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If you're chasing the startup dream, here's the part no one

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talks about the crash that can come after the big win.

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Xava Lehmann built AI startup ebot7 into a

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130 person rocket ship and sold a gymnastic

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listed live person. But behind the headlights, he was falling

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apart, grieving, burning out and questioning everything. In

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today's episode, we unpack what really happens after the exit,

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how Xava found meaning again, and what every

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founder needs to hear before scaling the next company.

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Welcome to startup Rad IO,

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your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German

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startup scene with news, interviews and

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live events.

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Today's guest is a rare voice in the startup world, someone who

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has won big and burned out even bigger. Xavier

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Lehmann is the co founder and former CEO of Ebol7. By the way,

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we have an interview with the co founder that we link here. One

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of Europe's fastest growing AI startups, he scaled the company to

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130 employees, partnered with major enterprises

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and exited to live person, a NASDAQ listed leader

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in conversational AI. The company's hybrid AI plus

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human agent model pushed the frontier of NLP

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driven automation. Xava was recognized by Forbes

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30 under 30 Europe and backed by top tier investors.

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But the story didn't end there. After the acquisition, he was

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forced to lay off much of his team. At the same

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time, he lost his mother to cancer. The mental and emotional

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toll nearly broke him and made him question everything about startup

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success. Today he's rebuilding not a company, but

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movement through the honest founder, his fast growing

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substack and his work coaching founders.

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He's turning pain into perspective and lessons into

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leverage. This is a conversation about what happens when the hype

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ends and real life begins. It's raw, it's real and

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urgently needed in today's startup economy. Xava, welcome to

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Startup Radio. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm glad to be here.

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That is really an interesting story and

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I totally think a lot of people will get a lot out of

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that. So let's rewind the tape. What was the

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original spark that led to the founding of

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ebot7? What did you and your co founders believe about the

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world of customer communication that others didn't?

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Yeah, good question. I mean, back then, in the days as I was

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a child, I wanted to be an investment banker actually. And

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so I did an internship in investment banking when I was like 21,

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22. And I quickly realized that, you

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know, it was kind of exciting, it was dynamic. I loved

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capital markets because everything is unpredictable, everything is new

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every day. But Somehow, like, getting to the

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office every day, seeing my bosses, you know, how they

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work, how they live, it kind of, you know,

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kind of made me question if I want to pursue that dream. You know,

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investment banking is something completely different. It's all about numbers. You go

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to the office every day. It is dynamic, but also it's kind

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of, you know, the same every day. And so what I did after

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the internship, I actually studied again because I didn't know exactly what

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to do. So I studied finance and Maastricht in the Netherlands. And there

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I met my, you know, oldest friend, actually, who I've known for like

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15, 16 years. And he coincidentally also

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studied Maastricht. And on the way to Kings Day, we had a

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conversation about what we want to do, you know, at some point because he

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had done internships at Red Bull and Adobe, and I had done some

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internships in M and A and investment banking. And then we thought, to

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be honest, like, I can't imagine in life working for someone.

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I mean, also my parents have been entrepreneurs their whole life,

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and somehow I couldn't really imagine working for someone else above

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me. And he had the same feeling. And then on the way to Kings Day,

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which is kind of the big celebration once a year in the Netherland where they

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celebrate the king, we kind of coincidentally, or like

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we just went, we scrolled through his Facebook feed and saw

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a Facebook developer conference. Really random because we couldn't

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code or something. We just coincidentally saw this. And

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what they actually said in that conference was actually that you could,

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you know, now is the time to actually integrate bots into Facebook

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Messenger. So people could, or actually companies could integrate

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into Facebook messenger and then reach their clients through. Through Facebook or

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WhatsApp. And we found it a really good idea because, you

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know, everyone knows about the bad, you know, customer service

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situations where you stuck in a hotline or wait days for reply for an email.

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And we thought. Did you say yes? No, no, no.

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Yeah. I mean, honestly, like, like everyone had, had. Has

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had like an experience with bad customer service, right? And we just thought,

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like, if customers can actually reach their clients exactly where

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they are, I mean, all of the people are spending time on what.

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On all these social media channels, but companies are not present where they actually,

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you know, spend most of their time. So that was kind of where we thought,

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okay, that might be a good idea actually, to kind of

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go to companies, you know, tell them, hey, we have this new

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technology where you can actually instantly reach your clients through the

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channels they are already using. Instead of opening A new channel or hotline or email.

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And that was kind of the initial spark. And to be honest, like,

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customer service is just really bad. I

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think if you want to change something in departments and companies, it

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would have been customer service. Really manual processes, really

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recurring questions. Always the same waiting days for

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apply for an email getting redirected into the wrong person. I hated

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it. And if we can make something better in that kind

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of field, we are definitely in for that. And so what we did

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is actually we drafted several emails, was like 10 emails, and we

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shoot shot them out to different companies like Domino's Pizza in

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like bigger companies and smaller companies. And we pretended to have

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the technology already and we just said like, hey, we

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have this technology. You can create bots. You can link them

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and connect them to Facebook messenger and WhatsApp, and you can reach your clients.

