Motorola Droid RAZR. Age 13. No clue how it worked. One thought: there must be a way to make it better.
Rooted it.Custom ROMs.Bricked it.My brother soldered a service cableand brought it back to life.
Then every flagship phone through high school: summer jobs to buy it, then root it and flash it. Hacked games too. A friend is still trying to beat my fake Subway Surfers score 0.
After that: hacked Xboxes and the whole family's tech support. I was that guy.
MOTOROLA
▾ ▴ ▮ 13:37
13:37
Saturday · no idea how this works
Terminal Emulator
$ su
# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root)
# █
Recovery v5.5
- install zip from sdcard
-- Installing: cm-9-NIGHTLY-spyder.zip
Installing update...
AP Fastboot Flash Mode (S)
0A.77
Battery Low
Cannot Program
Battery OK
OK to Program
Transfer Mode:
USB Connected
●▾ ▴ ▮ 13:37
13:37
custom ROM · mine now
◁○▭⌕
2013–14 age 14–15 · the radio
Then radios: my first go at firmware and transmission systems.
My brother and I got a big 2 m glider. We soldered it back together after the first crash, but my real fun was the transmitter: flashing its firmware and tuning every setting until it flew the way I wanted.
The clip: a couple of years later, still flying it. The landing: not our finest.
24 10 '15 17:13
RSSI --RxBt 5.0VTMR 00:00TELEMETRY LOST
2018 age 19 · choosing what's next
Techorbusiness?Medialogy.
I loved tech. But I'm social, and IT looked like it was only for nerds, so business school looked like the sensible choice. I went back and forth on it for a long time.
Then I found Medialogy in Denmark: tech, but about how it meets people. It felt like both. I moved to Aalborg.
Once I found it, the easiest decision of my life.
2018–21 Medialogy, Aalborg
Average student in high school. Then something clicked.
I kept ending up as the team's product manager, still with my hands in the code, and I was always full of project ideas that got the group excited. The guy who finds a fix for every problem. One example:
COVID hit near the end of the bachelor's, and I barely studied through it. No master's after: it looked a lot like the bachelor's again, and I'd rather get a job and see what the real world looks like.
Grade average: around 10 on the Danish 12-point scale. I didn't care much about grades.
2021 packed up for Copenhagen
COVID: no user testing in person→Remote testing on my own server
The team needs someone to coordinate→I'll take PM, and keep coding
Three uni projectsBinaural audiobooks, mixed reality, AI for photographers.
3D audiobooks (binaural audio). Software and a physical prototype for making and listening to binaural audiobooks. My part: designing the MUSHRA listening test and running it remotely on my own web server, mid-pandemic.Video ›Code ›
Stylizing mixed reality. On a Varjo headset: visual styles that make the real and the virtual hard to tell apart. My part: the research, running the tests and the numbers, the technical requirements and how the group worked.Video ›Code ›
AI-assisted photo culling, with Capture One. AI that helps photographers pick their best shots, built in scrum with Capture One's designers. My part: designing and building the AI features with the team.Video ›Code ›
Every semester I was sure we'd build the next Apple. We didn't.
2021–22 first job · IT consultant at SimplerQMS
First job. A lot to learn, fast.
Found a job within a month: IT consultant at a small startup. Their M-Files setup was new to me, so I dug in until I understood it properly. Then I moved the whole team from waterfall to scrum myself, and built a better release process for customer updates.
Still itching to travel, so I quit, with half a year's notice. They took it well, and the CEO wrote me a reference. I liked working with him.
From the reference letter · August 2022
“…significantly improving the process of updating to new software versions for customers in a cloud environment.”
“I am sad to see Jakub leave the company and he will be missed.”
Jacob Sjørslev Hyrdum, CEO of SimplerQMS, former VP at Ambu
Full letter on request.
2022–23 quit my job · almost a year backpacking
I quit my job to go backpacking. With six months' notice.
My brain didn't stop, though. Most of South America, then Southeast Asia. Two months in, the tech ideas were back. In a jungle.
Bought a drone. In Asia I started In-Drone: one-shot FPV films of villas and resorts. It paid for the road.
In-Drone
One-shot FPV films of villas and resorts: a single flight, no cuts. I started it in the second half of the trip, in Southeast Asia, with a drone I bought on the road.
It paid for the travel, and it was exciting, which mattered as much. I'm relaunching it from Copenhagen.
