Jesper Theil Thomsen

He recalled that he began hand-building speakers for Roskilde Festival in 2011; his first speaker lasted about 20 minutes before someone spilled a beer on it. He said that at first he “wasn’t really that good at it” and later teamed up with people who had expertise in areas he lacked; he and his classmates, some of whom later became co-founders of SOUNDBOKS, spent their summers building the loudest, most durable speakers they could.⁠[1][2]

A 2016 Fictiv article writes that the founders had been building speakers since they were 16; the writer adds that the do-it-yourself speaker community is huge in Europe and building speakers is a tradition in Denmark especially, and that without any engineering background or education they learned to build them by reading articles online. In the Fictiv article he said that people then started asking them to make speakers for them. A March 2026 Highsnobiety feature on SOUNDBOKS, labelled “Sponsored Story” and paid for by an advertiser, gives the brand’s origin story: at 16 the founder built a do-it-yourself rig for Roskilde Festival that fizzled out after about twenty minutes when someone spilled beer on it and never came back to life, and this failure inspired the product.⁠[3][4]

He, Hjalte Wieth and Christoffer Nyvold studied together at Virum Gymnasium in North Zealand, where they came up with the idea of a speaker combining high volume, long battery life and a durable design; he said in the Fictiv article that they graduated from high school in 2014.⁠[5][3]

In the Fictiv article he said that in their senior year of high school they placed an advertisement on the Danish version of Craigslist and received 200 orders. In a 2021 Q&A he recalled that it began when a friend asked them to build a speaker for her camp; they advertised expecting to sell two or three, received more than 200 phone calls within four weeks, sold five and then “decided that we needed to give a go at building a business from it.” In 2024 he said that in 2014 more than 200 people wanted to pay $800 for their hand-built speakers.⁠[3][2][1]

A 2024 SOUNDBOKS company article writes that the founders built the original SOUNDBOKS in 2014 to power their campsite’s parties at Roskilde Festival, that it died because someone spilled a beer into it, and that the founders swore an oath never to let either happen again; it calls Roskilde Festival the company’s “spiritual home.” A 2026 Ritzau story in Frederiksborg Amts Avis instead writes that the three upper-secondary-school friends “tog en selvbygget højttaler med på Roskilde Festival i 2015” (took a self-built speaker to Roskilde Festival in 2015), and that this later became Soundboks.⁠[6][7]

In the Fictiv article he said that they saved money for six months, working full time until January 2015, and launched the company that March. In a 2021 Q&A he recalled that they kept regular full-time jobs to save money, began buying parts in January 2015 and in March 2015 launched SOUNDBOKS.dk, a simple web shop promoted through events and Facebook advertising; he said: “We built all the speakers by hand from stock parts in a garage north of Copenhagen,” only 400 of them in the first year.⁠[3][2]

In the Fictiv article he said that after selling 400 speakers in the first year they knew they could go international. He described the problems of the first version: it was not weather-resistant, its battery door could be broken off, a reflex port on the back was designed incorrectly, and people stepped on and destroyed cables; the article writes that the port diameter had to be fixed by hand on all 400 units and that the battery failed in the summer heat. In a 2021 paid story on Overland Expo produced in partnership with SOUNDBOKS, the company’s own account is that the founders and a small team built the first 400 in a garage outside Copenhagen, after selling out for Roskilde Festival 2015. What Hi-Fi?, drawing on ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry, wrote in 2021 that Hjalte Emilio Wieth, Jesper Theil Thomsen, Christoffer Nyvold and five of their friends built battery-powered speakers in a garage to satisfy orders ahead of the 2015 Roskilde Festival.⁠[3][8][9]

Y Combinator’s company page and the Amsterdam Dance Event speaker profile both give 2015 as the year SOUNDBOKS was founded; the Amsterdam Dance Event profile calls him the founder of this Danish company, which aims to be the preferred supplier of the party through its portable speakers. In 2024 he also said the company officially launched in 2015. TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry wrote in 2023 that the company launched in 2014 and had been operating for 10 years.⁠[10][11][1][12]