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And then all of a sudden from these 10 emails, three or four came back

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and said like, hey, that's super interesting. And that was kind of the

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initial spark that led us to founding the company. Honestly, two days

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later. Two days. Well, that's not

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a lot for strategic planning. I have to admit.

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At the time, conversational AI was still emerging. What

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did, like the everyday look back

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then for a powered customer support, it

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was admittedly the time before LLMs and ChatGPT

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was what was broken and how did you fix it? Yeah, I

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mean it was back in 2016, so there was no OpenAI, no

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ChatGPT, no LLMs in this form. So the technology

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was really basic, to be honest. And the thing was customer

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support, I always thought like, you know, they have some automation

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tools already. They must have, like, if you look at O2

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Germany, for example, there's like millions of requests of support

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questions coming in every kind of month. So I thought, of course there

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must have something. But then once we went into like a

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customer support center and looked at how they work, it was

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crazy. They, you know, they manually type the answers they

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have. You know, sometimes they do copy paste, but then they have to go into

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different systems. Then for different questions, they need to go to

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different systems and then they needed to copy paste that answer. And in order

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to make it work for the client, it was a disaster. So once we

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kind of got a feeling of how the current customer support

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works, we knew exactly, that's a big pain point.

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So we can definitely make something work. And so

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the only problem was that AI or the

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things that we wanted to build bots were pretty much at the beginning. So

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the technology was really early, really not working

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well. It Couldn't understand detailed or

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complex requests. The only thing that it could do, or at least our

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system could do, is actually FAQs. So there was one question from,

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from a client and we could deliver the answer. And what we

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built because of that, because it could only like not understand

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any context in a conversation. It could just do like FAQs.

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We kind of build a hybrid solution which means that the

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technology is not, you know, automating the whole time,

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but it's only automating if a specific threshold is actually met.

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So you can set it up yourself. Every company could set it up yourself. You

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could say, for example, the system needs to be 95% sure

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that this is going to be the right, that answer. And only then it automates.

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But if not, then what the system does, it provides a

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suggestion to the agents so the agent can actually say, hey, that's the

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right answer, that's the wrong answer, that this needs to be edited. And

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then the system learns over time through the agent's

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input, which is, which was back in the days a really, you

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know, good system. Because if you work with Deutsche Bahn or BMW

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or something, the big brands, they didn't want any wrong answer

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sending out to clients, right? And so with our

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system, they could go live instantly. And through the

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input of the support agents, the system kind of trained itself automatically,

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which was kind of quite new at the time. And I think that was also

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one of the reasons we were. Reasons we were successful.

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Interesting. What

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was your, like, one day moment, the

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turning point where you knew this

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startup was going to scale really fast? I

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think there wasn't a specific one moment

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where I knew exactly now it's going to be, you know, scaling. It was

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more like, I mean, we were just working day and night. We kind of tried

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to make it work. And, you know, I think

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if you are stuck in a moment, if you're working day and night, you don't

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look left or right. You don't even know what's happening. You don't even know like,

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that it's actually going in the right direction, you know,

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back. If you look at it from like two years

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after that and you look back, then you think, okay, crazy what I

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kind of achieved. But if you're in the moment, if you're working day

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and night for months, for years, you don't even realize if there was a

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specific moment or something. But if you want to pin me down on like a

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specific moment, it would definitely be, I think, like the Series A. Like once

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we kind of got the Series A We got 6.5 million in US

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dollar funding. That was the moment where I thought, okay, now we're going to

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have and we can spend a lot of money and hire a lot of people.

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You know, that was the time where I could relax a little bit and, you

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know, kind of go on holiday also for the first time. So I think

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that was kind of the moment where I thought, okay, this is going to be

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scaling fast now because we can hire a lot of people, we can get a

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lot of clients. So probably in

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2019 then three years after we founded the company. I was

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actually, when I was looking at this question, I was going

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for a picture when you standing there in front

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of an Excel sheet, seeing all the data and

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realizing, I need a new scale because it's going so well.

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Yeah, I mean, honestly, like over the whole

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years, over the five years, it, it went pretty well. So we had

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really good growth rates in the beginning, 200% and then it went back to

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150 and 100% because the, you know, the threshold is

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higher. But I mean, it was also,

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you know, planned in the business plan. So like if investors expect

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something and we expect something from our, like, even

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if you get a new client and get like 500k in AR, you

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kind of expected it to happen. Right. And this is also kind of the,

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the bad thing about it because you need to celebrate more and you need to,

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you know, once you get a new client, you know, you need to really like

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do a big party. And I don't know, but we didn't do that. We just

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expected it to come and we just, once the contract came

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in, we just, you know, woke up the next day and worked again

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like nothing happened before. So

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it's. Yeah, that's the thing. I think in hindsight I would

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have done it a little bit, you know, different, like

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celebrate the small wins even more and do a little party

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or like, you know, do something with the team. But we're just like focused on

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making this work and making it successful. So any new deal

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wasn't, you know, moving the needle for us in the

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sense of now it's actually getting super successful.

