About Peter Theill

Peter Theill illustration

My name is Peter Theill. I’m a co-founder of Zublime, Outbound & Familio and owner of Commanigy. I started playing around with programming back in 1987 on a good old Commodore 64 and released my first couple of shareware products on Windows around 1994.

I finished my first education as a Datamatician in 1998 and immediately joined Belle Systems as a Software Developer. It was an exciting time joining a company as employee #24 and over the next four years, I watched it grow into a 500+ employee company (and then down to ~200). It was the dot-com days 🙂

While working at Belle Systems, a colleague and I decided to build a site for shareware authors. A couple of sites already existed but were all badly designed, had lots of advertisements, and did not provide a lot of value for the software authors. We named it Filebasket and quickly grew it to 200k+ daily users before it was acquired by Digital River.

I decided to leave Belle Systems (now called Digiquant) in 2002 to study Computer Science. I did that while continuing to do some consultancy for Digiquant and other customers, primarily working with the .NET platform.

Tommy Ahlers from a cool startup named ZYB contacted me a couple of years later and I decided to join as their second backend developer. It was a great ride where I got to work with extreme talent until we got acquired by Vodafone. At that time, I decided to leave to start a company called Gazebo with Morgan and Daniel.

Gazebo helped startups build a prototype of their idea in a few weeks so they were able to present something to investors. A couple of companies we helped were Rojabo and Biokemi.

Even though Gazebo was quite successful, we decided to throttle down after only one year of operation since we, the founders, did not agree on which direction to move the company.

I went back to consulting until Lasse & I became co-partners in GoMore. I rebuilt the technology stack from an 8+ year old system and we took it from 15k to 90k+ users in 1.5 years.

In 2011, Søren, Nikolaj, Michael, and I co-founded Click A Taxi, later rebranded as Drivr. It was an incredible journey where we pivoted a few times but never achieved cash-flow positivity, leading to our acqui-hire by Karhoo in 2017. I chose not to join but left with many valuable lessons.

After a couple of months of contemplating my next move, Stefan and I started Familio.

Work

  • 2023-: Co-founder & CTO, Zublime
  • 2019-: Co-founder & CTO, Outbound
  • 2017-: Co-founder & CTO, Familio
  • 2019-22: CTO, Paralenz
  • 2011-17: Co-founder, Drivr (previously Click A Taxi)
  • 2009-11: Partner, GoMore (until seed round)
  • 2008-09: Co-founder, Gazebo
  • 2006-08: Developer, ZYB (until aquired by Vodafone)
  • 2004-06: .NET consultant, Progressive IT
  • 2001-05: PHP/MySQL consultant, Digital River
  • 2002-04: Part-time Software Developer, Intec Telecom Systems
  • 2000-02: Team Leader, Web Development, Digiquant
  • 2000-2004: Co-founder, Filebasket (until acquired by Digital River)
  • 1998-2000: Software Developer, Digiquant
  • 1997-98: ASP/VBScript & JSP consultant, Progressive IT & IntraMed
  • 1997-: Owner, Commanigy

Roles

  • 2019-22 : CTO, Paralenz
  • 2017-19: CTO, Familio
  • 2011-17: Mobile Lead, Drivr
  • 2009-11: Lead Architect, GoMore
  • 2010-11: Interim CTO, Børn i byen
  • 2002-05: Architect, Filebasket
  • 2000-02: Team Leader, Digiquant Web

Education

  • 2006-10: Undergraduate – Master of Science at DIKU
  • 2002-06: Bachelor of Science at DIKU
  • 1996-98: Datamatician at Roskilde Business College
  • 1993-96: Gymnasium at Stenhus Gymnasium
  • 1991-93: Basic school at Stenhus Kostskole
  • 1985-91: Basic school at Kundby Skole

Languages

  • Highly skilled in JavaScript, TypeScript, Objective-C, Swift, Java, C# & Ruby (Ruby on Rails)
  • Skilled but rather rusty in Python, Go, C++, PHP (3.x, 4.x), Pascal (Turbo- & Delphi variants), Basic (MS- & Visual-) & Perl
  • Danish, English
  • Common LISP, Moscow ML (primarily academic use)

Certifications

  • Microsoft Certified Professional (in 2005, exams 70-320, 70-315)
  • Certified Java Programmer for the Java 2 Platform (in 2001)
  • Certified Turbo Pascal Programmer (in 1996)

Repositories

Publications

Expertise & Awards

  • 2014: Titled Laird of Dunans Castle
  • 2012: Årets Væksteventyrer from Ivækstprisen (for co-founding Click A Taxi)
  • 2009- : Part of Copenhagen Ruby Brigade
  • 2004-06: Part of the Danish Microsoft Partners Expert Team for Office clients
  • 2006: Received Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” award

Conferences

  • Stopped keeping track in 2009 🤷🏼‍♂️
  • April 1-2, 2008: RubyFools (ITU, Copenhagen, DK)
  • September 28, 2008: TechTalk with Anders Hejlsberg & Steve Ballmer
  • September 1-3, 2006: Microsoft Campus Days 2006 (Lyngby, DK)
  • April 6, 2006: Meet Microsoft – Windows Vista for IT Profesionelle (Copenhagen, DK)
  • March 21-23, 2006: Microsoft Office System Developers Conference 2006 (Redmond, US)
  • September 21, 2005: Meet Microsoft – Visual Studio Tools for Office (Copenhagen, DK)
  • August 8-11, 2005: Microsoft Summer Camp 2005 (Vedbæk, DK)
  • April 7, 2005: Developing with SQL Server 2005 (Copenhagen, DK)
  • March 23, 2005: Visual Studio 2005 Team System (Copenhagen, DK)
  • March 9, 2005: IBM Software Developer Days – .NET Focused (Copenhagen, DK)
  • February 10, 2005: Meet Microsoft – .NET 2.0 (Copenhagen, DK)
  • December 2, 2004: Meet Microsoft – Windows, mobile and Office (Copenhagen, DK)
  • September 24, 2004: C# Platform and language (Copenhagen, DK)
  • June 7, 2004: ASP.NET RoadShow (Copenhagen, DK)
  • May 11, 2004: Meet Microsoft – Focus on security (Copenhagen, DK)
  • March 30, 2004: Meet Microsoft – Smart Client Development (Copenhagen, DK)
  • February 25, 2004: Java’s implementation of Generics (Copenhagen, DK)
  • October 21, 2003: Meet Microsoft – for udviklere (Copenhagen, DK)
  • September 19, 2003: Meet Microsoft w/ Steve Ballmer (Copenhagen, DK)
  • May 15, 2003: Meet Microsoft Lancering (Copenhagen, DK)
  • February 28, 2003: Meet Microsoft – Den trådløse verden (Copenhagen, DK)

Sparetime Fun

  • 2023: Eremitageløbet
  • 2022: Eremitageløbet
  • 2021: Eremitageløbet
  • 2020: Eremitageløbet (covid)
  • 2019: Eremitageløbet
  • 2018: Eremitageløbet
  • 2017: Eremitageløbet
  • 2015: Copenhagen Marathon
  • 2013: Christiansborg Rundt (2km swim)
  • 2012: Christiansborg Rundt (2km swim)
  • 2011: Challenge Copenhagen 2011 (Ironman distance)
  • 2010: Great Wall Marathon
  • 2009: France Ironman
  • 2009: Hillerød Triathlon
  • 2008: New York City Marathon
  • 2008: DTU Adventure Race (24h race)
  • 2008: Hillerød Triathlon
  • 2007: DTU Adventure Race (24h race)
  • 2006: Copenhagen Marathon