Knowledge — Martin Källström

Companies

The ventures

Narrative

2012–2016

Lifelogging camera startup founded 2012 as Memoto AB, renamed Narrative 2013, bankrupt 2016. Martin co-founder/CEO.

1967 claims197 sources

Multiply

2020–

Martin's AI-native 'creative operating system' company (Stockholm, founded 2020; legal entity Fluent Development AB, org.nr 559225

399 claims69 sources

Twingly

2006–2012

Blog search engine and blogosphere data company, Linköping, founded 2006. Martin was co-founder/CEO until 2011.

335 claims57 sources

Heywear

2019–2024

NYC same-day optical retail startup (founded 2018–19, retail launch March 2021 at 363 Lafayette St NoHo, closed ~2024). Martin co-

149 claims15 sources

Alversjö Natur

2021–

Alversjö Natur AB (org.nr 559357-0145, registered late 2021, seat Kinda) — the community-held land company that owns the 100-hecta

88 claims11 sources

Kindship

2024–

Martin's current venture (martin@kindship.ai).

53 claims15 sources

Be Here Now

2017–

Martin's applied-AI company (Be Here Now AB, org.nr 559106-3036, registered 2017-03-25, Kisa; Martin sole board member and CEO) fo

51 claims11 sources

Primelabs

2004–2008

Martin's first company (mid-2000s), creator of Twingly; later renamed Twingly AB.

16 claims5 sources

Polyester

2004–

Consulting firm (handelsbolag) Martin co-founded 2004, spun out of a housing-portal dev department; predecessor context to Primela

5 claims5 sources

Not founded by Martin, but part of the story — Backers: Servisen

Projects

What they built

Narrative App & Platform

Memoto Kickstarter Campaign

120 claims

Alversjö Natur

Alversjö & The Borderland

Lifeloggers Documentary

Twingly Summer of Code

Twingly Microblog Search

Philosophy

How Martin thinks

Views on AI

AI co-creation623 AI adoption & society484 AI-native interfaces & products35 Data ownership & AI ethics14 AI engineering practice11 AI business & value6

Startup philosophy

Growth strategy & risk336 Hardware & manufacturing139 Fundraising & investors87 Failure & resilience54 Leadership & organization24

Memory & lifelogging

Memory & photography252 Presence & attention183

Personal development

Vulnerability & masculinity37 Meditation & balance26

Other

Privacy & surveillance228

Stories

How Martin tells it

How I explain things

Metaphors and mental models, each traced to the moment it was first said.

Luck is having all your tentacles outLuck doesn't exist, in his telling: it is the discipline of putting yourself and your product in enough rooms, proven by two nervous students, a referral in Lund and a rushed London pitch.Old fears, new machinesPrinting press, Walkman, a grandmother who refused the telephone: every new panic gets a historical parallel.Work is machine simulationA working glossary of his AI-era vocabulary: machine simulation, copy-paste monkeys, System 2, the pineapple canary.Colorful socks and the peepholeThe images he reaches for when asked what a company, or a life, is for.

Told and retold

The stories he keeps telling, every telling side by side.

The photo albums and the ninth birthdayNarrative's origin story, telling by telling from 2013 to 2017, and what shifts each time.The spreadsheet of ideasThirty ideas in 2013, fifty in 2014, seventy in 2021: the founding-idea story and how its numbers drift.The newspaper raceTwingly's breakout in the sanitized version and the true one: two rival newspapers launching the same day by accident.Eighteen cows and no VCRThe Småland farm childhood, and the different trait each retelling uses it to explain.

What it did to other people

Reception: users, reviewers, patients, bystanders.

Letters from usersA photographer in a wheelchair, a train conductor, a family with an autistic son: the mail that became his success metric.The reviewersLeo Laporte's secret month, a girlfriend leaving the room, and the 2014 review wave: the Clip as outsiders saw it.Lifelogging as careSofia's parents, Alzheimer's research and a seven-year SenseCam wearer: the uses that had nothing to do with gadgets.Watching AI land on other peopleClassmates, a goldsmith, an agency watching a workflow appear in five minutes: adoption as he observed it in others.

Rules I paid for

Playbook rules, each argued from the stories that cost something.

Decline the traffic you can't carrySaying no to Aftonbladet's front page, and the Kickstarter that buried the team in support: capacity honesty as a rule.Commit before you're readyA Vienna booth signed before the co-founders agreed, 1.3 million on design, and the cost when the bet ran too hot.Kill early, never abandon nearly doneClean kills of a classifieds site and a fintech, and the one abandonment two months from beta he still regrets.Clone the repo before you believe the demoDevin, Gemini, Figure and Cursor Composer: his method for hype, and the price he paid for skipping it once.An honest pitch beats fake opennessA staged co-creation workshop on Gotland he still feels shame about, and the flat organisations that held.

Life events

Turning points

~2000

Father's death

Martin lost his father at age 22; formative loss behind the Memoto idea.

2000-2001

Japan year

Martin and his wife moved to Japan (she at Ericsson Yokohama); he did web development for Swedish companies incl. Gadelius. Returned to find Framfab gone.

~2010

Mother's death

Martin lost his mother roughly a decade after his father — the lost memories of his parents became the seed of the lifelogging idea that grew into Memoto/Narrat

2011

Leaving Twingly CEO role

Martin stepped down as Twingly CEO to pursue new ventures.

2012-10

Memoto Kickstarter

The record-breaking Kickstarter for the Memoto lifelogging camera — $550k from 2,871 backers, turning a decade-old idea born from lost family memories into a co

2016

Narrative bankruptcy

Narrative's insolvency after raising ~100M SEK — and the unusually open public processing of failure that followed ('Konsten att gå i konkurs').

2019

New York & Heywear

Martin split life between New York and Sweden, building and running the Heywear same-day glasses studio in Manhattan (opened NoHo 2021, closed ~2024).

2020

Meeting Veronica

Martin met his partner Veronica Gullbrandson on Tinder — goldsmith and owner of Ädelsmedjan in Kisa. The relationship was openly polyamorous from the start, wit

~2022

Founding of Multiply

Starting the AI venture Multiply with Rasmus Adler Wahlberg; home of the Co-creating with AI podcast.

~2024

Founding of Kindship

Martin's current venture focused on AI capability for families/relationships (kindship.ai).

Cross-cutting