This 30-minute video provides an interesting tour of the Koenigsegg car factory in Sweden, where they hand-build high-performance sportscars. The company owner, Christian von Koenigsegg, says early in the video that he started the company when he was just 22. There really isn’t much more information given about that, but I’m intensely curious:
How does one go about starting a car company at the age of 22? Can someone point to more detailed information about how he might have accomplished this feat? Was he independently wealthy, or was he somehow able to attract (and inspire the trust of) wealthy investors? How did a 22-year-old have the technical, managerial, and business skills to bring such a huge endeavor to fruition?
“However, he took his first steps in the world of business in his early 20’s running a trading company called Alpraaz in Stockholm, Sweden. Alpraaz exported food from Europe to the developing world. The success of this venture gave von Koenigsegg the necessary financial standing to launch his chosen career as a car manufacturer.”
I would have thought that “the necessary financial standing” to start a car company from scratch would have been far more than someone could accumulate by the age of 22. I’m imagining many, many millions of dollars to buy/rent real estate, purchase tooling, and pay for a staff of designers, engineers, and builders for the ~8 years between the founding of the company and the time they finally started selling cars. Am I way off on that?
Did he actually found Alpraaz, or did he take it over from someone else as an already-established, successful business? He would have been running that company in the early 1990’s - before the internet really came online and brought about the phenomenon of overnight millionaires - and for just a couple of years. How much wealth could he have accumulated from a food export company in that amount of time?
I’m wondering how the Koenigsegg story compares with that of Elon Musk, who mad amassed a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars through the founding of internet ventures such as PayPal before he started Tesla Motors at the age of 31.
This Jalopnik article says: “Christian Von Koenigsegg once told Swedish online magazine Nyheter 24 that he invested all of his family’s money in the car company he started at age 22 in Angleholm, working eight years without a salary and seven at a paltry sum.” So it sounds like he started with family money.
Christian von Koenigsegg: ‘Everything of myself. And of all my money. Me and my family have put in around 20 million SEK (~€2 million). I have then worked in eight years without a salary and seven with a low salary.’"
Keep in mind that he’s built maybe 50 cars in 10 years. Wikipedia reports seven different models, they all look similar. He doesn’t need a lot of staff. Koenigsegg had a nice little niche but I can’t conceive how they can absorb Saab and remain in business.
Elon Musk may have amassed a huge net worth but he got the government to finance a large portion of Tesla. He’s also had big investments from Hollywood and took a lot of orders years in advance. It’s just a shell game and I suspect the company will shut down in another two years. He’s a smart guy. He’ll get out without losing much.