After Shopify Acquired His Previous Startup, Birk Jernström Seeks to Empower Developers to Build Solo Unicorns

Sam Altman and “his fellow tech CEOs” have initiated a betting pool to predict the year when the first solo billion-dollar company will emerge.

The idea of an individual achieving a billion-dollar valuation for a startup seemed far-fetched before the AI boom. Now, one-person, AI-driven ventures are sprouting in the tech scene, and Birk Jernström, CEO of Polar—a “monetization platform built to empower solo unicorns”—is ready to help them succeed.

Polar differentiates itself by focusing on the needs of developers, acting as their ‘Merchant of Record’ for billing and tax management. This allows businesses to start selling online products and SaaS subscriptions globally right from the beginning.

The Polar integration requires only a few lines of code, a feature that impressed Accel, the VC firm that led Polar’s $10 million seed funding round. “A new wave of AI-native, early-stage companies is eager to expand without distractions,” noted partner Andrei Brasoveanu.

Jernström’s earlier venture, Tictail, acquired by Shopify in 2018 for $17 million in an all-cash transaction, also bolstered his credibility. He and his co-founders set out to simplify online selling, making it as easy as blogging.

“We started Tictail in 2011 to democratize the online store experience. After launching in 2012, we quickly gained traction and within a couple of years had over 100,000 merchants on our platform, focusing on the long tail,” Jernström recounted.

Noticing that small merchants struggled with low traffic, Tictail created a marketplace, eventually catching the eye of Shopify. Although Tictail’s competitor had grown significantly and brought on larger merchants, Shopify realized, post-IPO, the need to cater to consumer demands and saw the potential in Tictail’s team.

Along with his co-founders and several colleagues, Jernström joined Shopify’s new Shop team. “This team evolved into what is now the Shop app and the Shop Pay ecosystem, which I was privileged to help develop and scale from the ground up.”

In 2021, as he was about to welcome his first child, Jernström began a period of reflection that led him to resign from his position and pursue his next venture, now known as Polar.

The departure was entirely amicable; Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke and president Harley Finkelstein are now angel investors backing Polar. The “merchant-focused” culture at Shopify has also left a strong impression on Jernström.

“I manage around 50 or 60 support tickets daily. I know each customer we serve intimately, and while it’s intense, I truly enjoy learning about their next steps and how Polar can support them,” he shared.

By focusing on customer insight and adopting an open-source approach, Polar has gained traction with its target audience. Since its launch in September 2024, the startup has attracted 18,000 customers, mainly developers monetizing software.

This growth is reflected in its cap table, which includes entrepreneurs behind popular developer tools like Framer and Raycast, both of which integrate with Polar, as well as Dub, Nuxt, Resend, Supabase, Vercel, WorkOS, and Lovable, which shares Polar’s Swedish roots and dedication to simplifying the development process.

They are now advocating for Jernström’s vision to make building software businesses as straightforward as platforms like Supabase and Vercel have made software development and scaling.

This aligns with the momentum AI has generated for independent makers and professional developers. It also echoes his upbringing with an entrepreneurial mother, his journey as a developer since his teenage years, and Tictail’s commitment to supporting small businesses.

“My goal with Polar mirrors that of Shopify: How do we empower more entrepreneurial developers to build, pursue their passions, and independently create businesses around software?”