Daniel Kjellén, who sold open-banking platform Tink to Visa for €1.8 billion in 2022, argues that some startup problems are simply too large for a minimum viable product. Writing for Crunchbase, he describes compliance as a "Hydra" — fixing one issue spawns others, because obligations span legal, product, and policy teams that rarely coordinate. For such problems, he says, founders need a "maximum viable product" from day one, not a narrow use case.
Kjellén's second company, Freda, is an AI-native compliance startup that emerged from stealth in September 2026. He credits his first exit with providing the credibility and capital to attempt something ambitious without investors forcing him to shrink the idea. "Money also means you can fund the full build yourself," he notes, so no outside check limits the scope before it is tested.
He also points to AI as a structural change: ten years ago, building a broad compliance platform would have required hundreds of people and many years. Freda's team of 22 ships at a pace he says was impossible during his Tink days. The article is a first-person argument, so there are no conflicting sources to compare, but it offers a clear case for why repeat founders may be better positioned to tackle systemic problems.