There’s a whole corner of the internet that calls August 1st “girl new year” — the idea that the real reset happens now, not in January, sold with the usual manifestation and and Pilates aesthetic. I’ll admit I’m basically doing a version of that. But underneath the joke is something I take completely seriously, and it has nothing to do with gender. Most people only recalibrate once a year, in January, at the worst possible moment for clear thought. Doing it in August, half-tanned and half-rested, is way better.

Much can change in half a year

My friends know I do this every year, and frankly they are quite sick and tired of hearing me go on and on about it — but each time I’m a little surprised by how much has happened since the last one. Last time I sat down properly, undisturned was in Namibia in January. No wifi and dunes that turned red at six every evening, nothing to do but sit with a notebook and my own thoughts. When I reread what I wrote there, most of it had already happened. The main bottlenecks have been resolved. I’m more contempt. After been dressing in the same clothes, enjoying the Swedish midsummer sun and not washing my hair for a week — I’m ready to go back to work on Monday. But first it’s time to reflect again.

Why summer, biologically

I wrote here a while ago about the frontal cortex, after hosting the dinner with The Footprint Firm earlier this year, about how real decision-making needs a brain that isn’t running on cortisol. Deep thinking requires the nervous system to actually be down-regulated. Summer, with its slower mornings and lower stakes, is one of the only times the frontal cortex gets to do the job it’s built for instead of just managing threats. It’s the reason this only works in August, not on a Thursday evening in November.

The questions I ask

So how do we do this girl new year? First we’ve covered rest, second it’s time for inspiration (I read, hang out on Pinterest and enjoy art), thirdly it’s time to put it in a format — I think of the six months ahead like a cake, not a to-do list.

So I start with values — these are the most important, and requires some work to figure out (perhaps more about that some other time).

Then the bottleneck. There is always one, and naming it is most of the work.

From there, inward and outward at the same time. Deeper world: what I actually need to feel steady, stripped of performance. Then the more shallow but enjoyable world, which are the sprinkles to life. Spirituality, separately, because it’s what gives my life weight beyond achievement.

Then the practical layer — career, finances (the honest number). Health, because at least for me, everything starts here and it’s the ultimate indicator. Then people: relationships, who to nourish, how to give time, and life’s most important part: love.

I’ll share some of my thinking at the end of this article.

Saying it out loud

None of this works if it stays in the notebook. That’s why I write this article. That’s why I verbalise it with friends and family. And my therapist gets the unfiltered version.

Keeping the thread through the year

Writing it down in August is the easy part. The harder discipline is not letting it go stale by October. So I follow up on Sundays, when I plan the coming week anyway. And every quarter I take a longer pass.

Still figuring it out

Some of what I’m carrying into this six months is a continuing thread. Practicing rest is not new — I have been bad at it for years and I am still bad at it, just less bad. Asking for help is not new either. But letting life carry me instead of forcing every outcome is new this year. In general I want to rush less and let quality permeate all parts of life.

A structure, and some examples from my board

Leading Word for the year — quality
Leading Values — love, courage, trust
Bottleneck — (I choose to keep this one for myself)
Deep world — finish my novel, write more politically, host salons with culture and politics
Shallow world — buy a hair dryer (!) and an evening bag
Career — spend a lot of time with my team and portcos, set the AI architecture 2.0 for Kost
Finances — save 1/3 of my earnings
Health — eat more protein in the morning, daily workouts, be more outside this winter
Spirituality — worthy mornings, evening ritual, go on a retreat
Love & Relationships — (I choose to keep this one for myself)

I often visualise this part rather than just write it, usually by creating an album in my phone. Some of the photos will only make sense to me, which is fine.

Hope this can inspire you to set out your own new year. If you have your own version of this, I would genuinely like to know what it looks like so feel free to share.

<3

I ended the day on a live podcast with Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist and PJ Pärson, founder of Northzone — one of Europe’s most respected venture investors. Elisabeth is not a career politician. Before leading Centerpartiet she was CEO of Företagarna and chair of SVCA. She’s also an entrepreneur herself. Probably the only party leader in Sweden who has held a real job. That changes how you think.

