Ikke Et Ord Om Politik
Ikke Et Ord Om Politik

Iværksætter Martin Thorborg

October 11, 2024

AI Summary

5 min read

Martin Thorborg’s father was a brilliant civil engineer, an acoustician with patents on CD players, a man who could speak four languages and win at Trivial Pursuit on any subject except sports and entertainment. When Thorborg called home after selling his company for 100 million euros, his father listened and then told him a story about his granddaughter eating fish fillet. The pride Thorborg expected never came. That moment, and the long silence around recognition, shaped how Thorborg later built his own companies and raised his own children.

The predictable boundary

Thorborg describes his father as 100 percent predictable. Dinner was at 18:00. The rules were narrow in some areas—honesty, no stealing, no fighting—and remarkably wide in others. As a child, Thorborg could take a rowboat to Furesøen at dawn, fish all day, and return without being questioned. The only question was whether he had caught anything. This combination of clear boundaries and broad freedom gave him a stable childhood. He knew exactly where the limits were, and within them he could do almost anything.

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:00) **Father-Son Dynamic and Emotional Void** - Martin Thorborg recounts his first major business success (€100M) and his father's dismissive reaction, which sets up the core emotional tension of the episode.
  • 2 (04:19) **Generational and Political Rifts** - The father's background as a left-leaning engineer clashed with his own father (a conservative parliament secretary) and later with Martin's centrist/right-leaning views.
  • 3 (06:14) **Childhood Inspiration and the Sony Engineer** - Martin's childhood dream was shaped by a visit from a Sony engineer who showed him a prototype CD player.
  • 4 (12:51) **Deathbed Reconciliation** - The father, dying of terminal prostate cancer at Herlev Hospital, looked Martin in the eye and said "I love you" for the first time.
  • 5 (14:09) **Family Life and Father's Eccentricities** - Martin describes his father's love of home movies, terrible homemade wine, and potent party punch that made elderly relatives ill.
  • 6 (19:41) **Martin as a Father: Conscious Investment** - Martin explicitly contrasts his own parenting with his father's, calling himself a "much better father."
  • 7 (25:35) **The "Deal" Approach to Parenting** - Martin describes how he handled his daughter's desire to participate in MGP: he offered to pay for singing lessons only if she committed fully.

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Show Notes

Iværksætter Martin Thorborg er denne uges gæst i 'Ikke et ord om politik' med Morten Messerschmidt som vært for samtalen. I afsnittet taler de bl.a. om Thorborgs forhold til sin far, der groede hash til børnene og drak pensionister under bordet. Men også om det dybere forhold mellem de to - fx om dengang, hvor faderen for første gang sagde til sin søn, at han elskede ham.

Ikke Et Ord Om Politik

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