Dapper Labs

Klarna

Dapper Labs

Platform and marketplace — Dapper Labs builds NFT products and earns revenue from primary sales (minting new NFTs and selling them to users), marketplace transaction fees (5% on peer-to-peer trades), and licensing fees paid to sports leagues for using their IP. The company also built the Flow blockchain, which it controls and operates.

Revenue is heavily tied to NFT trading volume and new user acquisition. The licensing deals with NBA, NFL, UFC, and LaLiga give Dapper Labs exclusive rights to create digital collectibles from official content — a massive competitive moat when the market is hot, and a significant cost burden when the market cools.

Klarna

Klarna makes money from merchant fees and consumer interest. Merchants pay Klarna 3-6% of each transaction — they're willing to pay because Klarna increases conversion rates by 30%+ and average order values by 45%.

On "Pay in 4" (interest-free installments), Klarna makes money purely from merchant fees. On longer financing (6-36 months), Klarna charges consumers interest up to 25% APR.

Klarna also earns revenue from its shopping app (affiliate commissions when users discover and buy from merchants), and from its Klarna Card.

Dapper Labs

Roham Gharegozlou was running a blockchain company called Axiom Zen when his team launched CryptoKitties in November 2017 — a game where users could buy, breed, and trade digital cats as NFTs on Ethereum. It went so viral that it congested the entire Ethereum network and accounted for 25% of all Ethereum traffic.

CryptoKitties proved that people would pay real money for unique digital assets, but it also proved that Ethereum couldn't handle consumer-scale applications. Gharegozlou spun out Dapper Labs in 2018 to solve both problems: build consumer NFT products AND build a blockchain (Flow) that could actually handle millions of users.

The NBA came calling in 2019, licensing their highlights for what became NBA Top Shot. When Top Shot launched in October 2020, a LeBron James dunk clip sold for $208,000.

By February 2021, Top Shot was processing $50 million in daily transactions. The NFT boom had arrived and Dapper Labs was at the center of it.

Klarna

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth, and Victor Jacobsson were students at the Stockholm School of Economics. In 2005, they entered a startup competition with an idea: let people buy things online and pay later.

At the time, online shopping was still new and most people were terrified of entering their credit card details on the internet. The idea was simple — Klarna would pay the merchant immediately, and the customer would get an invoice with 14-30 days to pay.

The competition judges hated it. The idea was dismissed as financially irresponsible and the team didn't win.

But Siemiatkowski pressed on. Swedish e-commerce was growing fast and merchants were desperate for any way to reduce cart abandonment.

Klarna's "pay after delivery" model was a hit because it shifted the risk — customers could receive the product, try it on, and only pay for what they kept.

The first customers were Swedish e-commerce merchants selling fashion and home goods. Klarna handled the invoicing, fraud detection, and collections.

Merchants saw conversion rates jump because customers were more willing to buy when they didn't have to pay immediately.

Dapper Labs

Licensing deals with major sports leagues gave Dapper Labs content that no competitor could replicate. NBA Top Shot specifically targeted sports fans, not crypto enthusiasts — a much larger addressable market.

The custodial wallet and credit card payments removed every crypto friction point, making it possible for someone with zero blockchain knowledge to buy an NFT in two minutes. Pack drops with limited supply created urgency and excitement similar to physical trading card releases.

Building the Flow blockchain gave Dapper Labs control over transaction costs and speed, avoiding Ethereum's congestion and gas fee problems. Celebrity involvement (Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Will Smith all invested) generated press coverage and credibility.

Klarna

Klarna grew by being embedded at checkout. The strategy was to sign up the biggest online retailers and become a payment option alongside Visa and PayPal.

Once Klarna was at checkout, consumers discovered it organically. The "Pay in 4" button became ubiquitous across fashion, electronics, and home goods retailers.

The Klarna app became a growth engine beyond checkout. By building a shopping app where users could browse products, discover deals, and track deliveries, Klarna turned from a payment method into a shopping destination.

The app has 35+ million monthly active users who start their shopping journey inside Klarna before even visiting a retailer.

International expansion was aggressive. Starting in Sweden, Klarna rolled out across Europe, then into the US, UK, and Australia.

The US became the biggest growth market — American consumers were especially receptive to Pay in 4 as an alternative to credit cards. By 2023, Klarna had 34 million US users.

Dapper Labs

The NFT market collapsed. NBA Top Shot's monthly sales fell from $224 million in February 2021 to under $5 million by late 2022.

The $7.6 billion valuation from 2021 looks nearly impossible to justify with current revenue. Massive layoffs — the company cut over 50% of staff in multiple rounds through 2022 and 2023.

The Flow blockchain never achieved the developer adoption needed to become a major ecosystem — most NFT activity stayed on Ethereum and later Solana. Licensing deals with sports leagues require minimum guarantees regardless of volume, creating fixed costs that hurt when revenue drops.

Regulatory risk — the SEC has investigated whether NBA Top Shot moments are unregistered securities. And the core question: are digital sports highlights a lasting collectible category or were they a pandemic-era novelty?

Klarna

The valuation collapse was humiliating. Klarna raised at a $46 billion valuation from SoftBank in 2021.

One year later, they raised a down round at $6.7 billion — an 85% haircut. It was the most dramatic valuation drop in fintech history.

Employee stock options were underwater. Siemiatkowski had to lay off 10% of the workforce.

The entire BNPL category went from hot to radioactive in months.

Credit losses are the existential risk. Klarna is lending money to consumers who want to buy things they can't afford to pay for right now.

When the economy slows, defaults rise. Klarna's credit losses hit $1 billion in 2022.

The company had to tighten underwriting significantly and pull back from riskier markets. The tension between growth (approve more loans) and profitability (reject risky borrowers) defines every quarter.

The IPO in 2025 was a comeback story but with caveats. Klarna went public at $15 billion — a major recovery from the $6.7 billion trough but still less than a third of its 2021 peak.

The company finally turned profitable by slashing costs with AI (replacing hundreds of customer service agents with AI chatbots) and tightening credit standards. But investors remain cautious about the BNPL model's long-term sustainability.

Dapper Labs

NBA Top Shot — officially licensed digital basketball highlights ("moments") sold as NFTs. Users buy packs, trade moments, and complete challenges.

NFL All Day — same concept applied to American football highlights. UFC Strike — officially licensed UFC fight moments as NFTs.

LaLiga Golazos — Spanish soccer league highlights as digital collectibles. Flow blockchain — Dapper Labs' own blockchain designed for consumer applications, used by NBA Top Shot and other products.

Dapper Wallet — custodial crypto wallet that works with credit cards, removing the complexity that makes normal crypto wallets unusable for regular people.

Klarna

Pay in 4 is the signature product — split any purchase into four interest-free payments over six weeks. Pay in 30 lets customers receive the product first and pay within 30 days.

Financing offers longer-term payment plans with interest for larger purchases. The Klarna App is a shopping destination — browse deals, track orders, manage payments, and earn cashback.

The Klarna Card is a physical Visa card that lets users Pay in 4 anywhere. Klarna Creator is a platform for influencers to earn commissions sharing products.

Klarna AI is their customer service chatbot that handles two-thirds of support queries.

Dapper Labs

Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue Management, GV (Google Ventures), Samsung, and celebrity investors including Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, and Will Smith. The $7.6 billion valuation was reached in a 2021 funding round.

Klarna

Sequoia Capital, SoftBank, Silver Lake, GIC, Atomico, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Heartland