Martin Källström
knowledge / stories

Eighteen cows and no VCR

When Martin is asked where his nerve comes from, he does not answer with a company. He answers with a farm: parents from academic families who became 1970s green-wave farmers deep in the Småland forest, a village of a hundred people, total freedom and almost no technology, no video recorder until he was in high school. He has told that childhood six times between a 2012 TEDx talk and a 2021 founder webinar, and each time the farm is the same and the lesson is different. This page lays the tellings out and follows what moves. The chronology lives on life history; the losses that end the story are on Father's death and Mother's death.

2012, TEDx Botkyrka: the bravest startup

The first public telling frames the farm as a company. "When I was 5 years old, I was part of the most brave startup I've seen in my life." His parents moved from Eskilstuna to Femsjö (the transcript garbles the village name), "a village of 100 people." He spent ten years on that yard, and "for my parents, those were the hardest and happiest 10 years of their life. Because in this startup there was no financing. They were bootstrapping from day one, and they had to be cash flow positive because their children depended on it." ▶ 3:25

The trait he extracts in 2012 is solution focus, which he says is where he got his entrepreneur mind. ▶ 5:32 The village also supplies his argument for the real-time web. There was one other child his age: "We didn't share a single interest. He was one year older, he was really interested in motorcycles. I couldn't care less about motorcycles. We became best friends because there were no other kids there." ▶ 8:09 Here the farm explains a product, Twingly, not a temperament.

2013 and 2015: the black-and-white TV and the calf

The press tellings are shorter and more pastoral. Der Spiegel's 2013 Memoto profile reports that "Källström talks about his childhood on a farm, where there was only a black-and-white TV set in the house. It was an idyllic environment, much like the setting of a novel by Astrid Lindgren." The next sentence is the deaths of his parents; the farm is there to set up the camera. Der Spiegel ↗

Breakit's November 2015 profile has Martin showing the reporter a photo: "Han visar en annan bild där han är åtta år och står bredvid en av familjens kalvar." (He shows another picture where he is eight and standing next to one of the family's calves.) The family is specified as in no talk: "Hans mamma och plastpappa kom från akademikerfamiljer men valde själva att utbilda sig till lantbrukare. När Martin Källström var sex år flyttade de till en bondgård i en by i Småland." (His mother and stepfather came from academic families but chose to train as farmers. When Martin Källström was six they moved to a farm in a village in Småland.) Six here; five at TEDx. The trait this time is presence: farming means seven days of work a week, but the parents are always home, so you had them close. He never wanted to take over the farm. Breakit ↗

2014, Startuppodden: eighteen cows and courage despite fear

The longest telling is the one the title comes from. Asked whether he was a kid who sat and hacked, Martin answered with the farm: "Jag är uppväxt på landet med fullkomlig frihet men väldigt lite teknik, väldigt lite digital teknik. Vi hade ju inte ens videobandspelare förrän jag gick på gymnasiet." (I grew up in the countryside with complete freedom but very little technology, very little digital technology. We did not even have a video recorder until I was in high school.) ▶ 16:22

Then the parents, whom he says he only understood in hindsight: "de var sådana här gröna vågare som på 70-talet ville bli lantbrukare. Kom från akademikerfamiljer och ville flytta ut på landet och driva jordbruk" (they were these green-wave people who in the 70s wanted to become farmers. Came from academic families and wanted to move to the countryside and farm). ▶ 16:47 The numbers arrive here and nowhere else: "flytta från stan 30 mil in i mörkaste Smålandsskogen där de hittade en liten gård med 18 kor och har fyra barn och bara lever av vad marken ger dem" (to move from the city 300 kilometres into the darkest Småland forest, where they found a small farm with 18 cows, and have four children and live only on what the land gives them). ▶ 17:12

The trait in 2014 is named precisely. "Det är ett enormt stort steg. Att inte utan rädsla, men däremot med väldigt mycket mod som gör att man vågar göra saker som man tror på fast man kanske är rädd för det." (It is an enormous step. Not without fear, but with a great deal of courage that makes you dare to do things you believe in even though you may be afraid of them.) "Och precis så har det varit med alla val jag har gjort." (And that is exactly how it has been with every choice I have made.) They backed him completely through his most computer-nerdy years ▶ 17:38 and his little brother just as fully through teenage years devoted to football rather than school. Doing what you believe in and finding your happiness in it, he says, is what he got from home. ▶ 18:21

2017 and 2021: the pitches he cannot remember

A year after Narrative's bankruptcy, Breakit's Camilla Björkman asked when he became an entrepreneur, and the farm came back as inheritance: "Att mina föräldrar gav upp alla sina bekantskaper och flyttade ut i skogen och drev en bondgård. De var gröna vågare på 70-talet" (That my parents gave up all their acquaintances and moved out into the forest and ran a farm. They were green-wavers in the 70s). ▶ 2:12

Then a detail that exists in no other telling. "Min bonuspappa Peter sa att när jag gick på gymnasiet så kom jag hem varje dag med olika affärsidéer och pitchade honom. Och det har jag faktiskt inget som helst minne av själv." (My bonus dad Peter said that when I was in high school I came home every day with different business ideas and pitched him. And I actually have no memory of that at all.) ▶ 3:02 He adds a second line of descent: his biological father, absent from every farm telling, was also always hunting for an idea to start a company around. ▶ 3:28

By 2021, on a StartupTalks webinar, the farm had been compressed to a sentence and pointed at a new lesson. "They were not tech entrepreneurs, they were farmers, but they made an equally adventurous journey starting a farm in Småland, in a super small village without knowing anyone there." What he learned: "you're supposed to do whatever you want in life and not postpone your happiness until pension or something like that." ▶ 6:02 Asked whether that was brave, he flipped it: "the worst thing that can happen to me is that I don't explore my dreams. So I think the brave thing is to not start a company." ▶ 6:41

What moves between tellings

The farm is stable; its coordinates are not. He is five at TEDx and six in Breakit; the family leaves from Eskilstuna in one telling and from an unnamed town, 300 kilometres into the forest, in another; the village has a hundred people in English and eighteen cows in Swedish. ▶ 3:25 · Breakit ↗ · ▶ 17:12 In 2017 the parents gave up all their acquaintances; in 2021 they arrived without knowing anyone, the same fact told from the two ends of the move. ▶ 2:12 · ▶ 6:02 What changes most is the moral: a bootstrapped startup for a tech conference, an Astrid Lindgren idyll when the subject is memory, courage despite fear a year into a hardware company, inheritance when the company is gone, permission not to wait when coaching founders. The one line present every time, in some form, is the 2014 one: do what you believe in, and find your happiness in it. ▶ 18:21

Worth remembering