 Det är bra att vara här med dig Peter. Thank you very much, it's great to be back in Finland. Yeah, you were here on 17 right first time on stage. Yes, yeah, cool. And I actually wanted to start out today with something that stuck with me from our prep call last week because I asked you how are you Peter and you said I'm living the dream so maybe we could start there with your dream actually. What is this dream that you're having and tell us a little bit about your ambition to build the world's greenest battery. So when when we started this, this, I whoops, I shouldn't call it a project anymore because it's a it's a much bigger thing than than a project. But we we basically saw that that Europe if Europe should achieve its Paris and really fulfill the requirements, basically reducing the carbon footprint with 80 percent over three decades. There is just a massive need to take oil out of of transportation to change the energy generation and all of this require energy storage and kind of having been at Tesla before being part of of developing the Gigafactory. I knew what would require it in order to scale. And this was was kind of the thesis that we looked at, you know, can we build large scale capacity in Europe in order to support this transformation? And the more we looked at it, the more we saw that specifically, there is two things. One is is that building batteries and energy storage is incredibly energy intensive to take from raw material to a finished battery. You basically consume almost a hundred times the amount of energy that you produce. So a hundred kilowatt hour to produce one one kilowatt hour. And that means that it becomes super, super important, not just that we build batteries for vehicles and for energy storage, but it becomes also super important that we do it in the right way, that we build it in grids where we have sustainable energy as a comparison. If you if you take the entire car industry, which is basically 90 million vehicles a year and you say, OK, all this industry is going to transform into electric vehicles and you do this based on batteries built in cold based grids, such as China and, you know, en number of East European countries, you will create the carbon footprint, building this battery, solving the oil problem that is the size of half Germans carbon footprint or the size of Spain's carbon footprint. And this become became a big, big mission. It's like not just building energy storage, but to drive this transition in a green way. So that became the big, big mission in, in, in, in the Norfolk start. And I guess that was also the reason for your choice to position this first gigafactory in the northern part of Sweden, where you actually have access to that kind of energy. Absolutely. I mean, we choose Skellefteå, where we building our first factory, and we're just basically a month away from, from starting production, where we have a huge surplus of hydropower. And it means we can get it green and we can get it continuously. But because that's also a challenge for industry is if you're dependent on solar and just wind, you will have intermittent supply, which means which doesn't work for industry. Ja, exactly. And another aspect of building a gigafactory like that, that is, of course, the people that you need. And how many people are you on board now on your team? We are roughly 2,200 or so. We're growing with about 100, 120 people per month. Wow, yeah, that's recruiting for you. Sorry. Yeah, that's recruiting for you. Absolut. Ja, vi har, du har part av, of building a company is also building an internal recruitment generator, så we have a team of 25 people who is just working on recruitment. I'm looking back at these five years and more than 2,000 people. What would you say have been the key challenges in terms of building a team this size? I mean, there is a number of different challenges in different steps. In the beginning, you know, one thing I brought with me from also from Tesla and working with Elon was, you know, if you want to build a world-class company, you can't just look at a local labor market. You really, really need to go after the best wherever in the world you will find them. If you find the best cell designers in Japan or Korea. Go for it. And if you find the best battery systems and data analysts in Silicon Valley, that's where you need to go. And when you're doing that as a startup, it's, you know, it has a number of different challenges because you don't have an organization to take care of this or, you know, you work permits. You need to help them with finding apartments and Stockholm is not an easy city. So you basically needed to over dimension this part in order to build a very attractive team from the start. Then you have the next challenge, which is, you know, up to 50 people. You can pretty much work as a group. You can solve all things pretty much directly and everybody becomes an individual contributor. But then when you get beyond 50 and you get to 100, you know, you need to start leading through leaders. And then when you get beyond 500, you need to have leaders that can lead through other leaders. And during this, this growth, there are certain people that grows with the task, but there is also certain people that just don't fit with being, you know, a strong individual contributor and then become, and this, you know, in the beginning, you're so tight, you work so hard together, so it becomes almost like emotional divorces when you have to, when you have to take these decisions during a growth pace. And we'll come back to the leadership part of this in a little while, but I also wanted to ask, as an impact investor myself, a very proud backer of NorthVolt, even though we're probably a rounding error on your cap table. But has impact made it more easy to recruit people to your team, would you say? Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, standing for, you know, a mission and wanting to do a big impact where you can go home and say, you know, I'm not solving a small problem, I'm solving a big problem, is very, very attractive. We see that when we're looking for people from all over the world that being part of this mission and kind of feeling very strongly is perhaps the most important part of attracting this talents over, you know, then other things also becomes important, like, you know, providing, you know, shareholding for all our employees, etc. But the mission is so powerful, but it also becomes super important that you, in all aspects living the mission, because your employees becomes your biggest critics. Yeah, yeah, that's great to have on board. And so this has really made you, made it able for you to attract people to join from all over the world to, to northern Sweden, basically. And you mentioned the diversity. You have how many nationalities again, like nine. We've surpassed 100 nationalities, I think a couple of months ago. And we were very, very proud of this. I mean, one, one interesting source of knowledge. It's kind of interesting in Sweden, for example, taking a PhD is, is not compared, for example, to the US or in Germany. It doesn't pay off that well. Exakt. And, and so many people, also Swedish people, don't go for, for the, for a PhD unless you're really, really want to become a professor. And so we've, and thereby there is, there's a lot of, of foreign students that join the Swedish PhD programs at KTH and Schalmers, etc. And they were really struggling. I mean, super competent people were really struggling to get, you know, good jobs in, in, in, in Swedish large corporations. And we took a bunch of them, I mean, and they're super capable, super motivated. And, you know, it was, that was an opportunity. Yeah, yeah. And in addition to that, I guess you're then a very diverse company. Do you see any advantage of that kind of? Has that been important in recruiting on other aspects as well? I think, I think there is a lot of, lot of benefits in the sense, but, but, you know, diversity is also an investment long term. Because it means difference of thought. It means a bit of a longer process in order to align everybody. But it also means that there is a, you know, smaller risk that you will run off a cliff where everybody is just running the same direction. So, so that diversity is, is important. But what we do see is, is there is challenges, you know, when you are a startup, for example, you bring people from, from Asia that are used to very hierarchical structures. And then you give them a flat organization and, and you give them a lot of responsibility. And that needs retraining, reprogramming. And, and it takes, it takes a while. It's also, you know, when you're getting, because different cultures also have different approaches to problem solving. So when you have a multifaceted group that is, you know, going after a complex problem, you might have very different ways of approaching it. And, and so it becomes super, super important that you, you're, you're really working on bridging this and, and that you're starting to create your own very strong culture. This is, this is what leadership is at us. This is the way we approach, you know, problem solving. This is, this is the type of behaviors that we encourage. And speaking of culture there, because you mentioned previously that you also have a background from Tesla. Was there a certain part of the Tesla culture that you brought with you into the north world culture and other other aspects that you've added? Would you mind describing the culture today? Well, I think, you know, Tesla made me realize how important, you know, to be driven by a mission. And, and how important it is to walk the talk. I mean, you know, you could argue a lot about Elon's different ways, but, but you could never argue about his dedication to, to the mission. And, and, and that brought a lot of energy into, into, into the company. We really, really tried to embrace that with, with building the, the Norfolk's structure. The other one is, is, you know, before joining Tesla, I, you know, I've been with a couple of large corporations. I worked with semiconductors. I worked with, with mobile phones. And in these companies, you know, when you can become a manager, director, vice