How I Learned That Some Startup Problems Are Too Big For A Minimum Viable Product
figure — by Daniel Kjellén A first venture usually follows a well-worn playbook: a gap in the market, obsessive refinement of concept and pitch, eventual conviction that the solution is as bulletproof as it is revolutionary. Then, the dreaded phase of product-market fit.
Instead of building the future of an entire industry, you find yourself forced to focus on a narrow use case and spend the first invaluable years proving that your idea can make money and scale. The grand vision gets put on pause. For most founders, this journey is the only one available. After all, investors are betting on someone who has never built a company before, so a small check and a narrow product limit what everyone stands to lose. But some ambitions need total commitment from the start, and having built a company before helps when taking them on. Lessons from the front line Daniel Kjellén, CEO and co-founder of Freda. After selling my first venture, Tink, to Visa for €1.8 billion (about $1.9 billion USD) in 2022, I found myself in a new position — and it wasn’t horizontal on a sun lounger. My co-founder Fredrik Hedberg and I had a real war chest of our own, and a brand-new entrepreneurial bug. For the first time in our lives, we had the experience and the resources to undertake something truly world-changing. Compliance is a gauntlet that any founder will be painfully familiar with. Scaling Tink across Europe, to 700 people operating under a host of regulators, my team and I got used to tearing our hair out over small wording tweaks, reviews that dragged on for months, and perpetual uncertainty that stopped us from iterating fast and boldly. Products were often delayed by months, a slip that meant the world in an industry moving as fast as ours. A problem with too many heads Compliance was a problem that could never be solved piecemeal. Every company’s obligations depend on a million different factors, each of which sits in a different part of the business that rarely talks to one another. Legal tracks regulations; another department oversees how they are implemented.