Run my own team: UX, front-end, back-end, in scrum
Ship an AI legal-help chat
My AI team built on-prem contract extraction on open-source models, with data kept in the EU while competitors sent theirs to US clouds
+20%
raise, 4 months in
+20%
again at one year
~15
devs who wanted to work like my team
2025 the wall
Others wanted to work the way my team did. Not much changed.
About a year in, a good part of the dev department (around 15 people) told me they'd like to work the way my team did, and the dev managers backed it. We had a big meeting with the CEO. It got a bit awkward. People agreed.Not much happened after.
Then came a merger. Things slowed down, old habits stuck, and it felt like the people doing the work weren't being heard. I pushed for a while, then lost hope.
Maybe other companies do it better. From what my friends tell me, often not. Either way, watching that much talent and time go to waste wasn't for me.
So I went to touch grass. After years behind a screen I wanted a physical job. That's why Madrid.
2025–26 six months in Madrid
Half a year behind a bar in Madrid. No laptop.
Needed a break. Poured drinks, learned Spanish. Exactly what I needed.
Drop tech? Hell no. To learn faster I wrote a script that pulls the hardest words out of a show's subtitles. Shared it. That became tv-learn, now Sub-Optimal.
— ¿Te apetece tomar algo? — Venga, pero no me líes, que mañana madrugo.
1A scriptfor my own Spanish
2tv-learnshared it, friends joined in
3Sub-Optimala real product, real users
Sub-Optimal
Turns the shows and videos you already watch into a language course.
Subtitles for any YouTube video, films and series
Pulls out the words you'll struggle with: drills, sentence mining, Anki export
Your Plex or Jellyfin library with interactive subtitles
Books with glosses for the hard words; Chrome and Firefox extensions
Back in Copenhagen, doing it my way. Smoothless: the Discord where Martin and I got our uni friends building together. Two of them already have an App Store app; they co-own tv-learn with me. In-Drone is relaunching here.
I take things that don't work well and make them work better: products, teams, release processes, a whole flat. Two years building and running an AI product team at RISMA, a startup before that, and always something of my own on the side. I want an early team with real stakes, where I can own things. Drones and emergency response if I get to pick.
Relaunching in Copenhagen: positioning, Danish copy and a bilingual site I built myself.
FPV films, relaunching
2025 –
Smoothlessco-driver · a builders' communitystory ↗
Got our uni friends building products together; two of them have an app on the App Store.
Got people building
Things I run
2023 –
Home labsmart home, home server, automationsstory ↗
A whole flat in Home Assistant: radar presence lighting, a robot finger that runs the dishwasher at the cheapest hour, TV light sync for 300 kr with an Arduino.
My own server: Docker, monitoring, VPN, network ad-blocking. This CV and my story site are served from it.
A video pipeline for my volleyball team: plug in the camera, minutes later there's a watchable match.
Daily work with AI coding agents; every project is set up so any agent can pick it up.
05Fix, don't buy.A soldering iron and 300 kr beat a 3,000 kr box. ↑ the flat
06All in when it counts.The problem nobody else wants. ↑ since 13
07Small and real over big and bloated.Things should move.
What I keep coming back to
People who save lives.
Firefighters, ambulances, emergency response, and the tech they run on. As a kid I wanted to fly the emergency helicopter. This year I've volunteered with the Red Cross at asylum centres, talked to emergency-tech people, gone to TechBBQ and kept building.
Haven't figured out where it leads yet. Not going to pretend I have.
Next what I'm looking for
Not a job. An early team where I can own things and make them better.
Real stakes, real people on the other end. Drones and emergency response if I get to pick. Any startup building something real if I don't. Got one? Write me.
There must be a way to make it better.
The 60-second version
I get obsessed, then I get it done. I'm looking for an early team where I can own things and make them better.
Now
Copenhagen. Building tv-learn (Sub-Optimal) and In-Drone with friends. Red Cross volunteer.
2023–25
AI Product Owner at RISMA: built and ran the AI team, shipped the first AI features, two ~20% raises in a year.
2021–22
IT consultant at SimplerQMS, a startup: helped move it from waterfall to scrum, worked on the release process.
2022–23
Quit with six months' notice to go backpacking for almost a year. Started In-Drone on the road.
2018–21
BSc Medialogy, Aalborg University. PSPO I certified.
Languages
Polish, English, Spanish, some Danish.
North star
Drones, emergency response, tech that matters to real people.