SOUNDBOKS took part in Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 batch; Y Combinator’s company page lists him as founder and CEO and Christoffer Nyvold as founder and COO, with the company in Copenhagen and a current team size of 50. Fictiv wrote in May 2016 that they checked out Y Combinator in Silicon Valley, applied and got in, and he said they were now in CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry as well; The Copenhagen Post wrote in March 2016 that the three were 20 years old and living in Los Angeles. TechCrunch wrote in 2023 that he had lived in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry for a few years.⁠[10][12][3][5]

The Copenhagen Post wrote on March 10, 2016 that he, Hjalte Wieth and Christoffer Nyvold had launched a Kickstarter campaign 23 days earlier with a minimum goal of 670,000 Danish kroner, reached the goal within three hours and, a few weeks later, had more than quadrupled it; at the time of writing 934 people had pledged, and the standfirst says nearly 1,000 people had pledged almost 3 million kroner. Drawing on Metroxpress, the article gives the speaker’s retail price as about 5,000 kroner and the promotional price for Kickstarter backers as 3,500 kroner; he confirmed that the extra funds would be used to increase production.⁠[5]

In an interview with Metroxpress he said: “We had big ambitions when we launched the campaign”; the article goes on to quote: “We have had the most successful launch of any Scandinavian company in Kickstarter’s history.”⁠[5]

Later accounts give different totals: TechCrunch wrote in 2023 that SOUNDBOKS accumulated $600,000 in preorders in 20 days; What Hi-Fi? wrote in 2021 that the company raised $870,000 on Kickstarter.⁠[12][9]

Fictiv’s May 2016 article and his remarks in it describe the second-generation product: the company developed its own amplifier, with the electronics about 60 percent amplifier and 40 percent motherboard; six circuit boards were combined into one; the battery door was redesigned to slide or lock in so it could not break off; the unit was made water-resistant; Bluetooth and a more robust auxiliary cable were added; and the corners were made much larger and everything flush-mounted. On the improvements he said: “It’s just a case of using a better, more expensive supplier.”⁠[3]

The article names Johnny Engberg as the company’s lead engineer; Fictiv produced a 3D-printed prototype of the enclosure around the battery; the wood is FSC-certified. He said the battery uses lithium iron phosphate, which handles −20 °C to +60 °C and lasts 2,000 to 4,000 cycles (against 500 for lithium-ion); it is not widely used in consumer electronics because it is more expensive, but it is greener in just about every way. The article writes that the speaker measures 26 × 17 × 13 inches, weighs 32 pounds, uses around 3,328 Wh of power to play 113 dB, reaches up to 119 dB, and takes three hours to fully recharge for 30 hours of playback.⁠[3]

On June 16, 2017, the Thiel Foundation announced the 25 members of the 2017 class of the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry, a two-year fellowship that provides young entrepreneurs with $100,000 and mentorship from the foundation’s network of technology entrepreneurs, investors and scientists; launched in 2011, the program encourages fellows to pursue full-time entrepreneurship instead of going to college, and Executive Director Jack Abraham said the fellows were selected from thousands of applications from around the world. He was among them, listed as “Virum, Denmark / Los Angeles,” in hardware; the announcement describes him as CEO of SOUNDBOKS, whose first product is the world’s loudest battery-powered speaker.⁠[13]

What Hi-Fi? wrote on February 16, 2021 that the third-generation Soundboks 3 was available at £815, $999 or AU$1,599 and that the company claims it delivers 126 dB SPL, making it the world’s loudest portable wireless speaker, without stating the distance from the speaker or the frequency at which this was measured. He said: “We have finally created the speaker we always wanted,” and that over the past four years the company had been integrating community feedback, the result being the new Soundboks; he said: “We were very focused on creating an unmatched sound experience,” for which wireless connectivity and battery life were critical. In its paid story on Overland Expo, SOUNDBOKS says the third generation added a TeamUp mode linking up to five speakers wirelessly over SKAA.⁠[9][8]

TechCrunch’s article of October 26, 2023 writes that the fourth-generation SOUNDBOKS costs $1,000 and uses three 72 W RMS class D amplifiers driving two 10-inch woofers and a compression tweeter, with a claimed battery life of up to 40 hours, a maximum volume of 126 dB, Bluetooth, 3.5 mm and XLR inputs, and a party mode linking up to four speakers. The article writes that about 10,000 SOUNDBOKS speakers were at Roskilde Festival, which has about 100,000 attendees; the company claims that about 1 percent of Danish households own one and that the figure is about 0.6 percent in Sweden; in the United States there is more competition and the population is less devoted to music festivals, and American buyers mostly use the speaker at parties and sporting events; the company expected slight growth in its home market of Denmark and was looking to Germany and the United States for further growth.⁠[12]

