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Why Teenage Engineering is So Cool
Jesper Kouthoofd did not want to start another company, so he started Teenage Engineering.It goes like this. Teenage Engineering drops a product. The tastemakers in tech rave in response.
It is not the specifications they are thrilled about. It isn’t even the form factor. Most people in Silicon Valley don’t even use the products.
But the products are beautiful. A music lover’s dream come true. Their launches are in a league of their own. Sometimes it is hard to tell who the customer is. Sometimes people call them a deeply unserious company.
If you haven’t heard of the Swedish music tech company before, that is by design. Unlike other large tech companies, they are not pushing themselves into your feed. In fact, most of their products do not even have screens. They make synthesizers, speakers, games, and whatever else they feel like making.
If you follow Teenage Engineering, getting surprised is part of the deal. Perhaps that is the core reason to follow the journey.
When I first encountered Teenage Engineering online, I was stunned. It felt like an artistic fashion company. I immediately felt a passion to use their products without even knowing what they did. They make cool products, and they sound pretty cool.
It turns out that, like most cool things, Teenage Engineering has a compelling backstory. It starts in Stockholm with stunts in tech, gaming, fashion, and entertainment. But the biggest surprise was finding the connection between Teenage Engineering and my favorite brand, Acne Studios.
We need to go down a rabbit hole starting in 1996.
Much of what I share here is my own research—digging through the Wayback Machine, old press releases, Acne Paper, and B Magazine.
Somewhere in Stockholm, a team of four creatives—Jonny Johansson, Mats Johansson, Tomas Skoging, and Jesper Kouthoofd (who would later start Teenage Engineering)—started working together. It was a creative collective they decided to call ACNE.
The acronym stood for Associated Computer Nerd Enterprises (and later, Ambition to Create Novel Expressions).
Their website domain was acne.se. While the focus was fashion, entertainment, and technology, they essentially did whatever they could get away with. It was an advertising agency, a film production company, a clothing line, and a video game studio. They even launched a film camera in partnership with Ikonoskop, covered by Monocle back in 2007.
To make ends meet, they took on branding and packaging design for other businesses in Stockholm.
“When Acne was created in 1996 the initial idea was to build brands, own as well as others... Although all members of the collective are independent entities acting in their own right in various fields of creativity, they all share the same vision and culture. This vision combines art and industry in equal measures.”
Just one year after starting, the team executed a brilliant product launch. They made 100 pairs of red-stitched jeans with an ACNE tag. They gave them away to their creative friends in Stockholm.
That simple act created the early fanbase. Co-founder Jonny Johansson had briefly worked at Diesel, and after seeing the traction with the jeans, he doubled down. Acne Jeans took on a life of its own, eventually becoming Acne Studios in 2008—the global fashion powerhouse it is today.
“We were driven by creativity and we were unprofessional. When we started everything, we didn't analyze anything. If we love it, then people will love it. This was the core idea.” — Tomas Skoging
In parallel to ACNE, Jesper Kouthoofd started making games under a new company called Netbaby. They built flash games and worked on a project for PlayStation called Kula World.
The vibe of Netbaby was unique even for a gaming company. It carried a sense of playfulness—approaching the product as a game first—that would later define the philosophy of Teenage Engineering.
Netbaby ultimately did not work out. It was then that Jesper decided he would never start another company.
That decision became the foundation of Teenage Engineering.
“I started to feel that I wanted to build things again. I had gotten a CNC machine... I really did not want to start a company again. Handling employees, meetings. I had to create my own space. I couldn’t be employed anywhere.” — Jesper Kouthoofd
The name was fitting. The logo was just a nut and a bolt. They wanted to keep things simple.
Their first project was making lamps. But their second product was the OP-1, a battery-powered synthesizer, sampler, and drum machine. It allowed anyone to make music on the go. Musicians fell in love with it.
The Italian musician Alessandro Cortini described it best: "One of the most creative pieces of art/instruments I have had the pleasure to work with."
The team was only five people when they shipped this beast of a project. If you have worked on hardware, you know it is almost a miracle that they pulled it off. Over 10 years later, the product is still regularly updated.
The team continued working on small parallel projects to bring in cash. I loved their collaboration with Absolut Vodka called Choir and the video they made for New Balance.
Their second major launch was the OD-11 speaker. It was a rebuild of an original concept by Swedish designer Stig Carlsson: a speaker designed for a real home, considering the noise and clutter of daily life. It had to sound good in an apartment, not just a soundproof shop.
In 2015, they released the Pocket Operator (PO-10) series. These were mini synthesizers for $59. I love that the UI display for a recent version was drawn by Jesper’s 9-year-old daughter. She did a hell of a job.
On the collaboration side, Teenage Engineering has worked with IKEA on audio furniture and helped the gaming company Panic design the Playdate, a yellow handheld console with a retro vibe.
My favorite collaboration to date is with Nothing, the playful alternative to Apple. Teenage Engineering was heavily involved in the initial design and creative direction.
Friendship is the central theme behind how Teenage Engineering operates. It is evident in the relationship between Nothing founder Carl Pei and Jesper Kouthoofd. (I highly recommend watching their interview at Figma’s Config conference).
So what makes Teenage Engineering cool?
To me, it is the people. It is their friendship, their passion for Stockholm, and their love for music and art.
It is the commitment to building great products consistently while not giving a damn about what I or you think of them.
“It should be like playing a game, rather than practicing a piano. It invites questions, it invites curiosity, and it invites playfulness.” — Tobias Hofsten
As Jesper Kouthoofd says: “To me it is important that you do other things in your life. Otherwise, it is a circularity in a bad way.”