How Sweden became the Silicon Valley of Europe

Stockholm: As Klarna’s billionaire founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski prepares to stage one of the biggest-ever European fintech company listings, a feast of capitalism, he credits an unlikely backer for his runaway success: the Swedish welfare state.

In particular, the 39-year-old pinpoints a late-1990s government policy to put a computer in every home.

“Computers were inaccessible for low-income families such as mine, but when the reform came into play, my mother bought us a computer the very next day,” he told Reuters.