In the article he said that when the company entered the U.S. it thought festivals would be its “beachhead market” there and young men its core audience, which proved not to be the case; he said the company has to run more as a hardware company than a venture company, growing healthily rather than at all costs; and he said he did not know a ton about the U.S. and that founders entering foreign markets must employ trusted local people.⁠[12]

A February 13, 2024 Entrepreneur article describes him as co-founder and CEO of SOUNDBOKS, which he described as a Scandinavian-based Bluetooth speaker company; he said it had sold more than 300,000 speakers worldwide, and the headline calls it a $43 million business (a figure the text does not expand on). He said the biggest challenge was growing to become the leaders the business needed while still growing up into adults themselves; he said it is hard to define yourself as a leader while still figuring out who you are as a person, and credited supportive board members, a strong leadership coach and employees smarter than themselves.⁠[1]

On fundraising, he said the company’s first funding came from investors they had originally just reached out to for advice, who chose to invest after seeing the company act on it; he quoted a Y Combinator saying: “If you want advice, ask for money. If you want money, ask for advice.” He argued that over the past fifteen years many companies not built for venture-scale growth raised venture capital, which diluted them and forced them to grow faster than was good for them, and that slower, more manageable growth could have spared some of them from bankruptcy. He also quoted Leonard Cohen: “Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you act,” and Cohen’s saying that “success is survival.”⁠[1]

Copenhagen Business School published an interview with him on March 17, 2026, describing him as CEO and co-founder of SOUNDBOKS. He said the CEO’s responsibility is to keep the organisation moving in one clear direction: “Everyone needs to know where we’re going”; he described the present as a state of “permanent crisis,” saying: “We don’t know what the world will look like in a year”; and he called switching between operational and strategic thinking “extremely complicated.”⁠[14]

He said leaders should focus on enabling others to perform and act as facilitators rather than hold all the answers, and that the best ideas often come from the collective; he cited Jeff BezosJeff BezosJeff Bezos is an American entrepreneur and investor who founded Amazon in 1994, led it as chief executive for many years, and became its executive chair in 2021. He also founded the spaceflight company Blue Origin, bought The Washington Post in 2013, and set up philanthropic funds including the Bezos Earth Fund.Open the full entry’s idea of anchoring strategy in the fundamentals that will still matter a decade from now; he said groupthink is one of the real dangers when the world moves fast; and he believes the generational gap among employees is overstated: “Every generation simply expects more.” He said SOUNDBOKS’s values, “be brave” and “champion community,” were set by employees, not top management.⁠[14]

On March 19, 2026 Highsnobiety ran a feature labelled “Sponsored Story” and paid for by an advertiser, which presents the Soundboks Mix in the brand’s own terms: a smaller, more agile sibling of the Soundboks 4 meant for everyday use as well as parties, with a crystal-clear indoor mode and the raw power needed outdoors. In it he said: “SOUNDBOKS began as a quest to build the perfect speaker for the festival campgrounds,” that “Mix isn’t just focused on making your existing parties better, it’s focused on amplifying your everyday life,” and: “We believe that parties are one of the world’s most undervalued cultural institutions.” The feature writes that the original brief called for a speaker that was “crazy powerful, but still portable,” durable enough for mistreatment, with a long-lasting and swappable battery, and that during lockdowns, when clubs and bars closed, the brand helped young people gather and build communities.⁠[4]

In a company article of April 7, 2026, SOUNDBOKS calls the Mix “our everyday speaker” and the Soundboks 4 its speaker for the biggest parties and moments, and writes that the company pioneered the party speaker category with the original Soundboks.⁠[15]

A Ritzau story published in Frederiksborg Amts Avis on September 4, 2026 writes that “Lyden af succes” (“The Sound of Success”), a Danish feature film inspired by the three upper-secondary-school friends who started Soundboks, had just begun shooting and was expected in cinemas in the late summer of the following year (2027); it follows the friends Jesper, Hjalte and Christoffer, with Milo Campanale, Osvald Sand Pallesen and Ask Berntsen in the three leading roles and Gustav Giese, Malaika Berenth Mosendane, Christian Tafdrup and Iben Dorner among the other cast. The article’s photo caption reads: “Jesper Theil Thomsen er direktør og medstifter af Soundboks” (Jesper Theil Thomsen is managing director and co-founder of Soundboks).⁠[7]

