In today’s episode, we have a chat with Jesper Theil Thomsen, co-founder and CEO of Soundboks. Soundboks. It all started at Roskilde Festival, where Jesper wanted to be the life of the party, and a good party needs good sound.
“Soundboks” is the story of three young guys who turned a personal need into a global business in just a few years. Today there are more than 50,000 Soundboks speakers around the world, and with headquarters in Copenhagen and Los Angeles, the business keeps on growing.
Jesper takes us through the Soundboks story. It starts with homemade speakers in his parents’ garage that sold out on DBA overnight. Today, at 27, he finds himself face to face with the city’s noise complaints.
It’s a journey at full speed with plenty to learn from, where you hit bumps in the road and nearly kill your own company. We talk about biting off more than you can chew, the flip side of success and how Soundboks has become a fixture on the festival scene and taken Danes’ music to new heights.
When Jesper was 16, he was going to Roskilde Festival with his best friends. They wanted the best camp with the loudest music, playing all night long. The party was never meant to end. That called for a monster of a speaker, and Jesper set out to build it himself. The internet was his teacher, and after a successful trip to Roskilde, that speaker became the starting point for Soundboks.
We start with the Soundboks journey, and Jesper reflects on his role as a leader and on what, in his eyes, makes a good leader.
We talk about wins and setbacks, and Jesper tells us about his biggest leadership mistake, which led to a culture crisis and nearly split the company in two.
We get into the culture at Soundboks, where the social side counts for a lot and the whole organisation helps drive the culture, not just the management.
The Soundboks culture is built on passion, motivation and a desire to learn, which Jesper also keeps in mind when he hires new people. Qualifications matter, but personality, culture fit and mindset matter more.
According to Jesper, talent comes first.
The chat about culture leads us on to Soundboks’ role in Copenhagen’s cultural life. Here Soundboks, and Jesper in particular, has been a target in the public debate about noise in the city’s streets. Is Soundboks the problem, or would the complaints from annoyed Copenhageners have come regardless?
As a regular feature, we look at the flip side of spending your youth building an empire. Jesper talks about the Soundboks Kickstarter campaign in 2016, when the company sold like never before, and why that was both a blessing and a curse.