What Fördomsshowen tells us about AI

When I’m in Copenhagen and miss Sweden too much, I watch SVT’s Fördomsshowen, Emil Persson’s show that quizzes Sweden’s party leaders on culture and the things most people know.

Ebba Busch campaigns for a literary canon but could not name the author of Röda rummet. Magdalena Andersson cannot tell Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt apart. Simona Mohamsson, who leads a party whose entire identity rests on the rule of law, did not know all of Sweden’s constitutions.

None of this matters, and all of it matters. Not because leaders need to know who Brad Pitt is. But the same knowledge gap, unfortunately, tends to show up around AI — the most consequential technological shift of our lifetimes, already reshaping our industries, our labour market, our public services. A politician who genuinely understands this is not a nice-to-have. It is a requirement. Which is exactly why yesterday felt different.

Big ambitions, symbolic budgets

Sweden is genuinely extraordinary. Fourth globally for private venture capital investment in AI, over 1,150 AI startups, and relative to population the largest capital markets in the world. Spotify, Klarna, Lovable — all built here, by people stubborn enough to try. That is a culture. It deserves to be named loudly, before we spend the next six months arguing about who is more afraid of the future.

But being the best in Europe is not enough when the competition is not Europe. The US invested close to 300 billion dollars in AI last year. Sweden’s national AI strategy has a budget of 479 million kronor. That is not a strategy. That is a gesture. The companies we build scale on American infrastructure, raise American capital, and often end up in American hands. Not the founders’ failure. A system’s failure.

What would actually change things

Sweden has Saminvest — a state-backed fund of funds with 530 million euros committed. It does good work. It is also six times smaller than Denmark’s EIFO, in a country half our size. France’s Bpifrance has deployed over 50 billion euros. The US channelled hundreds of billions through the Inflation Reduction Act. We are not playing in the same league. Take Saminvest’s model, multiply it by ten, and build something that actually matches the ambition.

Beyond capital: unlisted shares should be holdable in an ISK, so ordinary savers can own a piece of the tech economy they live in. And if we fund four years at university, we can fund one year of building a company.

Fear trickles down

Only 17% of young people in Sweden are optimistic about the future of the world. One in three is optimistic about Sweden specifically. Across the EU, that number is 60%. Sweden is one of the most innovative, well-governed societies on earth — and our young people are among the most pessimistic in Europe. That is not a data point about the economy. It is a data point about narrative.

Among young women aged 18–29, two in three back the left-green bloc. Among young men, barely four in ten. The gap has been widening since 2016. Two groups experiencing the same uncertain world, drawing completely opposite conclusions. That happens when political culture stops offering a shared direction and starts offering competing anxieties instead. Fear drives votes in the short term. It is also corrosive. Leaders have an obligation not to feed it.

Standing firm

Centerpartiet has done something that does not get enough credit. In an environment where the path of least resistance has been to inch toward the Sweden Democrats, they have consistently said no. Every party that has tried to absorb SD’s agenda has ended up feeding it.

No growth, no innovation, no future has ever come from a political project whose purpose is to set people against each other. Standing firm on that, at real cost, makes it possible for those of us in the middle — who care about jobs, growth, and an open country — to have somewhere to stand.

The better story

Ten years ago I used to host a podcast called The Swedish Dream. The name was not ironic. It was a bet that Sweden had a story worth telling — about what this country builds, who it lets in (hint: more than now), and what it believes is possible. That story still exists. But right now it is losing ground to a cheaper one, built on anxiety and managed decline.

Yesterday felt like the better story was still alive. That is rarer than it should be. And it is exactly what Sweden needs more of before September.

Last night Kost Capital hosted an intimate dinner together with The Footprint Firm in Copenhagen. Founders, investors, a psychologist, great food. The topic was one we rarely make room for in venture: what happens inside the body and brain of the person building the company.

Not strategy. Not fundraising. Not product-market fit. The actual physiology of building something from nothing.

It hit close to home.

The founder’s paradox

Cecilie Willer, the psychologist who led the session, shared research from Hele Oette on what she calls the founder’s paradox. If you put sensors on a founder, their body will often register extreme stress, while cognitively, they feel fine. They love what they do so much that the joy masks the damage. They do not feel it happening.

