Ole Lensmar

Ole Lensmar is a seasoned technology leader and entrepreneur who has been at the forefront of API development and testing innovation for over two decades. He began building HTTP/XML based APIs in the late 1990s and has since served as CTO at several startups and companies, consistently driving technological advancement in the software development ecosystem.

In 1996, Ole co-founded base8, an XML-oriented consulting company that was acquired by the publicly traded Mogul in 1998. At Mogul, he served as CTO and lead evangelist for their software portfolio, including an XML-based CMS and high-performance search engine, establishing his reputation as a forward-thinking technologist.

Ole's most significant contribution to the developer community came in 2006 when he co-founded Eviware Software and created SoapUI, now one of the world's most widely used open-source testing tools with millions of downloads and active users globally. Following SmartBear's acquisition of Eviware in 2011, Ole continued as a hands-on CTO and architect, playing an integral role in SmartBear's acquisition by Francisco Partners in 2017.

His influence extended beyond individual products when he was instrumental in SmartBear's acquisition of the Swagger ecosystem in 2015. Ole served as chairman of the OpenAPI Initiative from its inception in early 2016 until late 2020, helping establish industry standards for API documentation and development.

After a brief tenure as Product Architect at Ambassador Labs, which further fueled his passion for open-source solutions in the cloud-native space, Ole co-founded Kubeshop in 2021. As CTO of both Kubeshop and Testkube, he continues building next-generation open-source solutions for the cloud-native DevOps and testing ecosystem.

When not developing innovative open-source projects, Ole can be found biking on gravel trails through the Stockholm archipelago.