After Shopify bought his last startup, Birk Jernström wants to help developers build one-person unicorns

Sam Altman and “his CEOs from Tech” have a Paris swimming pool The year, we will see the first company of a billion dollars for a person.

The idea of ​​a single person reaching a billion dollars assessment for a startup would have been unthinkable without Ai. But unique, A-STIF companies have germinated throughout the technological industry and Birk Jernström, CEO of PolarA “monetization platform to empower a person’s unicorns”, is next to them to help them get there.

Polar hopes to stand out from other payment infrastructure platforms by focusing on the needs of developers. With Polar as their “file merchant” responsible for invoicing and tax management, companies can sell online products and SaaS subscriptions worldwide from the first day.

Polar can be implemented with a few lines of code, an approach that resonated with the company VC Accel, which led seeds of 10 million dollars in thriller. “There are a new generation of a-native and start-up companies that want to develop without distractions,” said partner Andrei Brasoveanu.

It also helped that Jernström had an exit to his credit. His previous startup, Tictalwas acquired by Shopify in 2018 For $ 17 million fusion of all cash. He and his co -founders created him with the ambition to make the sale of online products as simple as to create a blog.

“In 2011, we started Tictail with the mission of authorizing anyone Start an online store. We launched in 2012 and it quickly took off. Over a few years, we have the house of more than 100,000 merchants on the platform, a lot on the long tail, “said Jernström.

Recognizing that small traders needed more traffic, Tictail developed a market It finally made a target for Shopify. The competitor of Tictail had become much larger and on board the biggest merchants. But after His introductionThe Canadian Society has seen the need to look at the consumer side of things, and believed that the tictal team could help.

With its co -founders and several of their employees, Jernström joined the newly created Shopify’s team of shops. “It has finally become what is now known as Store application and the Compensate Ecosystem that I was honored to be part of the construction of zero to one and the scale. »»

But in 2021, when he was about to become a father for the first time, Jernström went through a period of self-reflection. This finally led him to resign from his distant role to understand his next movement, which turned out to be polar.

The split was entirely friendly, so much so that the CEO of Shopify, Tobias Lütke and President Harley Finkelstein, now support the angels. The culture “obsessed with the merchant” which they built in Shopify also detected on Jernström.

“I answer more than 50 or 60 support tickets per day. I know each customer with whom we work, and it’s a bit crazy, but I love to understand what their next steps are on their trip and what Polar can do to facilitate them,” he said.

Understand its customers and be open source Helped Polar to gain ground with its target users. From launch In September 2024, the startup increased to 18,000 customers, most of which are software monetizing developers.

This is also reflected on his CAP table, which presents entrepreneurs behind popular developer tools: Crampon And RadiusBoth Polar integrates; Nickname,, Nuxt,, Relive,, Supabase,, VercelAnd Workos; And Kindwhich shares the Swedish Polar roots and the emphasis on construction easier to build.

Now, they support Jernström’s ambition to make the construction of a company around software as simple as platforms such as Supabase and Vercel make it the creation and scale of the software itself.

This is linked to the momentum that AI has created for independent pirates and professional developers. But he also connects the points with him by growing up with an entrepreneurial mother when I was a child; to be a developer from his adolescents; And of course, the trip of Tictail to lift the little guys.

“What I want Polar realizes is similar to Shopify: how to allow more entrepreneurship of developers who can really build and follow their own passions and send software independently and create companies around this.”