Until they do.

Cecilie shared real cases. A founder who went blind from stress. Another who needed Botox in his jaw muscles because his body had been clenched for so long he could no longer relax his own face. A founder who could not remember people they had hired in their own team.

As an investor, that last one should terrify you. You are investing in leadership capability. If the person you backed cannot remember who is on their team, something has fundamentally broken. And yet, how many investors actually pay attention to this? We obsess over burn rate, CAC, and ARR. We do pattern recognition on cap tables and go-to-market strategies. But we do almost no pattern recognition on the nervous system of the person we are betting on. We should.

Where great companies are actually built

There is a law called the Yerkes-Dodson law, one of the largest empirical studies on performance and stress. It shows that performance rises with pressure, up to a point, and then drops sharply. For complex tasks, the kind founders face every day, creative thinking, decision-making, context-switching, the drop comes faster.

Cecilie introduced a model from psychologist Nina Werner that made this concrete. Your cognitive span, your ability to reflect, to nuance, to make sound long-term decisions, is at its largest when you are at a pressure level of around three or four out of ten. At ten, a psychiatrist would tell you: do not make any decision with long-term consequences. You are not cognitively equipped to do it.

This matters because leadership is, at its core, managing emotions. Your own first, then everyone else’s. Your investors, your board, your co-founders, your team. That requires empathy. And empathy is one of the first things to drop under sustained stress. When you are depleted, you are not operating from your frontal cortex, where creativity and long-term thinking live. You are running on the amygdala. Reactive, short-term, survival mode.

I know this because I have operated from my amygdala more than I would like to admit. And I know I am not the only one at the table, on either side of it.

That is not where great companies are built. And it is not where great investment decisions are made either.

Three systems

The framework that stayed with me most was Paul Gilbert’s model of three emotional systems. We have a drive system, fueled by dopamine, where we chase results and feel alive. We have a threat system, driven by cortisol, where we go into fight-or-flight and think in black and white. And we have a soothing system, where we produce oxytocin, recover, and connect.

Most founders, most high-performers, cycle between drive and threat. They skip soothing entirely. Some find it actively uncomfortable. They do not like the stillness. It can even trigger anxiety, because the dopamine disappears and what is underneath finally surfaces.

Here is what I find remarkable: oxytocin chemically neutralises cortisol. The soothing system is not a luxury. It is the antidote.

You do not build great companies from constant stress. You build them from regulated stress. And the ability to move deliberately between these systems, knowing which one you are in and how to shift, is a muscle. One that most of us have not trained nearly enough.

Why this is personal

I learned about the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system eight years ago, when I started going to therapy. I got a homework to rest for 10 minutes. The first time I sat down, I cried. My body was not used to it. I had been in constant stimulation for so long that stillness felt like a threat. That period was marked by anxiety, by being overly task-focused, by an inability to simply be present.

That was not a phase I passed through. Those patterns still show up. I still catch myself scrolling endlessly for no reason. I still have nights where sleep does not come. I still show up irritable or dissociated when I have been in my own head for too long. The difference now is that I recognize it. I know which system I am in. That awareness does not make it go away, but it changes what I do next.

Since then, I have been deeply interested in the connection between brain and body. Working at Kost Capital, investing in the future of nutrition, has added another layer to that understanding. The gut-brain axis, how what we eat shapes how we think and feel, how the body is a far more powerful indicator than most of us realize. Essential nutrients are not a nice-to-have. They are the foundation for focus, decision-making, and emotional regulation. This is part of what makes what we are building at Kost so fascinating to me. The food system and the nervous system are not separate conversations.

And now, as AI reshapes how we work, I believe the things that will matter most are the things that cannot be automated: empathy, presence, the ability to truly meet people. That means we have to take responsibility for how we show up. Not just professionally. Physiologically.

Still figuring it out

I try to incorporate a few things. Daily meditation. Daily training. Quarterly solo retreats, what I call Bodil-retreats, where I step away from everything and reset. Journaling. Time at the stable. The forests in northern Sweden. These are non-negotiables now, though they were not always.