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Let us talk a little bit about the struggle behind the growth

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scaling from 130 employees across five countries.

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There's really no joke. What were your toughest operational

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or leadership challenges as the team grew? Like

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30, then 60, then 100. Yeah,

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it's a good question because of course it changes over the time. Right.

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So I think once you hit like 20 or 30 employees, it's still

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super cool. It's really startup vibey. You have.

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Have a couple of people that help you in some directions in some ways,

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but it's more about creation, right? So you're really like,

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you know, you build something new, you break something, and you just try it

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all over again. Once you hit, like, I would say 50,

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60 people, it changes a little bit because that's the time

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when you need to delegate, right? You need, you know, to hire people.

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You know, in my case, I was actually hiring a CFO

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that takes over the. Or took over the whole financial and accounting

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processes. And so that's where it changes a

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little bit. It was still fun, but it was completely different because you

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delegated a lot and it wasn't more.

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Much more creative anymore. But once you hit 100

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people, like 110, 120, the whole game

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changes completely because you're kind of, you're maintaining, you're

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managing. You have all these people kind of below you.

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You're just doing recurring meetings. You have these, you know,

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like, kind of weekly calls. That's where it kind of.

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It was still fun, but it was completely different than when I

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created the company in the first place. So it was kind of a

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development, not in the, in the

239
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best way for me because I thought like, you know, I'm not the perfect

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manager. I'm a startup founder. I want to be creative. I want to, you know,

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break things. And once you hit 100 people, you can't

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break things anymore at that level. And you can't be so creative anymore because you

243
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put everything in the hands of your people. But what you get is the

244
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worst problems on earth. Like if your team

245
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can't handle a specific problem, then it lands at your desk.

246
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And it's most likely the worst problems, like the biggest

247
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customer threatens to leave, or the best employees

248
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threatens to leave, or like big salary

249
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negotiations or like, you know, you just

250
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handle and solve big pain points, big problems,

251
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which you need to like. I didn't like it as much as

252
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like building the company from the ground up, to be honest.

253
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I actually know how you feel. It's when you get from a founder to

254
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manager, right? Exactly. Yeah. That's

255
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a big transition, to be honest. And I haven't. Hadn't

256
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planned really with that transition because I've never done it before.

257
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But it's a completely different life, completely different, you know,

258
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kind of working environment. And you also need different kind of people.

259
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Right in the beginning you need like, people that are trying things out, being

260
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creative and stuff like that, and break things and at some point you need kind

261
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of managers, you need people that have, you know, done it before, have done

262
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it perhaps like for the last 10 years, 15 years already. You need experience, you

263
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need skills. It's not only about so much

264
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mindset or attitude anymore. It's more about skills and experience. And that

265
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changes a lot. I think personal opinion, before we get into the next

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question, I do believe entrepreneur is part of your

267
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personality. That's what you enjoy. But if you turn into

268
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a manager, then personal feeling, it's

269
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best if you have seen this. If you worked in a corporate environment, if

270
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you've done some jobs there, then the transition can go

271
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smooth. You've raised venture

272
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capital, signed enterprise customers, and scale tech

273
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across borders. What was the first big

274
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pivot you had to make and what did it

275
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teach you about your assumptions in product market

276
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fit? So when we founded a company, we

277
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didn't know exactly if we wanted to actually build a product around it. So

278
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what we set up the company for was actually an agency kind of

279
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system. So we just wanted to be the middleman in

280
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between companies that wanted to connect and

281
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build bots or integrate bots and developers who could actually build

282
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bots. So we just wanted to pay, you know, get a commission and, you know,

283
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to connect them, and then we're out of the game. But then at some point

284
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we thought like, okay, we actually need to kind of create our own

285
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product, because AI is much more difficult to scale

286
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and much more difficult to build. It's not like a setup system where

287
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you can, like a website. You build a website for three weeks, it's finished, you

288
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hand it over to a client and then it's done. With AI, with chatbots, it

289
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was more like a continuous process which you needed to optimize.

290
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You know, every time something broke, every time some, some wrong

291
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answer got out and stuff like that. So the agency problem or

292
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the agency company kind of concept didn't really work. So what we did,

293
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because we didn't have a developer yet, we didn't have a CTO yet, we

294
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kind of transformed it into a consulting company where we did

295
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monthly workshops in different cities across Europe

296
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just to get insights on how customer support actually works. So they

297
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paid for their tickets to spend a day with us talking about AI.

