What word do you think you’d hear most during an hour-long conversation with the CEO of a growing scaleup? Profit, innovation, investors? Maybe some industry jargon?
We ask because after spending an hour or so with Mollie’s new CEO Koen Köppen, one word rolls around the room and reverberates throughout the conversation, underpinning every part of our discussion.
Not leverage, utilise, or synergy (thankfully). No, the word is ‘customer’.
And that makes sense.
Why? Because Koen has been passionately dedicated to helping customers throughout his career – from his start in engineering to becoming Klarna’s Chief Technical Officer and now in his role as our CEO/CTO.
In fact, that commitment was forged early in his career, during his time in a customer-facing engineering role that challenged how he approached product development.
“Up until then, I was looking at a product from an inward-looking perspective”, he explains. “But actually, spending a year in my career working closely with customers and seeing products through their eyes was enlightening: it changed my mindset and the way I approach things.”
What word do you think you’d hear most during an hour-long conversation with the CEO of a growing scaleup? Profit, innovation, investors? Maybe some industry jargon?
We ask because after spending an hour or so with Mollie’s new CEO Koen Köppen, one word rolls around the room and reverberates throughout the conversation, underpinning every part of our discussion.
Not leverage, utilise, or synergy (thankfully). No, the word is ‘customer’.
And that makes sense.
Why? Because Koen has been passionately dedicated to helping customers throughout his career – from his start in engineering to becoming Klarna’s Chief Technical Officer and now in his role as our CEO/CTO.
In fact, that commitment was forged early in his career, during his time in a customer-facing engineering role that challenged how he approached product development.
“Up until then, I was looking at a product from an inward-looking perspective”, he explains. “But actually, spending a year in my career working closely with customers and seeing products through their eyes was enlightening: it changed my mindset and the way I approach things.”
What word do you think you’d hear most during an hour-long conversation with the CEO of a growing scaleup? Profit, innovation, investors? Maybe some industry jargon?
We ask because after spending an hour or so with Mollie’s new CEO Koen Köppen, one word rolls around the room and reverberates throughout the conversation, underpinning every part of our discussion.
Not leverage, utilise, or synergy (thankfully). No, the word is ‘customer’.
And that makes sense.
Why? Because Koen has been passionately dedicated to helping customers throughout his career – from his start in engineering to becoming Klarna’s Chief Technical Officer and now in his role as our CEO/CTO.
In fact, that commitment was forged early in his career, during his time in a customer-facing engineering role that challenged how he approached product development.
“Up until then, I was looking at a product from an inward-looking perspective”, he explains. “But actually, spending a year in my career working closely with customers and seeing products through their eyes was enlightening: it changed my mindset and the way I approach things.”
What word do you think you’d hear most during an hour-long conversation with the CEO of a growing scaleup? Profit, innovation, investors? Maybe some industry jargon?
We ask because after spending an hour or so with Mollie’s new CEO Koen Köppen, one word rolls around the room and reverberates throughout the conversation, underpinning every part of our discussion.
Not leverage, utilise, or synergy (thankfully). No, the word is ‘customer’.
And that makes sense.
Why? Because Koen has been passionately dedicated to helping customers throughout his career – from his start in engineering to becoming Klarna’s Chief Technical Officer and now in his role as our CEO/CTO.
In fact, that commitment was forged early in his career, during his time in a customer-facing engineering role that challenged how he approached product development.
“Up until then, I was looking at a product from an inward-looking perspective”, he explains. “But actually, spending a year in my career working closely with customers and seeing products through their eyes was enlightening: it changed my mindset and the way I approach things.”
