Alexander Skarsgård cuts a conflicted determine on the display screen. He’s famously portrayed an abusive accomplice and a psychotic tech billionaire, all with an depth that will have the world’s most infamous CEOs quaking of their boots.
So it’s no shock he’s now being forged as the proper 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 spotlight a few of the world’s most enjoyable, planet-saving ventures and provides listeners recent entry to local weather change-fighting position fashions.
‘An entire, profound feeling of vacancy‘
Skarsgård is internet hosting and narrating the brand new podcast collection 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 ultimately realized his goals of economic independence weren’t what he imagined.
“I went to Las Vegas to have a good time, ordering champagne and rooster, an enormous marble flooring suite, shopped like loopy, however felt nothing. There was a whole, profound feeling of vacancy.”
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 assets.
He left the corporate in 2015, progressively promoting his shares and within the course of lacking his probability to grow to be a billionaire.
What adopted was Norrsken, a enterprise capital fund that focuses on impression startups, or corporations addressing one or two of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Growth Targets (SDG). The Norrsken fund has $50 million in belongings below administration, backing startups addressing all the pieces from demand for sustainable EV batteries to burping, polluting cows.
The podcast is meant to extend the pool of “position fashions” for college students and graduates poised to assist change the world, in keeping with Adalberth.
The Klarna co-founder thinks a breadth of nationwide position fashions, together with Northvolt co-founder Peter Carlsson, is among the causes that Sweden excels in successful 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 yr when he voiced a brief documentary on the monetary worth of nature.
The actor gave a playful, expletive-filled voiceover to spotlight Oxford College analysis into the tradeoff between GDP and environmental harm. Taking part in dumb, Skarsgård informed his viewers then that he would dilute the analysis “to one thing even a Hollywood actor might perceive.”
As soon as once more, Skarsgård’s position is to be the accessible voice who brings Norrsken’s tales to life.
“This motion must occur, it’s not solely about capital. It’s additionally a cultural enlightenment that should occur. And I feel Alexander, along with his platform and talent to inform tales, that he’s utilizing that to do most good with this initiative.” Adalberth says.
Spotify
Sweden—a world chief in impression
Skarsgård and Adalberth are teaming up with one other Swedish tech big, Spotify, to completely publish their podcast.
The Swedes have a powerful monitor file of breeding globally profitable corporations, resembling Spotify, Klarna, and garments retailer H&M. That entrepreneurial spirit is probably paradoxical to Swedish tradition and the “regulation of jante,” which regularly prevents folks from bragging about their successes.
Skarsgård sees why that could possibly be an obstacle within the enterprise world.
“My statement as a Swedish-American, and I’m clearly generalizing right here, is that Individuals have an actual expertise for storytelling and massive concepts. Swedes are typically drawn to the extra humble and understated, bordering on self-deprecation,” Skarsgård informed Fortune.
However Adalberth and Norrsken’s CCO Daniel Goldberg suppose that modesty for private success is perhaps why Sweden is up to now forward of its friends in impression investing.
Sweden gobbles up an enormous share of sustainable investing {dollars}, with eight instances as many impression startups because the world common, in keeping with Adalberth. The place the nation would possibly lack in self-promotion, it’d acquire in a social conscience.
“How we outline success, what that does to the general requirements and methods, I feel that’s one thing that’s perhaps extra debated, maybe in Europe and particularly Sweden. I feel that’s the place we additionally see this subsequent era of startups, maybe greater than the US.”
“Humility or not, the secret’s most likely to have conviction and a powerful confidence in your self and what you’re attempting to promote,” Skarsgård says.
Stranger than fiction
Skarsgård has tackled numerous roles in his time on the display screen, most profiting 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 collection Succession, for which he could also be finest remembered. It’s laborious for any Succession fan to not be drawn into the parallels as Skarsgård wades into the enterprise capital house.
After taking part in 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, fairly than somebody pushed purely by greed. So requested whether or not he discovered himself evaluating Matsson to the “impact-driven” founders on his podcast collection, Skarsgård had a nuanced response.
“The world would most likely be a greater place with much less folks like Lukas Matsson and extra folks just like the founders on How We Repair This,” he says.
“However then once more, inform a man like Lukas Matsson there’s no means he can restore all of the coral reefs in our oceans.”