298
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And for us, it was really valuable because we could get their feedback in

299
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order to build a product that's actually worthwhile. So in the

300
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meantime, we hired a CTO who was then also one of our co

301
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founders, and we kind of built a product. So from that point in

302
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time, it was Clear. We wanted to build something in customer support,

303
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but we also had some shift sometimes. You know, at some point, we wanted

304
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to build something in E commerce because we thought it's a better, you know,

305
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kind of vertical. We didn't want to spend too much time in customer support

306
00:19:02.410 --> 00:19:06.090
centers. But, like, at the end of the day, we knew

307
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customer support is the biggest pain point, so we actually went for customer support at

308
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the end. But it taught me that, you know, when you start a

309
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company, it's not only about the first idea that's going to

310
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be successful. You will change it a lot of times, and probably you have

311
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to change it over time because you get more knowledge, you get more, you know,

312
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people that actually test your product, and you will kind

313
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of change it in different directions more than you think

314
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and more than you want to. But it's a good process. It's. It's good actually

315
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for the company. I think if you turn around a little bit and, like, adjust

316
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it on different ends. So for me, it taught me, like,

317
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you know, it's actually good to pivot. I think you should

318
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pivot if you feel like it's. It's worthwhile and gives you

319
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a better direction. And we've done it a couple of times and was really successful.

320
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Successful at the end.

321
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I was. I was wondering, when you

322
00:20:02.090 --> 00:20:05.250
scale that rapidly, if you promise that to investors,

323
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you get some. You get some pressure to scale

324
00:20:09.170 --> 00:20:13.010
rapidly. The faster, the better. How did

325
00:20:13.010 --> 00:20:16.050
this affect you personally as founder and human being?

326
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Was there something like a moment where you felt the

327
00:20:20.650 --> 00:20:24.450
warning signs of a burnout creeping in? I

328
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mean, so the thing is, the first three years we've

329
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worked day and night, to be honest, like, every day, every weekend,

330
00:20:31.730 --> 00:20:35.210
every birthday, you know, every kind of family event.

331
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So we didn't have one time off. But then at some point, after three years,

332
00:20:39.130 --> 00:20:42.890
you know, my body was pretty, pretty bad. So, like,

333
00:20:42.890 --> 00:20:45.930
my kind of. My parents forced me to go on holiday,

334
00:20:46.700 --> 00:20:49.820
and that was the first sign where I thought, okay,

335
00:20:51.020 --> 00:20:54.620
because on holiday I didn't recover. And that is always

336
00:20:54.620 --> 00:20:58.340
a bad sign. Once you go on holiday and you feel like it's actually

337
00:20:58.340 --> 00:21:02.020
getting worse than better, that was kind of the first sign that I needed to

338
00:21:02.020 --> 00:21:05.780
change something. So once I came back, I felt a little bit better. But

339
00:21:05.780 --> 00:21:09.260
I thought. I talked to my co founders and said, hey, I can't do that

340
00:21:09.260 --> 00:21:11.820
anymore. Let's, you know, try to,

341
00:21:13.360 --> 00:21:17.080
you know, break, like, do the weekends off. I can't do it on Saturday, on

342
00:21:17.080 --> 00:21:20.840
Sunday, every week. You know, let's also put in some holidays. For

343
00:21:20.840 --> 00:21:24.000
the next couple of months. And that was the first kind of

344
00:21:24.320 --> 00:21:27.999
change that I did in the company. And

345
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then we kept on working. We did some holidays, we did some take, you

346
00:21:31.800 --> 00:21:34.560
know, some time off on the weekends and was much better.

347
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And then it kind of hit me when we were

348
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actually doing our CSB. So we wanted to raise capital

349
00:21:42.850 --> 00:21:46.530
around US$30 million. And we had done a fundraising

350
00:21:46.530 --> 00:21:50.250
process for a couple of months already. And at the end, we found an investor

351
00:21:50.250 --> 00:21:54.089
who wanted to invest 30 million from the US but then at the same

352
00:21:54.089 --> 00:21:57.930
time, an offer from Life Person, the company that had

353
00:21:57.930 --> 00:22:01.650
bought us at the end, came in. And so we had to decide

354
00:22:01.810 --> 00:22:05.370
what to do now, right? And, you know, at the end of the day, we

355
00:22:05.370 --> 00:22:08.940
had a gut feeling that kind of selling the company was actually a much

356
00:22:08.940 --> 00:22:12.740
better decision than staying and getting that funding in.

357
00:22:14.820 --> 00:22:18.220
And so for a couple of months, we were super

358
00:22:18.220 --> 00:22:21.220
uncertain what to do. And at the end of the day, we kind of

359
00:22:21.460 --> 00:22:25.220
declined the investor. And the investor was gone then, of course, because the

360
00:22:25.220 --> 00:22:28.500
investor didn't want to wait for weeks and months until we decide.

361
00:22:28.980 --> 00:22:32.820
So this investor, who we found after a couple of months was gone.

