I've built things from some strange places. One of them was a pigsty.

I’ve built things from some strange places. One of them was a pigsty.

Silicon Valley has the garage. I’ve had one of those too. In Denmark, apparently, we also have the pigsty.

Over the years, the addresses have changed almost as much as the work. A software company in central Copenhagen. An electric car taking shape in a garage on Frederiksberg. An old pigsty in the countryside that became my workshop for years, where I built most of my prototypes. And lately, a fair number of hours with a laptop on a sailboat.

None of them felt significant at the time. They were just places where the work could happen.

Companies tend to look inevitable in hindsight. You see the founding date, the logo, the website and eventually an office that looks the part. It never felt like that while I was in it. At the beginning there’s a problem that won’t leave you alone, whatever space you can get hold of, and no guarantee that any of it will work.

We poured epoxy on the floor and turned the old pigsty into a workshop. It looked the part eventually. But if you drilled into the wall, you could still smell the ammonia.

I’ve always liked that stage, before the company looks like a company, when even the problem is still moving around. I don’t have to start with software or hardware. I can start with the problem and see where it leads. Sometimes that becomes code, sometimes something physical, and sometimes a conversation is enough to kill the idea before either is needed.

These days I’m talking to people, sketching systems, building small things and pulling some of them apart again.

I don’t know what the next address will be. But I know what the work looks like before there is one.