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After serving on KeyShot’s board, Søren Abildgaard stepped into a more active leadership role to help guide the company through its next chapter. His approach to scaling? Do less – but do it even better – and stay just close enough to the customer to move in step with their needs.
After serving on KeyShot’s board, Søren Abildgaard stepped into a more active leadership role to help guide the company through its next chapter. His approach to scaling? Do less – but do it even better – and stay just close enough to the customer to move in step with their needs.
When Søren Abildgaard stepped into the CEO role at KeyShot, he wasn’t walking into unfamiliar territory. He served on the company’s board, and when the opportunity arose to take on a more active role, he stepped in. A seasoned product leader with roots in 3D visualization and a long career shaping SaaS businesses, Søren saw KeyShot not as a departure but as a return. A chance to bring everything he’d learned full circle.
“I started in this space,” he says, reflecting on his time at DTU and Autodesk and his early interest in computer graphics and product development. “In a way, I’m back where I began, but now I get to help scale something that’s always mattered to me.”
KeyShot, long known as the leading 3D rendering tool beloved by product designers, is rapidly growing and evolving. Under Søren’s leadership, it’s becoming a platform for visualization and realization. An evolution that expands its impact across the entire product journey, from engineering and design to marketing and manufacturing.
When Søren took on a more active leadership role as CEO, he saw that the company had evolved to a phase common to many growth-stage software businesses: many things happening at once, and not all of them equally well-connected. This phase isn’t about handling dysfunction – it’s about safeguarding against diffusion. “I met with every team member,” he recalls. “I just wanted to understand what people were seeing and hearing.”
His perspective was clear. The company had strong foundations, but it was pulled in many directions. “There are always a hundred things you could do,” he says. “But what are the five you must do? That’s the discipline.”
In a time when many CEOs are pulled between product expansion and organizational overload, Søren chose subtraction. His first job wasn’t to add more. It was to restore focus: strategically, operationally, and culturally. “Scaling doesn’t mean adding complexity. It means clarifying purpose. If everyone knows what matters most, they can make better decisions faster.”
“Scaling doesn’t mean adding more complexity. It means clarifying purpose.”
That discipline has shaped every part of the company’s evolution since – from rethinking product positioning to simplifying internal planning cycles.
And at the heart of that clarity is the customer.
Søren makes it clear that customer understanding isn’t a one-off insight – it’s a system. “You have to build structures that keep you close to the user, and then use that to align the company.” Since joining, he’s pushed the team to connect customer workflows to product priorities, and product clarity to team focus. It’s a loop: better understanding sharpens the roadmap, and a sharper roadmap and communication brings internal alignment.
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The product itself has followed suit. While KeyShot’s legacy is rooted in photorealistic rendering, Søren is clear: that’s just one part of the story. “We’re seeing our customers use KeyShot in ways that go far beyond imagery,” he explains. From product ideation to virtual prototypes, and sales and marketing material, KeyShot is becoming a platform for product design to market.
“What we do is help customers move from concept to reality. That might mean speeding up packaging decisions, or aligning design and marketing earlier in the process. It’s more than visuals. It’s about enabling decision-making.”
KeyShot powers workflows ranging from single designers to some of the world’s largest product and manufacturing companies. At the center of that evolution is a simple principle: stay close to the customer – but not too close. “You have to stay just a little ahead,” Søren says. “If you’re five years ahead, you miss. If you’re behind, you’re irrelevant.”
“If you’re five years ahead, you miss. If you’re behind, you’re irrelevant.”
He applies the same thinking to how the company builds. “You don’t scale by doing everything. You scale by knowing where to play and where to win.” That means making deliberate choices – about partnerships, integrations, and features. It also means knowing when to say no.
KeyShot’s recent investment in AI is a case in point. Rather than chase hype, the team focused on where AI removes friction: generating scene variations, new visual concepts, and full environments through simple prompts. And critically, these tools can run on-prem, preserving the IP-sensitive workflows of industrial customers.
“Everyone is a leader. Not everyone is the CEO. But the goal is to give people enough context, clarity, and trust so they can act like owners.”
This attention to detail reflects Søren’s broader leadership philosophy. “Early in your career, success comes from solving problems yourself. Later, it comes from enabling others.” He believes in distributed leadership. “Everyone is a leader. Not everyone is the CEO. But the goal is to give people enough context, clarity, and trust so they can act like owners.”
As the company grows, Søren is focused on building systems and leaders that can outpace him. “My job,” he says, “is to make sure the organization can grow faster than I can.”
That journey is supported by KeyShot’s partnership with GRO Capital, which Søren describes as both strategic and personal. “They help accelerate growth with infrastructure and best practices,” he says. “Sometimes, they can challenge you, ask questions, hold you accountable. It’s been a true sparring relationship.”
In that sense, scaling KeyShot isn’t just a technical or strategic challenge. It’s a cultural one. And for Søren, the solution starts where his career did: by listening, focusing, and getting closer to the customer.
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