362
00:22:33.370 --> 00:22:37.170
And so we put everything at stake to make that M and A

363
00:22:37.170 --> 00:22:40.730
happen, to actually sell the company. But of course, we needed money.

364
00:22:40.730 --> 00:22:43.930
That's why we wanted to fundraise in the first place. So it took longer.

365
00:22:44.330 --> 00:22:48.050
And the problem was that we needed extra funding in order to make that M

366
00:22:48.050 --> 00:22:51.810
and A process happen, right? So it was a really uncertain kind

367
00:22:51.810 --> 00:22:55.570
of time because we also needed to come to our old investor and

368
00:22:55.570 --> 00:22:59.050
say, hey, we want to sell the company. But our investors said, like, why do

369
00:22:59.050 --> 00:23:01.970
we actually want to sell the company? So we had kind of an internal conflict.

370
00:23:01.970 --> 00:23:05.810
Our investors wanted to keep moving. We wanted to sell a company. And so

371
00:23:05.810 --> 00:23:09.410
our investors didn't want to really, like, you know, support us, help us in, like,

372
00:23:09.410 --> 00:23:13.170
selling the company. And so it was a little bit of a struggle, but at

373
00:23:13.170 --> 00:23:16.810
the end of the day, they, you know, pushed in some money so we could

374
00:23:16.810 --> 00:23:19.530
actually do the M A. But

375
00:23:20.090 --> 00:23:23.610
honestly, every day we felt like the

376
00:23:23.610 --> 00:23:27.250
acquirer, the potential requirer, he could always, you

377
00:23:27.250 --> 00:23:30.330
know, go, you know, retract from. From kind of

378
00:23:30.810 --> 00:23:34.610
buying us and like, you know, we would have been bankrupt within

379
00:23:34.610 --> 00:23:38.270
a couple of if, if. If they had done it. So having

380
00:23:38.270 --> 00:23:41.750
this uncertainty for months, and then in parallel, my mother

381
00:23:41.830 --> 00:23:45.110
got sick and got worse and worse by the week, and I had to kind

382
00:23:45.110 --> 00:23:48.870
of, you know, kind of take care of her too. And all of this

383
00:23:48.870 --> 00:23:52.630
happened in kind of the same months. And weeks in the same

384
00:23:52.630 --> 00:23:56.430
time. And then my mother died. And like, you know, there

385
00:23:56.430 --> 00:24:00.070
was some time where kind of the life person actually

386
00:24:00.070 --> 00:24:03.390
wanted to get out of the deal and then they went in again. So it

387
00:24:03.390 --> 00:24:06.670
was, was always a back and forth and we almost lost the whole company

388
00:24:07.310 --> 00:24:11.070
having to fire 130 employees at the end of the

389
00:24:11.070 --> 00:24:14.870
day. We were lucky and, and it happened. We actually reached the point where

390
00:24:14.870 --> 00:24:18.590
we went to the notary, but I was completely burned out. Like I was

391
00:24:18.590 --> 00:24:22.270
completely done after, you know, six, seven, eight

392
00:24:22.270 --> 00:24:26.110
months of, you know, fundraising and a process taking care of my mother.

393
00:24:26.670 --> 00:24:30.270
And so after that, after we sold the company, I was just

394
00:24:30.270 --> 00:24:34.030
completely, you know, destroyed. I couldn't like sleep

395
00:24:34.030 --> 00:24:37.750
anymore, I couldn't work anymore, I couldn't read

396
00:24:37.750 --> 00:24:40.230
any books anymore. I was completely destroyed. And

397
00:24:41.430 --> 00:24:44.830
it took ages until I got better. So that was kind of the

398
00:24:44.830 --> 00:24:48.550
burnout, you know, situation. It took me a couple of months to actually feel

399
00:24:48.550 --> 00:24:51.670
better and be able to work in and to work again.

400
00:24:54.390 --> 00:24:57.750
What no one saw was that during the four year of our

401
00:24:57.750 --> 00:25:01.600
acquisition, I was also watching my mother die. That's

402
00:25:01.600 --> 00:25:05.200
not a headline, but that's a real story. You actually wrote very

403
00:25:05.200 --> 00:25:08.640
powerful about losing your mother during the exit and hitting burnout post

404
00:25:08.640 --> 00:25:12.480
acquisition for board members. You'll take us behind the scenes.

405
00:25:12.720 --> 00:25:16.160
What you hid publicly and how did that

406
00:25:16.240 --> 00:25:18.160
disconnect shape your recovery?

407
00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:23.680
I actually know the feeling. It's kind of like all

408
00:25:23.680 --> 00:25:27.400
your energy get drained out when you see somebody getting worse and worse and worse.

