I Hope I Never Start Asking "What's the Point?"

On Thursday, Tesla demonstrated its new Roadster. A prototype drove upside down on a curved ramp, launched itself into the air, performed a flip using thrusters developed with SpaceX, and landed back on its wheels.

My immediate reaction was: Holy shit, that's amazing! And i pre-order one.

Then I started reading the comments on X.

"What's the point?"

"Completely useless."

"Another ridiculous Elon Musk project."

I really am getting tired of that looser mentality. The almost automatic reaction some people have to anything ambitious or unusual, where their first instinct seems to be finding reasons why it's pointless, impractical, or never going to work.

Of course, some of the reactions are about Musk himself. He's become so politically polarising that I suspect certain people would have responded very differently if exactly the same demonstration had come from someone whose political views they agreed with.

And sure, Tesla has been promising this car for years. There are perfectly legitimate questions about when it will reach production, whether any of this technology makes practical sense, and whether it will ever become something you can actually buy.

But for a moment, can we just appreciate that someone built a car that can do something like this? Even if it's just a stunt at this moment of time. It will be an inspiration for new innovations, it breaks the limiting beliefs of those brave enough to think outside the box. Does everything really need a practical purpose?

I think the reason this bothers me so much is that I've spent most of my life approaching things from almost the opposite direction.

I've written before about how I've managed to achieve a few things in life. I've built companies, travelled to incredible places, experienced things I never imagined I would, and generally had a tremendous amount of fun along the way.

And I think one of the biggest reasons is that I'm almost naively opportunistic.

When I get an idea, I rarely start by thinking about all the reasons it might fail. Instead, my mind immediately jumps ahead to what it could become. Usually something rather ambitious, occasionally completely unrealistic. Within minutes, I've imagined this enormous opportunity, become ridiculously enthusiastic, and convinced myself that I absolutely have to pursue it.

Then I start building. Have I failed? Oh yes. Many times. And I will continue to fail, I constantly have new business ideas to pursue, the day I don't have any more idea's I will step down and retire.

And often the reason the venture failed was not because the idea was bad or the obstacles impossible to overcome. I simply got bored. The initial excitement faded, and my brain had already discovered the next shiny idea that looked even more interesting.

Not exactly an ideal personality trait when you're trying to build a long-term business.

I've often said that one of the greatest strokes of luck in my life was meeting my wife, Catharina, when we were young (or she was young i was almost 30 haha, it's an open discussion she says I said i was 25 at the time we started dating, it's 7 years between us). I'm genuinely not sure the company we run today would still exist without her.

We used to describe our relationship to friends in a pretty simple way. I had my foot firmly on the gas, and Catharina had hers on the brake.

I was constantly coming up with new, sometimes completely crazy ideas. She was my filter, shooting down the ones she realised didn't serve our long-term goals.

Did she stop some genuinely brilliant ideas that might have turned into successful businesses? Almost certainly.

But that wasn't the point. We had limited money, limited time, and limited resources. In the early years, when we did practically everything ourselves and worked ridiculous hours without earning particularly much, we simply couldn't afford to chase every new opportunity. We had to focus.

And Catharina isn't exactly some quiet, cautious person who avoids taking risks. Quite the opposite. I call her my little pitbull. All 48kg of her.

If a supplier has upset her, she'll get on the phone and fight until they put things right. She simply doesn't back down. Meanwhile, I'm the typical Swede who would prefer everyone to just get along and be friends. I still find it rather adorable watching this petit wonderful woman take on a fight that most people twice her size would rather avoid.

I haven't always been easy to live with, either. Far from it. I've too often taken my frustrations out on her, something I'm certainly not proud of. She's seen the worst sides of me, and through all of it she's remained firmly on my side. She's my rock, and I love her for that.

Without her, I suspect I'd have spent the past twenty years accelerating from one exciting project to another, perhaps never staying with anything long enough to build something substantial. Instead, we made a pretty good team.

What's interesting is that AI is now changing some of the limitations Catharina and I had to live with back then.

