Lars Sneftrup Pedersen and the art of removing a step

A colleague wanted PowerPoint. Installing it required six disks, which meant somebody had to stay around to feed them to the computer. At Sonofon, the Danish telecom company where Lars Sneftrup Pedersen worked, this was a perfectly ordinary inconvenience. He wrote software to do the installation automatically after work. By morning, the computer was ready. PowerPoint had acquired an audience without requiring an attendant.

It is a modest beginning for a company now selling enterprise security across national borders. It is also a useful introduction to its founder. Pedersen noticed a task that occupied a person without much need for that person’s judgment. Code could take the shift. The interesting part was the time somebody would get back.

Today he is founder and CEO of Admin By Request. Its central proposition gives workers temporary administrative access when an approved task requires it, then withdraws that access. The ambition is to reduce the risks of permanent privileges while allowing people to finish their work. Somewhere between the security policy and the employee’s afternoon, Pedersen wants fewer interruptions.

The teenager with something to sell

Before office installations, there were games. Pedersen began developing them in his teens, working in machine code. One early experience brought an education in distribution: a prospective publisher rejected his game, and he later discovered it had been sold anyway, without his knowledge. Another game brought him 35,000 Danish kroner and reached players across Europe.

The two outcomes make an unusually compact introduction to the software business. A working program could travel much farther than its maker. Getting paid for it was a separate question. For a teenager, that second transaction also offered something quite tangible: somebody valued what he had made enough to buy it.

He subsequently studied computing in Aalborg and entered the world of salaried work. Yet the pleasure of making something remained. In 2024, he described himself simply: “I’m a nerd, a huge nerd.” It is a serviceable job description for a founder who still talks publicly about the hours spent coding alongside his developers.

“I’m a nerd, a huge nerd.”

Lars Sneftrup Pedersen · 2024

A toolbox finds its purpose

Pedersen’s work at Sonofon grew to include the company’s first online shop and its retail system. He started his own software venture in 2008, building Automation Studio. The broad collection of administrative tools eventually produced a more focused proposition. Admin By Request’s first Endpoint Privilege Management release arrived in 2017.

A toolbox asks a buyer to imagine several uses. A specific security product can address a recognizable decision: who should be allowed to run this program with elevated permissions? The difference matters to the administrator explaining a purchase as much as to the person approving the budget. Pedersen’s software had acquired a problem that could be named.

His later account of turning the business into a platform is refreshingly concerned with the plumbing. When Secure Remote Access arrived in August 2024, the administration portal had to support switching between products. The development team also had to reconsider how the whole system would work. An extra product brought an extra set of responsibilities behind the screen.

He recounted the coding hours with a parenthetical repetition of “hours and hours.” The phrase supplies a useful corrective to the neatness of a product timeline. Launch dates occupy a few characters. Making separate pieces behave as one service takes considerably more space in a working day.

Permission, briefly

Admin By Request operates in a corner of computing where convenience and control meet every day. An employee needs to install something. The organization wants to know what it is, why it needs elevated rights, and whether those rights can be removed afterward. The product’s name is practically a set of instructions.

The company now presents three connected products: Endpoint Privilege Management, Secure Remote Access, and Web Access Management. Each deals with a different moment when access needs boundaries. Local administrative privileges are one; remote connections are another; the websites and downloads available through a browser are a third.

That arrangement helps explain why Pedersen keeps returning to usability. A security rule has to survive contact with a busy employee. A control that requires an elaborate detour for every routine action creates its own administrative work. The design challenge is to keep decisions deliberate without making every permitted task feel exceptional.

His company’s free plan lets organizations evaluate its software on up to 25 endpoints. It puts a working installation within reach of the people who will eventually have to manage it. For an administrator, a trial on actual devices can answer questions a presentation leaves pleasantly unresolved. The software gets to make its own introduction.

The browser joins the queue

On August 3, 2026, Admin By Request launched Web Access Management. The product applies controls at the endpoint, including decisions about browsers, websites, and executable downloads. Downloaded files are held for policy checks and malware scanning before release. Existing Endpoint Privilege Management customers can use the same installed agent and management portal.

“The browser is where most work happens today,” Pedersen said at launch. His observation explains the next direction of the product range more economically than a catalogue of threats. Work has moved into the browser; the controls have to follow it. A download is another point at which somebody, or a policy, needs to decide what may proceed.

In his own account of the release, Pedersen wondered whether two products were enough to call the business a platform, then playfully suggested that three might settle the question. The joke is useful because “platform” can become a very grand word. Here it accompanies a concrete list of products and the practical work of connecting them.

A race suit is also a distribution channel

There is another route into Pedersen’s business: Formula 1. Admin By Request announced its partnership with Kevin Magnussen in February 2023. At the time, Pedersen said more than 60 percent of the company’s customers were in the United States. A Danish driver racing for an American team offered a connection he could readily explain.

He also pointed to the audience growth associated with Drive to Survive. The sponsorship belonged to a deliberate effort to increase recognition among decision makers and customers who watched the sport. For someone selling tools that largely work out of sight, a racing suit is a rather conspicuous place to put a name.

The relationships continued as the drivers’ careers changed. Magnussen moved into endurance racing with BMW, and Admin By Request extended its partnership through 2026. The company also renewed its agreement with Nico Hulkenberg for the 2026 season. Pedersen’s marketing now has a place in both Formula 1 and endurance racing.

The personal interest is quite visible, too. In a public post from Monza in 2024, he celebrated being on the grid with his son Mads. A business rationale and a good family afternoon can coexist. Pedersen has managed to find a marketing channel where the invitation itself is part of the appeal.

Three chairs, a different kind of partnership

In September 2024, Pedersen joined the ownership group of Intellis, a Danish procurement software business. Magnussen was already an investor there. Pedersen’s contribution was described in practical terms: experience developing software products, responding to users, and creating a strategy for improvements. His main job would remain Admin By Request.

Intellis co-founder Søren Iversen connected the appointment to Pedersen’s experience with internally developed systems. The intention was to improve the core product and customer experience as the company grew. It is a familiar assignment for somebody whose career has repeatedly involved making administrative work easier to handle.

That December, Pedersen and Magnussen appeared with Stig Larsen on the Intellis Talks Tech podcast. Their conversation covered joining the company and its direction. The photograph of the recording places them around a table with mugs and microphones, which is a helpful change of scenery from the racing paddock.

For Pedersen, the investment extends his working knowledge into another software company. Procurement and endpoint security have different customers’ problems to solve, but both involve permissions, processes, and people who would prefer to get on with their jobs. His experience has a use beyond the original product.

The next idea may arrive at the stand

As the business expands, Pedersen’s stated priorities remain close to its users. In his management report for fiscal 2025, he emphasized renewals and direct customer feedback as measures of performance. He also wrote about the effort required to maintain a shared culture across teams in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific.

There is a practical tension here. The company wants a wider product range and more customers, while promising software that remains straightforward to deploy and manage. Each addition gives the development team more to connect, explain, and support. The founder who once removed an installation chore now has to protect that economy of effort at a different scale.

In October 2026, ahead of the company’s planned appearance at it-sa in Nuremberg, he described trade-show conversations as an input to development. Visitors had repeatedly identified a gap that helped lead to Web Access Management. “A good share of what we build next starts with something a visitor told us at the stand,” he said.

The distance from a Sonofon workstation to an international exhibition is considerable. The habit is recognizable: listen to the person facing the inconvenience, understand where the process gets in the way, and build something that takes a step out of it. Six disks were once enough to keep him occupied. There seems little danger of running out of work.