409
00:25:27.400 --> 00:25:31.220
Right? Yeah, exactly. It was horrible. To be

410
00:25:31.220 --> 00:25:34.580
honest, it was the worst time in my life because it was almost like

411
00:25:35.060 --> 00:25:38.780
losing like not only my mother, but also the company that

412
00:25:38.780 --> 00:25:41.780
I've been building up for five years. It was also kind of my baby that

413
00:25:41.780 --> 00:25:45.460
I sold. Like it was just horrible, the whole process

414
00:25:45.460 --> 00:25:49.220
and also having this uncertainty around my mother, but also around the company

415
00:25:49.220 --> 00:25:52.780
that it might not happen. And at some point, you know, it felt like it

416
00:25:52.780 --> 00:25:56.490
didn't happen and like they we kind of needed to kind of

417
00:25:56.490 --> 00:25:59.530
decline the deal at some point. But then they came back after a week, but

418
00:25:59.530 --> 00:26:03.250
we didn't know that. So it was an, you know, honestly it

419
00:26:03.250 --> 00:26:07.050
was back and forth, but we were pretty open like with how we

420
00:26:07.050 --> 00:26:10.530
were feeling. I was super open with my co founders, how I'm feeling, how,

421
00:26:10.770 --> 00:26:14.490
you know, the thing is I couldn't really take a time off when my

422
00:26:14.490 --> 00:26:18.290
mother died. So I jumped straight into lawyers calls and

423
00:26:18.290 --> 00:26:22.010
stuff like that. So it wasn't like I could, could some could do some

424
00:26:22.010 --> 00:26:25.250
time off or like I could Recover a little bit. It was in the midst

425
00:26:25.250 --> 00:26:28.530
of. And the M and A process. I couldn't just, like, leave for two or

426
00:26:28.530 --> 00:26:32.170
three weeks. It was crazy. And I'm pretty

427
00:26:32.170 --> 00:26:35.930
open about it because I think that's part of who, you know,

428
00:26:35.930 --> 00:26:39.650
who. Who I am and, like, part of the entrepreneurial journey. Right.

429
00:26:39.890 --> 00:26:43.690
It's not only about the highs and the best things that happen and the good

430
00:26:43.690 --> 00:26:47.010
things and, you know, it's also about the bad things that can happen. And,

431
00:26:47.470 --> 00:26:51.110
like, for me, it's also kind of a relief to talk

432
00:26:51.110 --> 00:26:54.910
about it. The more you talk about it, the more you write it down.

433
00:26:54.910 --> 00:26:58.590
That's why I also started the newsletter. The more,

434
00:26:58.670 --> 00:27:02.190
you know, kind of I can also hear from it. So

435
00:27:02.190 --> 00:27:05.870
I'm. That's why I'm pretty open with it. I'm super happy to talk about

436
00:27:05.870 --> 00:27:09.150
it, and I've been that, you know,

437
00:27:09.550 --> 00:27:12.430
so open from the beginning on, and I think it's a good thing.

438
00:27:15.420 --> 00:27:18.700
Next question would actually be to ask you how you felt

439
00:27:19.340 --> 00:27:22.300
after the exit. But I think we already talked about it.

440
00:27:23.180 --> 00:27:26.860
You've once said that the burnout didn't start after the exit.

441
00:27:26.860 --> 00:27:30.540
It started long before. What were signs you

442
00:27:30.540 --> 00:27:34.220
ignored? What can you give others, other founders,

443
00:27:34.220 --> 00:27:37.820
as a warning system? And what should founders watch for

444
00:27:37.820 --> 00:27:41.350
before it's already too late? Yeah, it's a very good question.

445
00:27:41.510 --> 00:27:45.350
And I've been thinking about this a lot, and my

446
00:27:45.350 --> 00:27:49.110
essence, or my kind of resume is actually that it's not about

447
00:27:49.670 --> 00:27:53.270
the hard and long hours that you work it. That's.

448
00:27:53.430 --> 00:27:56.630
That's not the reason why I got burnout. Burnout you get

449
00:27:57.110 --> 00:28:00.750
once you do something for a long period of time, which you actually

450
00:28:00.750 --> 00:28:04.590
don't like to do. Right. Which is completely against your will, against

451
00:28:04.590 --> 00:28:07.570
your values, against everything you actually stand for.

452
00:28:08.130 --> 00:28:11.770
So for me, that was the M and A process. So that's where it actually

453
00:28:11.770 --> 00:28:15.530
started. I had some burnout symptoms before, too, but

454
00:28:15.530 --> 00:28:19.130
I always could actually recover by making holidays, by, you

455
00:28:19.130 --> 00:28:22.930
know, you know, kind of doing sport and meeting friends and stuff like that.

