Matias attributes some of this Swedish exceptionalism to a national bias towards doing: “Sweden is a country of engineers.” This may in part be due to a thinly spread population: the North in particular had a political impetus to be connected: the dark 1 nights might help create legions of Nordic otakus . The famous Swedish safety net, far from discouraging entrepreneurship, actually encouraged young entrepreneurs to take the risk, as, whatever happened, they would have a comfy landing. Not that Matias needed that. When, in 1996, he set up his own digital agency, Spiff, it soon became predicated on taking advantage of the internet boom. “Everyone was doing homepages.” They didn’t. Spiff started with just four people: the other three came from a production agency, and were much younger than Matias. Spiff Industries did not create homepages. It broke the trend and made advertising in ways no other agencies imagined. The first award they won was for the Swedish Post. For this campaign, they bought all banners on big Swedish media sites and then did daily callouts to Swedish influencers, such as Stefan Persson, CEO of H&M. First, they sent written letters to their targets that read: “Go to the Internet today, and read the newspapers!” Then, when their targets went online and visited the websites, they were greeted with digital banners directly addressing them: “Hi, Stefan Persson, please order your lobster here!” They simply had to click on the banner and choose, “Yes, I want lobster”. Thirty minutes later, they had a deliveryman at their door, with nothing other than their request, fresh lobster. For most people, this was a totally mind-shaking experience and suddenly a lot of “important” people understood what it was all about. Success fed success. Spiff continued to gain recognition but also grew in size. Soon they were managing 500 staff. It takes some calibre to handle that, although there’s never been much self-doubt around Matias Palm-Jensen. His mother was French, “an intellectual, stupid, strange philosophy student in Paris”, who decided on a whim to go to Sweden with her best friend – “not a very Parisian thing to do”. Of course she met a man. Franco-Swedish helps define Matias: Swedish he is, but with an even more exotic flavour than that might suggest. His grandparents had mixed with Miró and Dali. Pasolini came to stay – and also chose the basement.