Leapfrogging by Jesper Kring, strategic approach to agentic AI and exponential reality
See further. Leap ahead.
I work with those who want to build what's next, not defend the status quo.
What interests me is where the future is heading - and building the systems, companies, and leaps that get there.
Where we stand
The shift from agriculture to industry took a hundred years. The one we're in now takes ten - and is far more radical.
Agentic AI, quantum, a doubly exponential reality. And at the same time: population decline. Growth and prosperity must now come from something other than more people. It is already rewriting how companies are built and how value is created.
A change of that magnitude can't be handled with the methods and mindset that built the world we're leaving. It demands a different approach, and that's what I've been exploring and experimenting with for the past 20 years, and now work with deliberately across different settings.
Leapfrogging means skipping a whole stage of development. Not doing the same thing faster, but letting go of what the established are bound by, and landing directly on what's next. It applies to countries, companies and people, and it may be Denmark's and Europe's only real way forward in a new global competitive and geopolitical reality.
The approach
You can't think your way into a new way of acting. You have to act your way into a new way of thinking.
I've done that for three decades - built, failed, turned it around, built again. The experience sits in the instinct for when something is heading the right way, and when it's going wrong, long before the numbers show it.
That instinct, together with market data, is what I build with. As a co-builder and wingman, not the one laying the bricks, but the one close to where direction and decisions are made. And I follow the money. It shows where a system can change, and confirms it once it has. Capital and real change move together, which is why the surest way to predict the future is to help build it. It isn't about choosing between economic success and meaning. The strongest systems create both.
Where it's put to work
Leapfrogging is the frame. These are places it unfolds.
KRING
Venture building in practice. At KRING we've built Speedbooting, an agentic AI platform for building, investing in and scaling companies. I'm a co-builder and strategic wingman to the founders and teams building on it, and this is where I see, up close, what the new reality demands.
AlsLeben
A place on Als for depth and presence. Here I bring together the few, leaders, owners, founders, for confidential conversations and strategy work that can't be done between meetings. Not a conference center. A place where people with shared ambition think big and start small.
Letters
Letters to the future about what I see. Here I think on the page, about technology, capital, Europe and what's coming. Not to give answers, but to point at what I've suddenly noticed, perhaps before others have. Written when something breaks through, not on a schedule.
The track behind me
I wrote my first code at 13 on a Commodore 64. Took over my father's company at 21. Since then I've co-created companies from e-commerce and fintech to AI and platforms for building companies - including one of the first e-business setups, with 250 in-house software engineers in India, Ukraine and Denmark.
In 2016 I sat at Singularity University in California and heard Ray Kurzweil describe an exponential future that still sounded like science fiction. Today it's here.
Along the way, companies have been invested in and sold for more than 130 million euros - to Mastercard, Saxo Bank, Andel, Dansk Ejerkapital and others. Building is one thing. Capturing the value is another. Both taught me more than any single success could.
I've built both companies and funds - KRING holds three today. And before I moved to Asia, I worked for more than two decades with entrepreneurship and innovation in a societal and business context. I helped create the framework for the Væksthuse under the Danish Business Authority - today the Erhvervshuse - and served as deputy chair of Væksthus Sjælland. And I helped merge three public foundations into the Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship. I also led, within the regional growth forum (Vækstfora), a cross-disciplinary group of strong profiles spanning research, business and culture, to find new, financeable paths to growth across Region Zealand. And I chaired the Danish Entrepreneurs' Association, served on Andel's representative council, and advised Dansk Erhverv. Then I stepped away from all of it to go build in Singapore.
Back in Denmark, my focus is on agentic AI, an exponential reality, and the companies built native to it. It feels as if the three decades were a training for exactly this.
Where I put my effort
I put my energy in a few places - where I can help create real, positive change. Close to owners, investors, leaders and founders who have the courage to build what's next, take responsibility for doing it themselves, and make sure there's a short path from idea to action.
I build with those already in motion, not those waiting to be pulled into gear. As a co-builder alongside those who have decided to move something that matters, and who have something at stake themselves, or see a crisis as a springboard for something better.