Alexander Skarsgård cuts a conflicted determine on the display screen. He’s famously portrayed an abusive associate and a psychotic tech billionaire, all with an depth that might have the world’s most infamous CEOs quaking of their boots.
So it’s no shock he’s now being forged as the right foil to the conflicted world of investing, the place the wants of the investor usually conflict with the wants of the planet. Skarsgård is launching How We Repair This, a brand new podcast that seeks to focus on among the world’s most enjoyable, planet-saving ventures and provides listeners recent entry to local weather change-fighting function fashions.
‘A full, profound feeling of vacancy‘
Skarsgård is internet hosting and narrating the brand new podcast sequence developed alongside impact-driven enterprise capital fund Norrsken, began in 2019 by Klarna co-founder Niklas Adalberth.
Adalberth based Klarna alongside Victor Jacobsson and present CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski in 2005, however finally realized his desires of economic independence weren’t what he imagined.
“I went to Las Vegas to celebrate, ordering champagne and chicken, a big marble floor suite, shopped like crazy, but felt nothing. There was a complete, profound feeling of emptiness.”
This pressured Adalberth into remedy and to reassess whether or not he was making the world a greater place with Klarna, an organization that was encouraging extra consumption and placing added pressure on the world’s sources.
He left the corporate in 2015, progressively promoting his shares and within the course of lacking his likelihood to grow to be a billionaire.
What adopted was Norrsken, a enterprise capital fund that focuses on impression startups, or firms addressing one or two of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Improvement Targets (SDG). The Norrsken fund has $50 million in property below administration, backing startups addressing the whole lot from demand for sustainable EV batteries to burping, polluting cows.
The podcast is meant to extend the pool of “role models” for college students and graduates poised to assist change the world, in response to Adalberth.
The Klarna co-founder thinks a breadth of nationwide function fashions, together with Northvolt co-founder Peter Carlsson, is without doubt one of the causes that Sweden excels in profitable impression funding.
To boost the profile of impact-based enterprise, Adalberth wanted a well-recognized face to get his message throughout. Naturally, he turned to fellow countryman Skarsgård.
The Swede-American caught Adalberth’s consideration final 12 months when he voiced a brief documentary on the monetary worth of nature.
The actor gave a playful, expletive-filled voiceover to focus on Oxford College analysis into the tradeoff between GDP and environmental injury. Enjoying dumb, Skarsgård advised his viewers then that he would dilute the analysis “to something even a Hollywood actor could understand.”
As soon as once more, Skarsgård’s function is to be the accessible voice who brings Norrsken’s tales to life.
“This movement needs to happen, it’s not only about capital. It’s also a cultural enlightenment that needs to happen. And I think Alexander, with his platform and ability to tell stories, that he is using that to do maximum good with this initiative.” Adalberth says.
Spotify
Sweden—a worldwide chief in impression
Skarsgård and Adalberth are teaming up with one other Swedish tech big, Spotify, to solely publish their podcast.
The Swedes have a powerful observe file of breeding globally profitable firms, corresponding to Spotify, Klarna, and garments retailer H&M. That entrepreneurial spirit is probably paradoxical to Swedish tradition and the “law of jante,” which frequently prevents individuals from bragging about their successes.
Skarsgård sees why that might be a drawback within the enterprise world.
“My observation as a Swedish-American, and I’m obviously generalizing here, is that Americans have a real talent for storytelling and big ideas. Swedes tend to be drawn to the more humble and understated, bordering on self-deprecation,” Skarsgård advised Fortune.
However Adalberth and Norrsken’s CCO Daniel Goldberg suppose that modesty for private success may be why Sweden is to this point forward of its friends in impression investing.
Sweden gobbles up an enormous share of sustainable investing {dollars}, with eight occasions as many impression startups because the world common, in response to Adalberth. The place the nation may lack in self-promotion, it would acquire in a social conscience.
“How we define success, what that does to the overall standards and systems, I think that is something that is maybe more debated, perhaps in Europe and especially Sweden. I think that’s where we also see this next generation of startups, perhaps more than the US.”
“Humility or not, the key is probably to have conviction and a strong confidence in yourself and what you’re trying to sell,” Skarsgård says.
Stranger than fiction
Skarsgård has tackled loads of roles in his time on the display screen, most benefiting from his physicality like Tarzan and the Viking prince Amleth in The Northman or as an abusive husband in Massive Little Lies.
However it’s Lukas Matsson, the antagonistic GoJo CEO from HBO’s Emmy-winning sequence Succession, for which he could also be finest remembered. It’s exhausting for any Succession fan to not be drawn into the parallels as Skarsgård wades into the enterprise capital house.
After enjoying Matsson for 2 years, Skarsgård nonetheless doesn’t know what drives the character, who seemingly had no boundaries as he ventured right into a hostile takeover of the media group Waystar Royco.
He views Matsson extra as an adrenaline junkie motivated by a problem, slightly than somebody pushed purely by greed. So requested whether or not he discovered himself evaluating Matsson to the “impact-driven” founders on his podcast sequence, Skarsgård had a nuanced response.
“The world would probably be a better place with less people like Lukas Matsson and more people like the founders on How We Fix This,” he says.
“But then again, tell a guy like Lukas Matsson there’s no way he can restore all the coral reefs in our oceans.”
