I wasn’t sure I was going to write this post, but I’ve had several of these conversations in the past few weeks and putting my thoughts here is a good kind of closure.

The Analyzd team joined Klarna in 2011 to bring our way of doing Risk and Product to a company that was starting its international push. Klarna simplified payments in a way I found appealing but was easy to fraud and abuse, and what we brought to the table made a difference. It was also my first attempt at testing my philosophy about Risk completely on my own – not as a group leader in a small startup or a huge behemoth like PayPal but a company in hyper growth. Boy, was I in for a ride!

It’s been two years. I learned a ton – first, that this thing really worked. The amazing team and I managed to bring Klarna to new levels of fraud and risk prevention as well as technical prowess, introducing technical and predictive innovation that allowed for some of the lowest rejection and default rates in the industry on an annual payment volume of close to $2.5 Billion in online, real-time short term credit. Klarna Risk is not only a great place to work at and a well-oiled machine delivering results but also a great place to be from, and I expect many of the young leaders to move on to lead teams in the coming 5 years, much like the FraudSciences team did. I also learned what it means to be part of a hyper-growth company, raise money and work with some of the most impressive VCs in Financial Services and in general, work with regulators and traditional finance companies and many other things.

I also learned something else – I like building and inventing, much less so the exec type, and with the team’s maturation they needed me less. After much deliberation I decided that it’s time for me to go a build something new, and let the professional executives run the show. I’m leaving behind a big, mature and strong team led by some of the most talented people I had the fortune to work with and a company with a bright future, led by smart and capable leaders. I will continue to be bullish about Klarna’s ongoing success and help them out as much as I can, while I go back to square one and build something new, hopefully again something helpful.

I am slowly transitioning out of my role, and will stick around through the end of 2012, but come 2013 I am planning to be out and about. More info on my next steps to come in the near future. Stay tuned.