I've written before about how much I agree with the Silicon Valley tech crowd who believe we'll soon see billion-dollar companies run by one person, or perhaps just a handful of people. I genuinely believe that's where we're heading.

We're already putting some of that thinking into practice in our own business. We currently do around SEK 250 million in annual revenue, and when someone leaves a back-office position, we no longer replace them with another person. We look at how technology can take over that work instead.

But think about what that means for someone like me. Twenty years ago, every new idea meant diverting money, people, and attention away from the business we were trying to build. Today, I can experiment with things that would have been completely unrealistic for us back then.

I have four DGX Sparks running local AI models. I'm building my own software, experimenting with ideas almost daily, and I've even started developing an alternative to Adobe Lightroom because I wondered whether I could make certain things work better myself.

Does the world need another Lightroom alternative? No. Will I finish it? I certainly hope so, but given my history, who knows? It's not the point or why I'm building it.

I'm having a fantastic time trying, though.

A few years ago, attempting something like this would have required an entire development team and a serious financial commitment. Today, I can sit in my office and actually try it myself.

It doesn't mean every idea is suddenly worth pursuing, or that I've somehow discovered more hours in the day. Catharina's brake is still useful.

But the cost of experimenting has changed enormously.

And it's happening everywhere. Math, Medicine, robotics, energy, space exploration. Things that sounded like science fiction when I was growing up are becoming possible.

I'm over fifty now, and I genuinely can't remember ever being more excited about the future.

Which brings me to something that worries me considerably more than a few negative comments on X.

What kind of outlook on life are we giving our children?

I have a son growing up in this world, and I sometimes wonder what picture of the future he and his generation are getting.

Now, I'm not sitting in classrooms during the day, so I don't pretend to know exactly what children are being taught. Maybe my perception is unfair. But looking at the general conversation in society, the news, and social media, there seems to be an almost endless stream of things we're supposed to worry about.

Climate catastrophe. Consume less. Travel less. Eat less meat. Ideally become vegan. And perhaps if we just manage to squeeze a tenth recycling compartment into the rubbish bin, we'll finally save the planet.

Meanwhile, AI is apparently going to take everyone's jobs.

I exaggerate, obviously. These are real challenges, and some of the consequences will be serious. But sometimes it feels as though we're teaching an entire generation to fear the future rather than look forward to it.

Why does so much of the conversation focus on what we need to stop doing instead of what we might be able to invent, improve, or solve?

If we have enormous environmental challenges, I'd much rather see young people become excited about developing new energy technologies, better materials, or entirely new solutions none of us has even imagined yet.

I want my son to believe he can actually change things. That he can have some ridiculous idea and try to turn it into reality, even if everyone around him thinks it will never work.

I'm worried that if we constantly teach young people to look for problems, they'll become very good at finding them. Perhaps so good that they stop looking for opportunities.

And I know from my own life how different things might have turned out if I'd approached every new idea by carefully considering everything that could go wrong.

I probably wouldn't have started half the things I did. And while that might have saved me some money, frustration, and sleepless nights, it would also have cost me an enormous amount of enjoyment.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being a little naive about what's possible. In fact, I think it can be a tremendous advantage.

Of course you need people who can see the problems. I married one, and I'm rather grateful for that.

But I would hate to live in a world where everyone has their foot on the brake.

For me, one of the most wonderful things about being human is our desire to build and create. To discover things, understand more, and push the boundaries of what's possible.

Otherwise, what's the point of it all?

Just getting up every morning, working to pay the bills, putting food on the table, and eventually retiring to wait for the end?

I know that's a bit of an extreme way to put it, but I can't imagine living without something that excites me, something I want to try, build, discover, or experience.

And I don't particularly care if it makes sense to everyone else.

Maybe the Tesla Roadster will never become a commercially successful car. Maybe the whole flying-car concept will turn out to be completely impractical.

But someone had a rather crazy idea, convinced other people to help build it, and managed to demonstrate something extraordinary.

I watched it and felt like a twelve-year-old again. I hope I never grow out of that.