How do you go from pitching Sequoia to ringing the bell on a US IPO?

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, co-founder and CEO of Klarna was raised in a home where ambition met accountability. Even as Klarna thrived in Sweden, his parents reminded him: “That’s fantastic. When are you going to get your degree?”

That grounding, paired with Sebastian’s own ambition to measure up to companies like Google and Facebook, pushed Klarna beyond local success to a global stage.

In this episode, we also get into:

• how sci-fi books inspired him to see entrepreneurship as an adventure

• how Klarna brought Sequoia on board

• how Klarna got ahead of Afterpay in the U.S market

• navigating co-founder tensions and pivoting leadership

• turning Sweden’s strict bill collection into Klarna’s advantage

ABOUT US:

We’re proudly sponsored by Brex—a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.

I’m grateful for their continued support as I bring you all conversations with some of the most exceptional founders of our generation. For more information, please go to: https://www.brex.com/?ref_code=bmk_audio_HDinHD

Connect with us here:

1. Sebastian Siemiatkowski- https://x.com/klarnaseb

2. Brex- https://x.com/brexHQ

3. Henrique Dubugras- https://x.com/hdubugras

This episode was produced and distributed by our friends at Atomik Growth: https://atomikgrowth.com/

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

05:03 Background and Immigration

12:59 University Life

23:55 Gap Year Adventures

37:57 Finding Multiple Jobs

41:57 The Birth of Klarna

53:42 The First Product

01:15:32 Sequoia's Investment

01:34:50 Entering the US Market

01:49:01 AI and the Future

Before founding Synthesia, Victor Riparbelli grew up in Denmark with parents who struck a balance between ensuring his future security and giving him the freedom to pursue his passions, with his father steering him toward technology.

At Stanford, the intense academics and ambitious peers challenged him to question the status quo and honed his approach to creating helpful tools.

We also get into:

• why complex video games were his first playground for building business

• how Mark Cuban became their first investor without meeting them

• why the future of communication is video

ABOUT US:

We’re proudly sponsored by Brex—a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.

I’m grateful for their continued support as I bring you all conversations with some of the most exceptional founders of our generation. For more information, please go to: https://www.brex.com/?ref_code=bmk_audio_HDinHD

Connect with us here:

1. Victor Riparbelli- https://x.com/vriparbelli

2. Brex- https://x.com/brexHQ

3. Henrique Dubugras- https://x.com/hdubugras

This episode was produced and distributed by our friends at Atomik Growth: https://atomikgrowth.com

Before founding Vercel, Guillermo Rauch, was a self-taught teenager in Argentina earning his first dollars online to help his family.

From early open-source work to remote freelancing, this episode traces how his drive to figure things out led to solving web performance at scale.

We also get into:

• how his dad instilled a mindset of pushing tech boundaries

• what growing up during Argentina’s economic swings taught him

• why he sees Minecraft as a healthy game for his kids

• why he believes speed without direction is meaningless

ABOUT US:

We’re proudly sponsored by Brex—a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.

I’m grateful for their continued support as I bring you all conversations with some of the most exceptional founders of our generation. For more information, please go to: https://www.brex.com/?ref_code=bmk_audio_HDinHD

Connect with us here:

1. Guillermo Rauch- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rauchg/

2. Brex- https://x.com/brexHQ

3. Henrique Dubugras- https://x.com/hdubugras

This episode was produced and distributed by our friends at Atomik Growth: https://atomikgrowth.com/

With an insatiable appetite for “what’s the new model,” Aaron Levie, Co-founder and CEO of Box, grew up chasing ideas without hesitation: performing magic at birthday parties, building websites, and making short films.

In this episode of HD in HD, he shares how a curious mind from early ages became his greatest strength, and how staying slightly uncomfortable kept him ahead of the biggest tech shifts, from SaaS to AI.

Today, Box powers content for 100k+ organizations and 68% of the Fortune 500, and is still driven by the same restless energy Aaron had as a teenager, always chasing what’s next.

In this episode, we also get into:

00:00 Intro

00:57 Brex Sponsorship

01:44 Aaron Levy's Early Years

02:24 High School

13:04 College

17:29 The Early Days of Box

23:17 Technological Shifts and Challenges

29:39 Navigating Competition

30:00 Enterprise Differentiation

32:24 Brex Sponsorship

33:12 AI’s Impact on Software and Work

44:51 AI's Role in Enterprise Knowledge Management

48:07 Future of Organizational Design

55:50 AI's Influence on Sales and Marketing

01:03:50 Reflections on Luck, Strategy, and Mistakes

ABOUT US:

We’re proudly sponsored by Brex—a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.

I’m grateful for their continued support as I bring you all conversations with some of the most exceptional founders of our generation. For more information, please go to: https://www.brex.com/?ref_code=bmk_audio_HDinHD

Connect with us here:

1. Aaron Levie- https://www.linkedin.com/in/boxaaron/

2. Brex- https://x.com/brexHQ

3. Henrique Dubugras- https://x.com/hdubugras

This episode was produced and distributed by our friends at Atomik Growth: https://atomikgrowth.com/

When Ariel Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Navan, first set out to modernize corporate travel, he wasn’t an industry insider.

What he did bring was a relentless focus on fundamentals, constantly asking, “Is it a good business?”, an instinct that arose from his family’s financial struggles, working in cafés, and participating in virtual business competitions in Israel.

And that is exactly what led him to build a travel tech giant.

In this episode, we also get into:

• why building a startup while raising kids gave Ariel motivation to do better.

