Stockholm at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

How's your own engagement? Like do you engage with other companies you don't invest in or you don't co-found? Like are you are you a like an aft active community contributor? I think you're you know with your with your with your presence and the recognition that you're seeing, I I would assume that would would be the case also.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Yeah, I don't really have time to go to events and dinners and so on, so I skipped that. But uh I try to uh I try to uh support and invest um in uh very early stage uh uh stuff. Uh really. to uh to pay paid forward to the next generation. You see a lot of that in Stockholm now, yeah. The the pace of investment is yeah, I've only I've only seen it in Silicon Valley. Rounds moving so fast now. Which will lead to which will lead to a uh a few very large successes of course, but it will also lead to a lot of uh uh losses uh which is part of the game and also as the tech and startup community getting more uh mature in Sweden and Stockholm there's also a much higher acceptance for failure now than ten years ago. Ten years ago it was a bit stigmatized like you have to put your company in bankruptcy you you're a bad person you should be ashamed. Now in Stockholm there's nothing on that it's like badge of honor do it again you should come and work at my company for some time then do it again.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

It's probably something we're gonna see also with all the AI companies popping up that not all LLM rappers are going to be a billion dollar successes. So uh which which is fine and how it should be they they they learn and they come back stronger. Do you truly believe that like Stockholm as a city or Sweden as a country is is able to take that position as the European Silicon Valley?

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yeah I think it's the only city that can take that position uh in Europe because of course absolute number of uh large companies and investment will be larger in Paris where I am or London and so on but if you look at per capita and again these network effects and density Stockholm is the only city that can do that. Yeah and so and with Pitt you recently raised a significant was it a C round like pre-seed seed round A round what was it the uh the first round that Pitt announced uh a week ago I don't know even what to call it anymore it was the first money in the rounds have gotten bigger yeah so first money in call it a pre-seed seed uh was uh 16 mil uh dollars led by Andreas and Horbitz.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Chunky chunky seed round but also impressive to see that it's not a Swedish local investor who's writing the check it's actually one of if not the most well known US based BC who's coming in. Has that changed like that since since like when you were out raising money for boy uh eight years ago or five years ago do you have you seen a change for that for the interest in Swedish companies and investments? Yes. I mean it was very difficult uh to raise money for uh for boy several times who were like this close or going down a few times uh of course uh pit is uh another business model but we also live in another time uh where all the national capital is flowing flying into stock on on pretty much a daily uh weekly basis or a few times every month uh to to find the next uh you know next lovable next Lagora next Spotify next boy uh so it was easy this time yeah yeah yeah I could I I could assume and what about yourself your like your own personal reflection so I don't know if I went on uh on a long break or um or or what it is yet uh probably not the longest of breaks but do you do you still have uh energy to keep firing at VoI or are you appealed by every other opportunity out there that you can go for in the time of AI how do how do you see your own path developing?

SPEAKER_00 25:26

I'm very excited about VoI I've never been more excited. I mean we were through five very tough years I would say the first five regard five five and a half years until we started become profitable were super super tough. And now we made it through uh the business is much better shape the products are better uh regulations have matured a team is very strong people have been around for a long time we can think more long term which is much more fun and uh rewarding than fighting for your survival uh the coming three months and uh yeah again I think micro mobility has never been smaller and less important than it is today. Give us another five ten years and uh yeah we would be a very very large impactful mobility company. And it's also yeah and it's also this uh the only thing you have is time in the end. That's the most cash resource you have and uh mindset wise I have recalibrated my mindset to think on an infinite time horizon versus the first years with Boy I had to think on a you know a couple of weeks time horizon. And when you think on an infinite time horizon you don't get stressed you make I hope better decisions for the long run and so on which trick it down to your team and that is uh that is really fun yeah the uh I I recall the the mental state in the formative years is is a different one than uh then later on when the business is getting more healthy right starts very much startup life is uh it's a stressful journey very much how are you like how are you then still finding time to do the other stuff that you're doing outside of companies because I I think you're you're known for in Sweden also doing some events and some some conferences with a couple of other founders right yeah we have our flagship event uh June 5 we call it summer mingle I hope you will come Kim look I get you test my colleagues every year for the last many years I'm like I call up at a money and saying hey and is there do I get an invite this year and said no Ken not this year either so I hope this year will be the one that I get an I get to go June 5 Pencil Libyan is called the Summer Mingle and the idea for this is the fourth time we're doing it the idea back then was both me and my best friend Johannes founded a company called Cree Libye which is Europe's largest digiphical healthcare provider. We felt we had so much to do with politicians and regulations but we only met them in very serious formal settings so we thought that creates an event which is more relaxed not like work focused for the business and political and culture community in Sweden, Nordics and Europe to get to know each other and then the first year the Prime Minister came which was a big surprise to us like why would he care about our small little scrappy tech event we got the Estonian she was prime minister president back then Kaya Kalas now EU's foreign secretary and now it's year four and now we have kind of uh who is who from politics and tech and culture and finance and so on. Where people we don't do it as our companies we do it as ourselves so it's nothing like corporate about it. It's just friends and family and business partners of people we know 400 people this year and then it's a formal part where prime ministers and others speak a bit and then from nine o'clock it becomes like a full blown party part where we last year brought uh uh Sebastian Ingrosso from Swedish House Mafia uh and that was wild of course uh so we tried to mix uh fun fun with formality okay now I can't wait to go so it's gonna it's gonna be on the Selma's bucket list.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Look look Frederick so um I know we're running out of time because you had a I had a hard stop here um in a few minutes. Really appreciate you you took the time to dial in. I'm keen on you leading the Kalma union uh reinstating of that so I'll I'll I'll task you with that uh I'm sure I speak on behalf of the entire uh population of the Nordic region that will follow will follow Sweden blindly into that if we can um if we can get just part of the success that you guys are seeing right now. And then I'm looking forward to be driving around uh yeah I haven't even better idea I mean you uh promoted yourself uh away from the CEO title you can run the Kalma union you have time now yeah it's a good point good point maybe I should go into politics I think uh I have a fatigue for politics uh after seeing uh the Danish election pan out um you know I put up a post uh a couple of months ago that Danish politicians are more keen on uh pick farming uh the wind industry and the insulin industry and if it's not uh if it's not any of those three then we don't see any much support for that so maybe I should go for the Swedish passport and then um reinstate the Kalmar Union out of a Stockholm office instead.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

I mean that would be the perfect plot twist.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Yeah yeah yeah just the two countries that are most known for having the most wars throughout history then peg on to each other right I like united by united by Dame from Stockholm yeah yeah freaking awesome Frederick it was amazing chatting with you I'm looking forward to seeing you in Stockholm and then to uh ride around Copenhagen on an e-bike sometime after summer and you're the right have a good one