president, you always work with these, these balance scorecards. You have like, you know, eight different than every month you look at it, it's like red, yellow, green. And, and then when I came to Tesla, it was like, okay, this, you know, this quarter, we have two objectives. This is our balance scorecard. And, and that's, you know, to take problem step by step and not trying to do everything in and balance the scorecard, but really focus is, is something that is, it's a little bit challenging, but it really makes a momentum in, in an organization. So we've really focused on reducing the objectives and the way that we work with kind of OQRs in, in, in our organization. Super. So really strong focus. That's an advice for, I guess, all the founders out there. And maybe if you were to share another advice on how to build a team like this, what would you share with people out there that are currently building their teams? I think one thing that is, is that I would, would very much share is obviously, you know, as, as a founder, you, you need to compliment yourself, you know, you need, you need to build a team that is complimentary, but that also means that you need to know what your weak sides are so that you can compliment, compliment these. The other one that, that I think is super important and that we focus a lot on, on now is, is, is kind of the multiplier theory that. You know, it's not just important for you as a leader to, to, to achieve your objectives, to, to, to meet, meet a performance target. But it's as important that you are a talent attractor. That people want to work with you and want to come. Because if, if you're not, we will not scale. And, and this is also when you're working with engineering organizations, these two are not always the same in the same person. And, and you, you need to be honest about that. And that's, that's a hard truth sometimes. Yeah. And I guess you, that's something you learn along, along the way. Like it is, it is. And that leads us into kind of your leadership style a little bit. And I guess that has also changed a lot during these years and as you scale the company. For sure. I mean, it is, you know, it, it is different when, when you, when you, in the beginning, you know, you have your first 20 employees at the office, face to face every day, you know, obviously you have much more faster changes in the beginning. You have much more kind of, you know, tomorrow we run out of funds. You know, what the fuck do we do? And, and as you grow, as you grow bigger, you, you need to recognize that, that doing big changes needs a much more, much more communication. It needs bringing much more people on board understanding. You, you, you know, you're becoming the driver of a supertanker, but you still want it to be a fast track supertanker. Yeah. And that, that requires some, some changes in the way that, that you lead. And also that you need to think a little bit more about how you communicate. I have taken it, I take it, taken an example. I mean, I was up in, in Skellefteå and every, every Wednesday. So also today I do a video streaming for all employees. And we were having this, this situation up in, in Skellefteå, where we kind of got the, at our big building site, we got the second wave of, of corona. And it was mainly driven by that a lot of, of our subcontractors were not vaccinated. And, and, you know, the first wave of corona was very disruptive for us. It was very difficult to, to run. So I went out in my, my, my, my, my stream and said, you know, we, we will give all our sub, subcontractors a certain time. Let's, I think it was like 10 days to get vaccinated, but, but after that we will not allow people that are not vaccinated on site. It's a matter of, of safety for, for, for everybody. And it took like, and this was an internal video streaming. It took like 15 minutes before we had Aftonbladet, Norran and other newspapers saying, you know, we heard you communicate this message. You, you know, are you now taking decisions over people's life? So, so, you know, these, these are realities that comes with, with a bigger company and, and also a lot of media focus. I can imagine, I can imagine. And I mean, this is obviously a big role, a big job that you're taking on. How do you find or take rather the time to kind of recharge? I mean, a day like this, actually not booking too many meetings, but, but just being a day off, reflecting a bit is, is, I think it's, there is no way that you can run a marathon like this if you don't have a little bit of a switch off button. And, and I tried to do that, but it is hard. You know, it is also so that, that whenever there is a crisis, the organisation will always look at you, how you act in, in, in a crisis. And if you don't act with a sense of urgency, you can't expect the rest of the, the organisation. I can take another example. I am during the autumn, the school break in, in the autumn in, in Sweden, I, me and my, my kids together with my partner, we, we travelled to Uganda. And because she's running a charity there and we will, we're buying some land to build a school. And, and