Joffen Hopland on Making It Look Effortless

Jon-Fredrik "Joffen" Hopland is Co-founder of Altek AI, which he runs with Kristoffer Storhaug Pedersen.

I first met Joffen at Founders House in Stockholm. I was working from there for a week, and he and Kristoffer had just flown in from Oslo after meeting Max Larsson, who told them to come over and get fired up. They did, two days later, and slept on his couch.

We had ramen that evening and he told me about the fourteen years before this one. At 13 he decided he was going to move to Los Angeles and become a drummer. After high school he saved for a year, packed his bags and went. He played the Sunset Strip, toured North America fifteen times, played Coachella, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits, and shared stages across Europe and Asia. Then he taught himself to code and started a company. We both play drums, so the conversation ran long.

Altek AI builds AI agents that help hotels turn guest inquiries into bookings. Hotels receive thousands of emails and a large share of their bookings happen there, while teams still spend hours every day organising, answering and following up by hand. Altek does the work behind those emails and keeps the humans in control.

Joffen has since moved to Stockholm properly.

We sat down to talk about what fourteen years on stage taught him about building a company, why hospitality, and what it takes to make software feel like magic.

Q&A

1. At 13 you decided you were going to move to Los Angeles and become a drummer, and then you actually did it. What did making that decision that young teach you, and how much of it carries into building a company?

Ever since I was a kid, I've always believed that anything is possible. I've always thought about the universe as being infinite, and if the universe is infinite, why wouldn't the possibilities be infinite too? I think that most of the limitations we put on ourselves are created by our own minds, and that we're capable of so much more than we think.

So when I started playing drums, I very quickly developed a dream of moving to Los Angeles and becoming a drummer. It was a really strong gut feeling. It felt like that's what I was meant to do, and I never really questioned whether I could do it. Throughout my teenage years, I would visualize this life of living in California, touring the world and playing huge shows.

So after high school, I worked for a year to save up money and moved to Hollywood. I spent almost a decade living in LA and touring with different artists. It started small, playing for free around LA, touring in vans and playing small bars and clubs, before eventually travelling in tour buses and playing bigger shows and festivals.

But it wasn't easy. I remember when my first band in LA broke up, after having put all my eggs into that one basket the first couple of years there. I wasn’t playing with anyone else. I wasn’t making any money. And I remember thinking: “Is this how my LA journey is going to end”? I was down for about a week, and then I decided: “Screw this, I’m not giving up, I’m going to make sure I get overbooked as a hired drummer”. 3 weeks later I was on tour, and 6 months later I played Coachella. Then the ball started rolling.

This whole experience taught me so much. It taught me that if you really believe in yourself, work incredibly hard, and stay disciplined, you can achieve really big things and turn your goals and dreams into reality. And it taught me to be very comfortable living in uncertainty and taking calculated risks. It taught me social dynamics, psychology and networking. It also taught me that a big part of making it is just to keep going and not giving up. And that timing (no pun intended) and momentum is very important.

And I bring all of this with me into building Altek AI. I've already experienced making one seemingly impossible dream come true. So why shouldn't I be able to do it again?

2. You went from touring musician to software engineer to founder. Most people would call that a hard pivot. How did it actually happen, and what surprised you most once you were on the other side?

It definitely wasn't planned!

My drumming career was actually going really well when the pandemic hit. Almost overnight, I lost my entire income because I made all my money playing shows.
It turned into the most difficult and challenging period of my life. But after a year of soul searching, I decided to try learning to code. I didn't tell a single person about it because I wanted to figure out whether it was something I genuinely enjoyed and that felt right, without anyone else's opinions influencing me.
After three or four weeks, I just knew that this was my next thing. And I went all in on it.

It was a pretty strange feeling, because for almost 20 years, everything in my life had revolved around becoming a drummer and being in the music industry. Suddenly, I was going in a completely different direction. Uncharted territory. I started studying computer science in the fall of 2021, focusing quite a bit on machine learning and AI.
Programming felt very similar to producing music to me. When you're producing a song, you're putting together different instruments, melodies, rhythms, and ideas, and somehow everything needs to work together. Building software felt surprisingly similar. At least to my weird brain.

During my studies, I met Kristoffer, my co-founder. We were both entrepreneurial and started brainstorming business ideas. It just clicked between us. Then ChatGPT came out, and we realized AI was going to change the world.
Looking back, being a founder and being a musician actually have a lot in common. You're creative, you're constantly experimenting, you’re networking and you're on this mission together with a small group of people.