• the supply chain problem in the travel industry.

• will AI replace travel agents in the near future?

• how Navan’s chatbot helps reduce customers’ travel expenses.

ABOUT US:

We’re proudly sponsored by Brex—a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.

I’m grateful for their continued support as I bring you all conversations with some of the most exceptional founders of our generation. For more information, click here.

Connect with us here:

This episode was produced and distributed by our friends at Atomik Growth: https://atomikgrowth.com/

Before co-founding StoneCo, a $3.67B fintech giant, André Street was already thinking like a founder at the age of 14, skipping school not to rebel, but to build.

Howie Liu built Airtable into one of the most powerful no-code platforms in the world—used by over 450,000 companies and backed by everyone from Benchmark to Thrive to YC.

In this episode of HD in HD, I was joined by the founder and CEO of Airtable as he reelected on the unexpected turns that shaped his entrepreneurial path—from cold-pitching algo trading models at a college career fair, to building software that powers teams at scale.

In our conversation, we get into:

We only scratched the surface on the Airtable chapter, so don’t be surprised if there’s a part two.

ABOUT US:

We’re proudly sponsored by Brex —a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.

Connect with us:

1. Howie Liu– https://x.com/howietl

2. Henrique Dubugras– https://x.com/hdubugras

This episode was produced and distributed by our friends at Atomik Growth: https://atomikgrowth.com

00:00 Intro

01:20 Introducing Howie and Airtable

02:10 Early life and family

07:33 Early tech

14:13 Building Websites

32:18 Dreaming big

34:07 Middle-Class Entrepreneur Theory

35:55 High school

44:57 College applications

56:40 Duke University

1:05:10 High-paying jobs

1:07:10 Internships and early career

1:09:23 Neural networks and quant trading

1:16:10 New internship

1:22:02 First startup and lessons learned

1:34:22 The birth of Airtable

1:38:27 Outro

Jack Zhang landed in Melbourne at 15 with no money, no English, and no one to lean on.

By 30, he was turning down a billion-dollar offer from Stripe.

In this episode of HD in HD, I sit down with the co-founder and CEO of Airwallex to trace his zero-to-borderless journey—from small-town China to building one of the biggest tech stories ever to come out of Australia.

We get into:

• What Airwallex did differently that Stripe couldn’t in APAC

• The $100,000 mistake that nearly derailed their first client

• How Jack handled 2022’s valuation reset (and why he didn’t panic)

• The AI opportunity he thinks everyone is sleeping on

• how Airwallex hit $1B in volume before raising a proper Series A

00:00 Trailer

00:46 Introduction

01:18 Airwallex

04:58 No English from China to Australia

15:15 My first business, no financial support

23:06 All work, no fun

31:03 Development and coffee

36:26 Nothing is that hard

40:05 Startups

45:40 Brex

46:29 Starting Airwallex

53:27 The whole thing fell apart

57:20 Sequoia Capital and Tencent

1:05:41 Billion-dollar acquisition offer

1:11:59 Managing globally

1:16:20 Motivation and efficiency

1:23:26 Worth billions, hard to turn

1:24:58 Lessons from China

1:29:38 Outro

Global payroll is a maze most companies dread navigating.

Deel turned it into their MOAT—streamlining HR across borders, powering remote work, and hitting an $800M run rate with 5,000 employees.

Alex Bouaziz, Deel’s CEO and co-founder, grew up nerding out on Nintendo and hunted perfection from Paris to MIT. His relentless curiosity built a platform that’s rewriting how the world hires.

In this episode, we explore:

• why he wakes up obsessed with your problems, not his product

• how a Disneyland obsession shaped his entrepreneurial spark

• why he’s doubling down on AI and stablecoins

ABOUT US:

We’re proudly sponsored by Brex—a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.

I’m grateful for their continued support as I bring you all conversations with some of the most exceptional founders of our generation. Onward and upward, together.

Connect with us:

1. Deel - https://x.com/deel

2. Brex - https://x.com/brexHQ

3. Henrique Dubugras- https://x.com/hdubugras

This episode was produced and distributed by our friends at Atomik Growth: https://atomikgrowth.com/

Everyone ignored this problem—until it became an opportunity. Alexander Rinke, co-founder of Celonis, turned a student project into a $13B+ process mining giant from Germany.

Born and raised in Berlin, he went on to build a software empire that has saved companies like Pfizer $300M.

This episode of HD in HD explores Alex’s path from student founder to CEO—and how he sees AI transforming the way companies run.

Alex and I also unpack:

• how 1,500 handwritten letters helped him land Siemens

• why AI’s next wave hinges on process overhaul

• how a $50K project outgrew his McKinsey dreams

ABOUT US:

We’re proudly sponsored by Brex—a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.

Connect with us:

1. Alex - https://x.com/alexanderrinke

2. Henrique Dubugras- https://x.com/hdubugras

This episode was produced and distributed by our friends at Atomik Growth: https://atomikgrowth.com/

00:00:00 Trailer

00:01:20 Introduction

00:02:40 Process Mining

00:03:59 Real-World Applications

00:06:46 Early Life

00:09:48 Education and Early Career

00:24:32 The Birth of Celonis

00:42:36 Initial Funding Challenges

00:49:45 Scaling and Venture Capital

01:01:15 Mentorship and Role Models

01:05:39 The Future of Celonis and AI

01:13:28 Reflections on Success and Upbringing

01:24:24 Closing Thoughts