we were really off the grid in, in Uganda, so I, I didn't have access to internet and thereby, you know, I didn't have access to teams chats, etc. So I didn't, I couldn't see that there was a team chat around that we had, we actually had a fire in, in our plant in, in Västerås, where we have R&D. And, and it wasn't a big fire, but, but whenever we, you know, call 911, you know, it's always police fire department and not at least media comes. And, and this was a fairly, you know, it's, it's a small thing. We, our employees took care of it. But part of the procedure is that they need to go to a health check afterwards because, you know, the, the fumes in a battery, specifically the electrolyte is a little bit, it could be dangerous. So they went on, on a health check, it took, took an hour and then they were back at, at, at, at work, but in media, this became, you know, free injured in, in a fire in Västerås. And I, I was down in Uganda and I started to get SMS from, from board members and, and investors asking me what about the injured people in, in Västerås. And I was totally, and then you get a buildup of, of anxiety. It was, it was a cool thing. But, but, you know, you can never be totally off grid. Exactly. Okay. So it will be some time until you go off grid next time. Exactly. Cool. I wanted to also, if we fast forward a little bit and talk about kind of future applications of the North Pole batteries, what are some of the applications that you are most excited about? I think what is interesting right now is, is, is that you're seeing everywhere where we have a combustion engine, people are thinking of, you know, how can we replace this with, with a battery? It's not just a car. And, you know, it's, it's, it's the diesel generators that we have everywhere on, on concerts, on construction sites, etc. So it's, it's super exciting to see how we reevaluate all these, these, this infrastructure. Then, you know, if you want to be a little bit more futuristic, but it's not that far away, then, you know, the way of, of using batteries for, for flying is, it's not that, that it's not that far away. We have today roughly an energy density in, in our high performing batteries that is around 700 watt hours per liter. Mm. When, and with, with that, if you build a plane, you can get roughly maybe four to five hundred kilometers on, on, on a flight. But the problem is, is also with, with, which is kind of the minimum for, for regional, regional flights, but, but you also have a, you also have a requirement that, you know, you should have 30 percent extra when you land in order so that you can hover around an airport or if, if there is a, is, is an issue, which means that that four to five hundred actually becomes, you know, 250, 300, and that's not, not sufficient. So you, you basically need to go towards 1200 watt hours per liter. We acquired a company in, in Silicon Valley in Berkeley, Kuberge earlier this year that is developing a, a next gen battery. It's a, it's a lithium metal instead of a traditional graphite anode. It's a lithium metal with, with a special type of, of electrolyte that actually brings cells up to, to a thousand watt hours and actually towards 12 and potentially 1400 watt hours. And, and I was out there when US opened up two weeks ago. I was out there with them and seeing their new facility, their building. They're a little bit there like three years where we, from, from where we were when we started to build our R&D. And I was meeting up these, these electric aviation companies and recognizing that, you know, this is going to change, you know, you're going to go much more from big, you know, flight point to point. If I take one example, Delta, for example, it's a, a Vermont that, that is focusing on, on cargo, flight cargo. It can lift 750 kg on, on one plane and, and DHL have done a big investment in them because they see that instead of having big airplanes that DHLs have today that goes through Memphis and these hubs, they will build in the future a mesh network. So small peer-to-peer jump that will suit e-trade much better, faster deliveries. It will start with a pilot, but you know, eventually it will be without pilots. And, and this is, you know, they will start certifying planes 2023. They might be up and running by 2025 and, and it's fairly big volumes. So it's, it's, it's, you know, five years away and, and that's nothing. So in five years we can travel here by electric aircrafts. I, I think Stockholm to Helsinki borderline five years, but for sure in 10 years. Amazing. Final question for you, Peter. Do you think Norfolk is at your last venture or is there more to come? Will you go into space like some other people? I mean, you know, no, you, you never know what, what your last venture, but it feels like right now I will kind of die with, with Norfolk. But, but, but I do have one dream that I've been pretty outspoken with, and that is, is eventually I would like to be, also become a wine farmer. So that's, that might be my, my last venture, at least as I see it today. Sounds really nice. Thank you so much, Peter. Thank you. Thank you.