Interview With Teenage Engineering Founder Jens Rudberg

In the first episode of Mutewatch’s entrepreneurial web series, Peeps, host Anastasia Vesterberg talks with Jens Rudberg, one of the founders of Teenage Engineering.

Rudberg offers his thoughts on how to run a successful business, based on his own interests. 

The video above is the final episode. Below, you can see the unedited interview:

via Mutewatch

21 thoughts on “Interview With Teenage Engineering Founder Jens Rudberg

    1. Yeah? And so what? Most synths products are also considered niche market by guitarists, drummers and every non-musician types. Does it matter? I don’t think so. This thing is awesome, even if I’m not personally into buying one at this time.

        1. The OP-1 has plenty of bang for your buck. I challenge you to find something with its synthesis, sampling and sequencing capabilities for less than $1000.

        2. Yeah I know… crazy.. There’s also some guitar manufacturer who makes guitars for over 1000$… I mean what kind of crazy people buys them when you have plenty of sub 300$ guitars available right?

        3. I have to ask myself if the OP-1 is a victim of its own marketing. I think the perceived “Hipness” of the machine is seriously off-putting to some people; and to an extent I empathize with that.

          That being said; to suggest that £600 is too much for a device that crams so much into a tiny, but beautifully designed form, with a 16 hour battery life… That just seems preposterous to me.

          I own a lot of hardware and software, both vintage and contemporary and not a single one (though I love them all) is as enchanting, inspiring and immediate as the OP-1.

          1. I never have understood why a certain subset of the synth crowd has prejudged thus as being ‘hip’, too Apple like, or too expensive – without ever using it.

            Everybody who owns one loves them, they release updates regularly, and the OP’s are cheap enough that people will buy them but expensive enough to keep the company in business.

            None of the original synth companies had their business act together and we got 25 years of mediocre synths starting in the 80s as a result.

            Glad to see that these guys know what their doing, even if the naysayers don’t get it.

  1. Perhaps it is easy to forget that not every company can produce with the scale, price and market share of a roland, korg, behringer, etc. So the price tag for the OP-1 doesn’t seem unreasonable considering what it is, how it is made, the design philosophy, build-quality, and active development.

    It takes the cake for the sheer cleverness of it.

    When I think about some of the annoying qualities of making music on an iPad, the OP-1 addresses most of them: keyboard, knobs, i/o, and not part of the “empire”.

  2. If they’d put some mathematics into a sequencing tool to control playing orders and controllers,
    this could be the “biggest bang” in musical history since Mozart, Ravel and Stockhausen.
    The annoying plentifullness of not mentioned artists simply show their irrevelance related to the OP-1’s abilities and i’m not going to excuse myself for saying that.
    The single user itself is just a bug, being part of a bug kingdom feeding the bigger bugs to become space travelling super bugs.
    I hpoe sti clrea htat htis ospt si maetn rioncilyla.

  3. Cool interview with the founder. It’s got to take guts to start a company like this at the peak of a recession (several years ago). Kudos to these guys for that and for making one of the most original new keyboards on years!

  4. OP-1 is a great product/tool/synth/etc…..I don’t own one but one of my friends does. I applaud the genius in the design. More power to the company and users of this OP-1. I’m gonna get one, and enjoy it with the rest of my gear in the studio.

  5. I wish it was at 500€…love the concept and features from the ou-pee…meanwhile an iPad + samplr can do lots of funny things..and its cheaper!

  6. i had it a little not so long ago … it was fun and so on but for the money i needed some more
    so now i swifted it for a monomachine ..and i so happy for this
    when i get super ritch some day maybe i gonna bye a op-1 again …

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