456
00:28:23.090 --> 00:28:26.770
I was never, you know, kind of, you know, in that

457
00:28:26.770 --> 00:28:30.570
kind of feeling that, oh, I might get burnout now and I need to really

458
00:28:30.570 --> 00:28:34.330
stop. It was actually only when, you know,

459
00:28:34.330 --> 00:28:38.090
the whole fundraising process turned into an M and

460
00:28:38.090 --> 00:28:41.810
A process. My mother on, you know, in parallel. That's

461
00:28:41.810 --> 00:28:44.770
where, you know, the burnout signs actually started. And,

462
00:28:45.490 --> 00:28:48.210
you know, this. The signs are like, you know,

463
00:28:49.090 --> 00:28:52.770
for me, it was like doing something of a month. Like,

464
00:28:52.770 --> 00:28:56.450
anyone who has done a fundraising round knows what I'm

465
00:28:56.450 --> 00:29:00.220
talking about. It's not nice. Like you're talking to a hundred

466
00:29:00.540 --> 00:29:04.060
investors, you always asked or you know,

467
00:29:04.140 --> 00:29:07.820
reply to the same questions. It's always about negative things. Why you.

468
00:29:07.980 --> 00:29:11.780
And look at this competition. And you know, then it's about term sheets and

469
00:29:11.780 --> 00:29:15.540
contracts and it's always about negative things. And also during the M and A

470
00:29:15.540 --> 00:29:19.380
process, it's always about, you know, how can the buyer protect itself from,

471
00:29:19.380 --> 00:29:22.700
like if something happens, how can we protect ourselves? And something bad

472
00:29:22.700 --> 00:29:26.440
happens. You know, it's always about, you know, protection, about

473
00:29:26.440 --> 00:29:30.000
bad things that could happen, about worst case scenarios. So that's,

474
00:29:30.320 --> 00:29:34.080
and if you do that over like nine months or so and

475
00:29:34.080 --> 00:29:37.800
you don't, you're not creative, you're not working on your startup, you're just

476
00:29:37.800 --> 00:29:41.560
purely in these processes, talking to lawyers the whole time, talking to investors

477
00:29:41.560 --> 00:29:45.200
the whole time, you get, you know, really drained from these

478
00:29:45.200 --> 00:29:48.880
conversations and from these processes. So at some point, you

479
00:29:48.880 --> 00:29:52.520
know, I just thought, like, I'm, I'm just a machine. Like I'm, I'm,

480
00:29:52.520 --> 00:29:55.710
I don't live anymore. I just, I'm just running these

481
00:29:55.710 --> 00:29:59.110
processes. On, on the other hand, I had to take care with my mother.

482
00:29:59.510 --> 00:30:03.070
It was horrible. Like it's, you know, and, and the

483
00:30:03.070 --> 00:30:06.390
signs are like, you feel like a machine. You don't recover anymore. You,

484
00:30:06.630 --> 00:30:09.750
you're super drained. You wake up and you have this like

485
00:30:10.070 --> 00:30:13.870
clouds in front of your eyes and you can, you, you can't

486
00:30:13.870 --> 00:30:16.950
breathe. And I had heart problems during that time. I had,

487
00:30:17.670 --> 00:30:21.150
you know, like headaches all the time, but really strong

488
00:30:21.150 --> 00:30:24.810
headaches, which I've never had before. And I had them for months, like

489
00:30:24.810 --> 00:30:28.530
every day for months. So that was pretty, pretty bad. And

490
00:30:28.610 --> 00:30:32.410
so that was the time where I thought, okay, this is definitely going

491
00:30:32.410 --> 00:30:35.730
in the wrong direction. But I couldn't stop. I couldn't just leave the process and

492
00:30:35.730 --> 00:30:39.530
leave everyone behind. I was too much driven. I

493
00:30:39.530 --> 00:30:42.850
wanted to actually then, you know, make it successful and sell the company at some

494
00:30:42.850 --> 00:30:46.530
point. So I couldn't stop, even though I

495
00:30:47.410 --> 00:30:51.010
needed to. But

496
00:30:51.090 --> 00:30:54.770
going a little bit down the road, you once stepped

497
00:30:54.770 --> 00:30:58.130
away from the second company that he founded.

498
00:30:58.450 --> 00:31:01.810
What was your first real step toward

499
00:31:01.890 --> 00:31:05.570
healing and clarity and what began to

500
00:31:05.570 --> 00:31:09.170
change? Yeah, so after the first company, after I

501
00:31:09.170 --> 00:31:12.610
sold it, we were in that company for another two years because of

502
00:31:12.610 --> 00:31:16.210
Arnold and because, you know, they of course wanted to stay. Even though we were

503
00:31:16.210 --> 00:31:19.980
pretty bad in terms of energy levels, we kind

504
00:31:19.980 --> 00:31:23.540
of kept on being in the company. And after two years we felt actually a

505
00:31:23.540 --> 00:31:27.380
lot better. And we thought, what about now? You know, what can we do now.

506
00:31:27.460 --> 00:31:31.220
And we thought like, perhaps we feel better

507
00:31:31.220 --> 00:31:34.740
by, you know, founding the next company just because

508
00:31:35.060 --> 00:31:38.660
we wanted to go somewhere. Like, you know, perhaps that's kind of a way

509
00:31:38.660 --> 00:31:42.420
to heal ourselves. And we kind of were a lot better already

510
00:31:42.810 --> 00:31:46.290
after two years. So we founded the next company which was called

511
00:31:46.290 --> 00:31:49.930
Vidlab 7. And the thing was, we did exactly the same.

