Martin Ibsen

15+ years in digital products across energy, toys, pumps, telecom, museums and hotels. These days mostly preoccupied with this: what happens to product work when code becomes free?

Portrait of Martin Ibsen
Martin Ibsen Aarhus · 2026

I've spent 15+ years building digital products and leading the teams behind them, across energy, toys, pumps, telecom, museums and hotels. Agencies, a national infrastructure operator, a consultancy, and a couple of things I've started myself along the way.

Most recently I led Product & UX at Energinet, where I built a cross-functional team of 14 around three national energy platforms: ElOverblik, Energy Track & Trace and EnergiDeling. These are the services Danish citizens and companies use to see where their power comes from and how it moves through the grid. Different audiences, different regulatory realities, one shared question: how do you make infrastructure feel like a product?

Before Energinet I spent five years as a product leadership consultant at Syndicate, working with LEGO, Grundfos, Norlys and a handful of others. I helped their teams get better at discovery, prioritization and delivering outcomes instead of features. Earlier I led concept and UX work at Design-people and KRUSO/Funday Factory. I was part of the team behind LEGO Boost (still one of LEGO's most award-winning products), contributed to Danfoss' Eco smart heating system, and helped rethink AeroGuest's mobile hotel check-in before it scaled internationally.

Martin in a workshop, gesturing in front of a flip chart with a colleague in the foreground
Workshop at a client: discovery, prioritization, and where the build ladder lives.
I'd rather have calluses on my hands than opinions at a distance.

These days I also build with AI, not as a developer, but as a product leader who thinks the craft is changing. Knud (an app that sorts your screenshots automatically), Stilnote (material schedules for interior designers, out with the first customers), Vibetjek (an experienced developer reviews your vibe-coded project), Wardrobe (drop-in design systems for AI coding tools) and the newsletter AI for Product Leaders.

I wrote a book on digital communication in 2013, and I'm a Professional Agile Coach and NLP Practitioner. I teach and coach when I can. That's how I stay sharp.

Based near Aarhus.