What I still struggle with is the switch. I cannot simply sit down at the end of a day and be calm. I need to work out, or paint, or draw to come out of the day. My body needs a physical transition before it will let go. This is a muscle I want to strengthen, and I know I am not alone in that.

What I want to know

I find this endlessly fascinating, and it is part of what makes what we are building at Kost so meaningful to me. The connection between what we put into our bodies, how our brains function, and how we lead. It is all one system.

So I will end with a genuine question. How do you activate your soothing system? Is it nature? Animals? Family? Something else entirely?

I believe mastering this will be one of the most important performance edges any founder or investor can develop. Not soft skills. Hard infrastructure. The kind that compounds. I am deeply interested in getting better at it. And I would love to learn from you

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The numbers

Yet these adjustments have not stabilised their support. Instead, the opposite has happened: the Moderates and the Liberalerna have steadily lost voters, while the Sweden Democrats have continued to grow.

The pattern is striking because it has repeated itself election after election. What was initially seen as a tactical adjustment increasingly looks like a strategic trap.

A simple look at election results since 2010 illustrates the shift.

Over the same period:

• The Moderates lost more than a third of their voters.

• Liberalerna nearly disappeared as a national party.

• The Sweden Democrats quadrupled their support.

And the trend continues.

Recent polling ahead of the 2026 election shows Liberalerna at roughly 2 percent, well below the parliamentary threshold, while the Moderates hover around 17–18 percent and the Sweden Democrats remain above 21 percent.

2010: A center-right built on economic reform

When the Sweden Democrats first entered parliament in 2010, Swedish politics looked very different.

The Moderates dominated the center-right with 30 percent of the vote, leading the government under Fredrik Reinfeldt. Liberalerna received 7 percent, remaining a stable mid-sized party.

The political agenda of the center-right coalition focused primarily on economic reform: tax reductions, work incentives, and labor-market reforms designed to increase employment.

Migration and integration were political issues, but they were not the central dividing line of Swedish politics.

2014–2018: The agenda begins to shift

By 2014, the Sweden Democrats had more than doubled their support to 12.9 percent. Migration and integration began to dominate the political debate, particularly after the war in Syria, and people fleeing for their lives to Europe.

In response, several parties moved toward stricter migration policies, tougher integration requirements, and stronger law-and-order rhetoric. The assumption was that adopting tougher policies would neutralise the Sweden Democrats’ advantage.

Instead, the opposite happened.

By the 2018 election, the Sweden Democrats had reached 17.5 percent, while the Moderates fell below 20 percent and Liberalerna stagnated around five percent.

The debate had effectively moved onto the terrain where the Sweden Democrats were strongest.

2022: Influence without responsibility

The 2022 election confirmed the reversal of the political order. The Sweden Democrats reached 20.5 percent, becoming Sweden’s second-largest party, while the Moderates remained around 19 percent and Liberalerna barely cleared the parliamentary threshold.

Through the Tidö Agreement, the Sweden Democrats gained significant influence over government policy while remaining outside the formal government structure.

This arrangement allowed them to shape the political agenda without bearing the full costs of governing.

2026: Liberalerna closes the loop

The latest step came yesterday, when the Liberal Party announced a cooperation framework with the Sweden Democrats known as “Sverigelöftet.” The agreement formalises continued cooperation with the Sweden Democrats within the governing bloc and signals that the party is prepared to deepen that collaboration after the next election.

For a party that once defined itself by opposing cooperation with the Sweden Democrats, the shift marks the closing of a long political arc.

What once appeared politically unthinkable has become normalised.

The populist playbook

The trajectory of the Sweden Democrats follows a pattern often associated with populist parties.

The strategy is simple:

1. Focus relentlessly on a small set of emotionally resonant issues.

2. Frame those issues in ways that force other parties to respond.

3. Benefit when mainstream parties adopt the same framing.

Once the debate moves onto that terrain, the party that originally defined the issue usually retains the strongest credibility.

Importantly, this can happen without governing. Populist parties can shape the agenda while avoiding responsibility for difficult policy trade-offs.

The strategic trap

This is the trap the Moderates and the appear to have fallen into.

Each election cycle has followed a similar pattern:

• The Sweden Democrats gain support.