Building a startup is a lot more chaotic and complex, though! But it kind of feels like being in a band. It’s you against the world.

3. Hotels receive thousands of emails and still handle most of them by hand. How did you find that problem, and what did you learn about the industry once you were properly inside it?

Having spent so much of my life touring, I've probably spent more nights in hotels than most people. So I knew pretty well what it was like to be a guest.
And I'm telling you, when you wake up exhausted on tour and call down to the reception to ask for a late checkout, only for nobody to pick up the phone, so you have to get dressed, go downstairs, stand in line, and then be told no anyway... that's not exactly a great guest experience.

So initially, we were thinking about how AI could improve the guest journey and guest communication. But when we started going deep into this and spending time with the hotels, we discovered something even more interesting behind the scenes.
We were surprised by how fragmented their technology was. Hotels were using all these different systems that didn't really communicate with each other. Information was scattered everywhere, and staff were spending enormous amounts of time doing manual work.

And when we asked why things were done that way, the answer was often just, "It's always been this way."
Email kept coming up as one of the biggest frustrations. And the more we looked into it, the more we realized it wasn't really an email problem. It was all the work happening behind each email.

Hotel employees were spending so much time behind computer screens that the actual human part of hospitality was suffering. That's really what got us interested in solving these problems, so that people can spend more time doing what hospitality is supposed to be about.

4. You have written that when you watch a great musician perform it looks effortless, and that years of hidden work are what make it feel like magic. You want Altek to feel the same way for hotels. What does that actually mean when you are building the product?

When we talk about hotel technology, we usually talk about ROI. How much time can we save? How much can we reduce operational costs? How much additional revenue can we generate?

And obviously, these things are important.

But I think there's another element that's often overlooked, and that's how technology makes people feel.
When you watch a really good musician perform, it looks effortless and easy. What you don't see are the thousands of hours of practice that went into making it look that easy.

I think great software should feel the same way.
Imagine you're working at a hotel, and something that previously required ten minutes of clicking through different systems suddenly just happens automatically. You almost don't have to think about it anymore. It removes friction from your day. That running their hotel becomes easier, that their workday becomes less stressful, that they have more time for their guests. And that watching Altek do something difficult and complicated in a few seconds feels like magic.

There's a lot of complexity behind making what we’re building work. But the person using it, or not using it for that matter, shouldn't have to experience that complexity. It should just feel effortless.

5. You met Max Larsson in Oslo, flew to Stockholm two days later, slept on his couch, and have now moved there. What does Stockholm have that made you relocate, and what is Oslo still missing?

When you arrive at Stockholm Arlanda Airport, there's this long wall with pictures of successful and influential Swedes. People like Avicii, Björn Borg, and the founders of Candy Crush.

The first time I saw it, I remember thinking, that's it. That's the difference between Sweden and Norway.
Meanwhile, back in Norway, a politician literally has a wall in her office called the "Wall of Shame", with newspaper clippings of successful businesspeople.
I think that says something about the cultural differences. In Norway, there's this mentality that you're not supposed to stand out too much. Everyone should be more or less the same.

And don't get me wrong, I believe in equality. But I also believe people should be encouraged to dream big, take risks, and live extraordinary lives if that's what they want.

Stockholm has a stronger culture around entrepreneurship, technology, and building global companies. You're surrounded by more ambitious people.
I like that. I feel more at home in that kind of environment.
And, to be fair, Norway's exit tax was starting to worry me quite a bit.

6. You and Kristoffer have been building Altek since 2024. What has changed most about the company over the last year, and what does winning look like from here?

A lot has changed!

Last December, we raised our first funding round, which was a completely new experience for both of us.

We also went from being just the two of us doing absolutely everything to building an actual team.

We managed to grow Altek to around 80 hotels with just me and Kristoffer, which was pretty intense. We've now passed 100 signed hotels and made our first hires.
In the beginning, we did almost everything together. We attended the same meetings, worked on the same problems, and were involved in pretty much every decision.

Now we've learned to divide and conquer. I'm focusing more on product and fundraising, while Kristoffer focuses more on sales and how we position the company. We've also hired our first Head of Customer Success.
One of the biggest lessons has been understanding that time is our scarcest resource.
There are always a thousand things we could be doing, and almost everything seems important. But we've learned that it’s about identifying the most important bottlenecks and being really good at saying no to everything else.

As for winning, I want us to build something that creates enormous value for our customers and becomes one of the leading AI companies in hospitality.
And I believe we can go even further than that.