2025 Year in Review

2025 was a year of building and shipping. At Heder Bank, we went from a manual mortgage process to automated processing, savings accounts, and the beginnings of an online bank. Outside work, I sold my first side project, launched a car bingo app, and spent family time cycling through Denmark and racing obstacles with the kids. Here’s my look back at 2025:

Work

2025 has been intense. After Robin and I jumped into designing and coding a bank from scratch last year, we’ve shipped a (manual) Minimum Hateable Product for mortgages, two websites, savings account onboarding, automated mortgage processing, and the start of an online bank while building brand and style guide. Solid output for what we claim is the smallest IT department in banking (plus a handful of consultants).

Being CTO means I’ve learned more about regulations than I ever wanted to know. I’ve written outsourcing documents, reviewed contracts, done endless risk assessments. I’m genuinely glad banking is heavily regulated, but I’m even more glad we hired a dedicated CISO who’s brilliant at this stuff. Hopefully that frees me up to actually build things next year.

A definite highlight was launching and automating our savings account flow. Since we needed more capital to fund new mortgages, releasing this feature became our top priority over the summer. The response was overwhelming—within days of launching, over 2,000 customers signed up for savings accounts, and we actually had to pause new applications because we’re such a small bank. I think that makes us one of the first banks to ever “sell out” of savings accounts. Now, our focus has shifted to building out the daily banking experience, which is both challenging and genuinely exciting!

Norway Fintech Festival

This year I also spoke at Norway Fintech Festival about Hyper Personalization in banking. In a moment of questionable genius, I decided to hand-draw every slide. Because what’s more personal in the age of AI than actually drawing and painting my own slides? The presentation was luckily well received!

Side projects

Sold Violating-gdpr.com

This year I sold my first side project. I was contacted by a company that saw potential in the site I created years ago checking your website if you sent data outside of the European Union. After some mails back and forth we agreed with a sum and I sold the site to them via Escrow. A win-win for both parts!

isecrets.io

Years ago I launched isecrets.io as a newsletter that automatically sent over 150 emails with iOS tips. The problem was that running a high-traffic newsletter cost more than I was making from it. So I shut down the newsletter and turned all the tips into a searchable database instead. You can try it out here.

Launched Car Bingo

This year I once again attended Revenuecats shipathon in October. This year I launched a car bingo app inspired by the car-bingo sheet my wife created for our kids this summer. It was a fun “quick” project over some weekends, and the kids have enjoyed it on trips. Though they keep telling me I added way too many things to find. Try out the app here.

Sunday SMS

I got tired of digging through my daughter’s school bag every week, so I made a Cloudflare script that texts my wife and me every Sunday evening with the week’s school schedule for the oldest one. Small thing, but it’s been helpful.

Parental leave tracker

In September I started part-time parental leave for our youngest. Currently this means two hours less work each day and every other Friday off. That’s about 600 hours to track across a year, so naturally I built a simple webapp for tracking it.

Blog and newsletter

I have only written 5 blogposts this year, which is quite disappointing considering one of my goals last year was to write more. I probably did write more, but mostly for myself and for work. The thing is, time spent writing means less time building, and building is what gets me excited these days.

The Good Parts

Travel

Dyreparken

Once again we travelled to Dyreparken some weekends before our real vacation started. I can’t recommend it enough being a couple of days in the magic of the pirate land. This time we rented a hut in Juliusskogen with canopy walks between the trees. A lovely memory!

Scouting camp in Gjøvik

Our main vacation this year started with a bang when we attended the national scout camp in Gjøvik with over 8 000 scouts. The first evening is also where I discovered my biggest blunder of the year: I had forgotten to pack the tent-rods for our family tent, so I had to scour Gjøvik and beyond to find a blackout family tent in a couple of hours. Luckily I found one and we ended up having a good time!

Bike vacation in Denmark

Then we spent two weeks in Denmark on bikes. We rented three different cabins in the north and just cycled everywhere. Turns out not having a car feels more freeing, not less. We’re definitely doing this again.