• Mainstream parties adjust their policies.

• The Sweden Democrats grow stronger.

Instead of neutralising the issue, the adjustments normalise it - and normalisation tends to benefit the party that introduced it.

The road not taken

What makes this trajectory particularly striking is that an alternative strategy always existed.

Sweden possesses extraordinary structural advantages: world-class engineering, globally competitive companies, strong universities, and a highly educated workforce.

A liberal political agenda could have focused on education, innovation, economic growth, and labor-market integration - the issues that historically defined the center-right’s credibility.

That kind of strategy would not ignore migration or integration challenges. It would place them within a broader project of economic development and social mobility.

But such a strategy requires political discipline. It requires refusing to fight elections on the issues chosen by your opponents.

The end of Liberalerna

After fifteen years of adjusting to the Sweden Democrats, Liberalerna now poll around two percent.

At that level the question is no longer how the party recovers.

It is why it exists.

Biking to work through Copenhagen this morning, it was impossible not to notice the election posters. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called a snap election on February 26, setting the vote for March 24. As The Guardian reported, she has framed the campaign around major domestic questions, including a proposed wealth tax aimed at addressing inequality.

The pitch is simple: tax the richest Danes a bit more to protect the welfare state.

It sounds responsible. But simple politics often hides complicated economics.

Denmark already has one of the highest tax rates in the world. OECD data shows Denmark consistently ranks at the top in tax revenue as a share of GDP, around the mid-40 percent range and well above the OECD average. This is not a low-tax society struggling to fund healthcare or education. Denmark already finances a generous welfare state, and it does so well.

We should be proud of that. The Nordic model works. But protecting it requires smart tax design, not symbolic tax design.

Why I Care About This

I write this as a Swedish venture investor living and working in Denmark. My focus is backing ambitious founders and helping unlock innovation that builds a new economy. I see first-hand that incentives shape ecosystems. Policy can accelerate entrepreneurship, or quietly discourage it.

Denmark has the talent, education system, and institutional stability to build far more than it does today. The question is whether we create the conditions for ambition to stay and scale here.

The Problem With a Wealth Tax

Let’s break it down: a net wealth tax is not a tax on income. It is a tax on assets, including illiquid shares in companies. Founders may owe tax on paper valuations long before they have liquidity. That changes behaviour. It can force share sales, dilute ownership, delay hiring, or push relocation.

Relocation is not theoretical. When Norway increased its wealth tax, a number of wealthy individuals left the country, as reported by Reuters. Capital is mobile, especially in small open economies.

Denmark is even more exposed. Malmö is twenty minutes away.

Sweden’s Lesson

Sweden abolished its wealth tax in 2007. Since then, Stockholm has become one of Europe’s strongest startup ecosystems. According to Dealroom, Stockholm consistently ranks among the top cities globally for unicorns per capita.

Spotify, Klarna, King, iZettle and others did not just create wealth. They created ecosystems that compound. Early employees became investors. Founders reinvested. New companies emerged. We now see Lovable and Legora paving the way.

Denmark has world-class companies like Novo Nordisk. But relative to population, Sweden has built more high-growth tech giants. That is not about talent. It is about incentives.

A Structural Paradox

There is also a contradiction in the system. Denmark does not tax primary residence capital gains in the same way many countries do; property is taxed through land and property value systems instead. In practice, real estate can be more tax-efficient than building and holding equity in an innovative company.

If fairness is the objective, that deserves an honest debate.

Most OECD countries have moved away from broad net wealth taxes due to complexity and capital flight concerns. France replaced its broad wealth tax with a narrower version. Sweden abolished its. Norway’s remains controversial and unsuccessful.

This is not ideological. It is structural.

The welfare state is funded by growth. By companies that scale, hire, export, and generate taxes over decades. If founders move, Denmark does not just lose wealthy individuals. It loses future jobs and future tax base.

I do not want Denmark to become libertarian. I want it to be competitive.

Smarter Alternatives

If the goal is long-term prosperity and a strong welfare state, we should focus on growth, not symbolism. Here’s a few things to consider:

• Strengthen R&D tax credits so innovation stays here

• Modernise the university tech transfer

• Fix stock option rules so startups can compete for talent

• Make capital gains reinvestment simple and predictable

• Remove friction for companies that want to scale globally from Denmark

These ideas could expand the tax base over time instead of shrinking it.