The same article writes that the trade outlet Detailwatch wrote on July 9, on the basis of the 2025 annual accounts, that Soundboks had lost 106 million Danish kroner over the past four years; revenue fell 17 percent in 2025 from the year before, to 215 million kroner, with a loss of 19.8 million kroner, an improvement from 31 million kroner in 2024; the article writes that “forventningerne til 2026 var høje” (expectations for 2026 were high), based on new production and an expansion in Germany.⁠[7]

On September 16, 2026, SOUNDBOKS introduced the Soundboks Rider, which it calls the world’s most portable party speaker: a maximum volume of 118 dB, a weight of 6.5 kg (14.3 lb), 35 hours of battery life with swappable batteries, an IP66 rating and three sound presets (Bass+, Outdoor and Indoor); the company writes that the Rider is built for specific situations rather than as a full sound system and that, unlike the Soundboks 4 and Soundboks Mix, it does not have TeamUp.⁠[16]

Soho House’s “What’s Next” feature introduces him as a Cities Without Houses member and co-founder of Soundboks, based in Copenhagen; his bio on Y Combinator’s company page also says he is based in Copenhagen. His favourite cities are Copenhagen and Tokyo; he would like to learn Japanese, make homemade pasta, do calligraphy, write code and improve his piano playing; his favourite musicians are Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Lana Del Rey and Rhye; and he recommends “Direct Truth” by Kapil Gupta, “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho and “The Amber Spyglass” by Philip Pullman.⁠[17][10]

The Copenhagen date spots he listed in the interview include Apollo Bar at Charlottenborg Palace, Restaurant Mes, Safari, Bar Pasta, Osteria 16, Restaurant Twelve (since closed) and Duck and Cover. His eight-word memoir was: “I’ve received more death threats than love letters”; he also said: “I’m keeping my fingers crossed that COVID-19 will soon be a thing of the past.”⁠[17]

In a 2021 Q&A he recalled that about a year into the business the company wanted a large bike on which to mount speakers to ride around Copenhagen and host events, and paid $14,000 for one from a Dutch company, only to learn after it arrived that under Danish rules it was “neither characterized as a bike nor a car” and so completely illegal to use on Danish roads. He said that as the business began to scale, “we were not in control of what was going on,” which almost killed the business, until hiring its first experienced finance person helped it regain control of forecasting and budgeting; on entering the U.S. they assumed festivals would be the core market, but festivals proved not to be the major market there and they wasted a lot of money and resources pursuing it; and the first versions of the SOUNDBOKS had no app and not even Bluetooth.⁠[2]

What Hi-Fi? wrote in 2021 that besides its Kickstarter campaign SOUNDBOKS raised $2.5 million from investors including Matthew Bellamy of the band Muse and Tue Mantoni, a former CEO of Bang & Olufsen. TechCrunch wrote in 2023 that, with two exceptions, the company’s funds came from high-net-worth individuals and angel investors; for its Series A it raised from Copenhagen-based Heartcore Capital and Best Nights VC, the corporate venture arm of Jägermeister; in June 2023 it raised $8.6 million from existing, unannounced investors, bringing the total invested to $20.93 million; any future outside capital must be designated for something specific.⁠[9][12]

The Amsterdam Dance Event speaker profile writes that SOUNDBOKS had sold more than 350,000 speakers, with Germany and the United States as its biggest markets. A SOUNDBOKS company article of October 2024 writes that about 12,000 camps at Roskilde Festival use its speakers; the brand story page of the company website gives 2015 as the founding year, 450,000 owners and 6 million parties powered.⁠[11][6][18]

In a 2021 Q&A he said: “I also sit on the board of Children’s Rights in Denmark,” and said that SOUNDBOKS had donated to children’s homes in Africa and was then launching a larger collaboration with the Red Cross in Denmark.⁠[2]

SOUNDBOKS: Official website: https://soundboks.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[19]

Y Combinator: Official website: https://www.ycombinator.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20]