Toughest Oslo

Going to Oslo for Toughest in the autumn is becoming a family tradition. There’s something about the combination of running, obstacles, and that final exhausted sprint up the ski slope. This year I ran with Helene on Saturday and our two oldest on Sunday. We didn’t attend last year since I dislocated my shoulder the year before in the race and my shoulder wasn’t fully rehabilitated. This year it went fine in the main race, but I actually managed to dislocate my other shoulder during the family race. Luckily it snapped quickly into place with no later side effects.

Trolljegerprøven

The week after we ran Trolljegerprøven with both our oldest kids as well. I was more nervous about this since the middle one cancelled last year because she became too cold with all the water hurdles. But this year she finished strong!

Kaizers Orchestra

I haven’t been to a concert in years, but when Kaizers announced they were coming to Bergen I bought tickets immediately. Ended up going alone but really enjoyed it.

Health

Having three kids between 1 and 8 while working at a startup bank doesn’t leave much time for the gym. I’ve had to accept that. What I do now is pop into the training center near our office right after cycling to work. I’m already warm, so I just do a quick full-body workout. My average session is about 20 minutes. Sometimes it’s literally one set per body part. But staying consistent with this and doing lots of supersets with almost no rest has somehow made me stronger than I was last year.

Wonderful things from 2025

Purchases

Trmnl I bought this e-ink screen as soon as I saw it. It sits in our kitchen showing the next three days of our family calendar, today’s weather, and a countdown to whatever we’re looking forward to. The best part: I’ve had it for months and haven’t charged it once. tech

Quadlock case for iPhone I got the new iPhone 16 Pro, which is great. But it’s even better with the QuadLock case that lets me attach it to my bike or running band. I’ve used QuadLock cases for years, but this year I also got a ring for the back and it’s been incredibly useful for propping up the phone and just holding it better. gear

Media

Endurance This is about Shackleton’s 1914 expedition to Antarctica. His ship got trapped in pack ice and he and his 27 crew members had to survive by drifting on ice flows, traveling in small boats, and living on seals and penguins in freezing conditions until they made it back to civilization. Absolutely gripping. Book

American Kingpin A detailed account of the Silk Road—the darknet marketplace built on Tor and Bitcoin—and how they eventually caught its creator. One of the best true crime books I’ve read. Book

Replay Jeff dies but wakes up as a younger version of himself. He uses what he knows about the future to get rich, but every time he reaches that same point, he dies again and wakes up even younger. Eventually he meets Pamela, another replayer in the same situation, and they figure it out together. Book

Red Rising Red Rising is a sci-fi novel where humanity has colonized the solar system under a rigid color-coded caste system, with Golds ruling as godlike elites and Reds toiling as the lowest slaves in underground mines. The main character Darrow, a Red, is surgically transformed into a Gold and infiltrates their brutal academy to destroy the society from within. I’m on book 4 now, which probably says enough. Book

The Gentlemen I actually read more books than watched movies this year. But the movie I enjoyed most was The Gentlemen, which had all the energy of Lock Stock and Snatch. Fast-paced with great dialogue. Movie

Taylor Swift - The life of a showgirl My most played album last year even though it came out in October. So many good songs! Album

Apps

Obsidian My favorite note-taking app got a major speed upgrade this year, which made it way more useful on my phone. Highly recommend it.

Claude Code I've played a lot with Cursor, ChatGPT and Claude over the year, but Claude Code has been the real game changing app for this year! It is amazing what it can do and how it empowers me as a creator!

Plans and goals for 2026

As I look ahead to 2026, I’m even more excited about the year ahead than last year. The pace of AI development keeps opening up new possibilities. Here’s what I’m focusing on:

• Create a daily banking experience for Heder Bank. I’ve spent 15 years in fintech. Time to apply all of it and build something exceptional.
• Launch another iPhone app. I’ve been thinking about this concept for years, but the technology has finally caught up. Excited to ship it.
• Write to learn in public. Last year I had the goal of writing more in public. I am fairly certain I wrote more, but I definitely shared less. Let’s change that up this year!
• Create more family adventures. When I look back at this year, the family trips are what I remember most. I want more of those.