Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business

IntroductionThe Pursuit of Happiness

Less than a decade ago, my friends Alexander Aghassipour and Morten Primdahl and I were gainfully (ish) employed—and unfulfilled.

Though life in Copenhagen was good—everything was taken care of in the place with the happiest people in the world—we wanted to do something else with our lives. Perhaps we were each experiencing a mid-life crisis of sorts. We were all in our mid- to late thirties, and concerned that time was running out to do something we really wanted to do.

We felt that we needed to make a change before it was too late. We all know that people grow more risk-averse over time. As we start to have houses and mortgages, and kids and cars, and schools and institutions, we start to settle. We invest ...