Wealth does not disappear when you tax it poorly. It moves.

Denmark should design policy for the next 30 years, not the next news cycle.

After years working inside the system for the Minister of Migration, within a Moderate-led government, on the party board, and as vice-chairman of the Moderate Youth Organization, I chose to step away when the Moderates began collaborating with the Sweden Democrats. At the time, I hoped that distance would bring perspective. Instead, it has brought grief.

This did not happen overnight

What we are witnessing today is not sudden. It is the outcome of a political compromise made years ago, one that has slowly but steadily reshaped rhetoric, priorities, and policy. The language shifted first. From growth, to job creation, to integration, to immigration, to mass immigration. Then came the reframing of people themselves, from refugees, to “not real refugees,” to people who should go back.

That shift has now become policy.

Over the past years, Sweden has moved from permanent residence permits to temporary ones, from temporary to uncertainty, and from uncertainty to a system increasingly focused on exclusion. The collaboration with the Sweden Democrats was framed as pragmatic and contained, something that would not fundamentally change who we are. But it has. Deportations have become political signaling, fear has replaced long-term thinking, and cruelty is too often justified as responsibility.

When deportations become political theater

Today, children who have lived nearly their entire lives in Sweden, who speak Swedish, who go to Swedish schools, and who see this country as their only home, are being deported when they turn eighteen. Families are split apart by administrative decisions that ignore social reality. Public attention has also been drawn to cases involving very young children, which, regardless of legal nuance, highlight how far removed the system has become from basic proportionality and humanity. What disturbs me most is not only the decisions themselves, but the political enthusiasm around them. The press conferences, the tough language, the appetite for headlines.

This is not about safety or justice. It is election-year symbolism.

I stayed away from politics because it is deeply triggering. The past ten years in Sweden and globally have been marked by fear-based debate and short-term reactions. Social media has compressed political thinking into outrage and immediacy, leaving little room for depth or reform. Nowhere is this clearer than in migration policy, where deportations are increasingly presented as proof of strength rather than as a last resort.

We are arguing about the wrong things

At the same time, Sweden announces a national AI strategy totaling less than a serious Series A round per year. In a world where AI is already reshaping economies, this level of ambition feels disconnected from reality. Sweden has the ingredients: deep industrial knowledge, strong institutions, and world-class talent. But instead of focusing relentlessly on adoption, education, and enabling people to build companies and create growth, we seem distracted by cultural panic.

From Denmark, where I now run a venture capital fund focused on the future of food and nutrition, I also watch Sweden investigate falling birth rates. The question seems to be why people are not having children. The answer is neither mysterious nor ideological. Women today have choices, and rightly so. If we are to bring children into the world, we need work, housing, economic stability, and a sense that the future is worth committing to.

Wanting higher birth rates while simultaneously closing borders is a contradiction. Sweden is a small, open economy in the north of Europe. We depend on trade, collaboration, and people coming here to work. Many of our most driven entrepreneurs, builders, and innovators are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Sweden was built with them, from refugees from former Yugoslavia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and now Ukraine. To deny this is to deny our own history.

Closing doors will not build the future

What we are seeing now is populist symbolism masquerading as policy. Identity politics dressed up as responsibility. Deportations used to project control, while the real work of job creation, growth, productivity, and technological leadership is postponed.

This is what happens when a mainstream party absorbs the worldview of an extremist one. The Sweden Democrats no longer need to sit in government to shape policy. Their priorities are already embedded in the agenda.

Sweden is capable of more

I want this this election year to be about how Sweden ignites its economy for the future, how we transition into the AI era, and how we create opportunity without crossing planetary boundaries. None of that is guaranteed. Fear will not secure it. Closed borders will not deliver it.

I have been silent for ten years. I focused on building companies, investing in the future, and contributing in other ways. But watching children and young adults, people who are Swedish in every way that matters, being deported as political theater has brought me to a breaking point.

Today, I can no longer stay quiet.
That is why I am publishing this, my first Substack, now.