512
00:31:49.930 --> 00:31:53.730
We hired people, we built up the product, we got investors

513
00:31:53.730 --> 00:31:57.530
on board like eqt, so really strong company

514
00:31:57.530 --> 00:32:01.130
again. And we did everything from scratch again, kind of similar

515
00:32:01.130 --> 00:32:04.850
playbook than we had in the first company. But then, you

516
00:32:04.850 --> 00:32:08.650
know, during that time my body just really kind of

517
00:32:09.490 --> 00:32:13.290
told me to stop. Like I had headaches again, I had burnout symptoms

518
00:32:13.290 --> 00:32:17.090
again. I was really in a horrible place at some point. And after

519
00:32:17.090 --> 00:32:20.690
round about a year, I just needed to leave. I gave everything

520
00:32:20.690 --> 00:32:24.130
back and I just needed to drop out and do something

521
00:32:24.130 --> 00:32:27.730
completely different because my brain, my, my, my body,

522
00:32:27.810 --> 00:32:31.490
my, my mind was just telling me to stop and not do this any

523
00:32:31.490 --> 00:32:35.090
day further. So it was a tough decision. I talked to my co

524
00:32:35.090 --> 00:32:38.530
founder, I talked to my investors and, and it was really hard to actually make

525
00:32:38.530 --> 00:32:42.090
that decision. But at some point, you know, I just couldn't do it anymore. And

526
00:32:42.090 --> 00:32:45.930
it was the best decision that I've ever taken, to be honest. And

527
00:32:46.410 --> 00:32:50.010
then I went to Africa. I spent a couple of months in

528
00:32:50.010 --> 00:32:53.850
Africa doing social work. So I'm. I support

529
00:32:54.250 --> 00:32:58.010
an organization called Amos where we support animals

530
00:32:58.010 --> 00:33:01.570
in the field and we build fences and so to protect them from

531
00:33:01.570 --> 00:33:05.410
poaching. And then there's other social projects in Cape Town that I support.

532
00:33:06.050 --> 00:33:09.890
So we visited some kindergartens and disability homes which I

533
00:33:09.890 --> 00:33:13.650
support now. So that kind of, you know,

534
00:33:13.890 --> 00:33:17.690
was an eye opener for me because I've, you know, I

535
00:33:17.690 --> 00:33:21.370
was just all of a sudden with people that have nothing, but they were

536
00:33:21.370 --> 00:33:24.610
super happy. And I always thought like, you know, being

537
00:33:24.610 --> 00:33:28.210
successful, having money, being wealthy is like the way to go

538
00:33:28.210 --> 00:33:31.740
and be, you know, to be happy. But then I thought, saw all these

539
00:33:32.620 --> 00:33:36.220
people that had literally nothing. They were living in a shed, like in,

540
00:33:36.300 --> 00:33:40.140
you know, like, like, you know, a tree house or something. Like it

541
00:33:40.140 --> 00:33:43.420
was crazy. And they were super happy, super friendly, super open.

542
00:33:43.820 --> 00:33:47.580
And so that's where kind of my mindset shifted. So I came back from

543
00:33:47.580 --> 00:33:50.700
Africa and then I thought, okay, what could I actually do to

544
00:33:51.340 --> 00:33:55.140
help also people, right? Like not only do something for myself, but also

545
00:33:55.140 --> 00:33:58.320
do something to contribute to the society, to help Hope,

546
00:33:58.720 --> 00:34:02.440
you know, someone actually built something because I have done it

547
00:34:02.440 --> 00:34:06.000
over 10 years. I know how to build A company. I know how to get

548
00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:09.520
investors. And that's where kind of I thought, okay, how about I write a book?

549
00:34:09.760 --> 00:34:13.480
That was kind of my initial idea, but writing a book takes you like one

550
00:34:13.480 --> 00:34:16.480
and a half or two years, and you need to really be motivated to sit

551
00:34:16.480 --> 00:34:20.080
down every day and write a book. You know, 300, 400

552
00:34:20.080 --> 00:34:23.880
pages, even more. And I thought, like, how about, you know, just

553
00:34:23.880 --> 00:34:27.640
sharing quick and small stories every week? Because through that I can

554
00:34:27.640 --> 00:34:31.470
reach more people earlier, but also I can get feedback on

555
00:34:31.470 --> 00:34:35.270
the stories really early, and then at the end, I can actually write

556
00:34:35.270 --> 00:34:39.110
a book about it. Right. And so that's how I started Substack and from

557
00:34:39.110 --> 00:34:42.510
Substack, which is a newsletter where I reach a lot of founders and

558
00:34:42.510 --> 00:34:46.190
CEOs, kind of coaching evolved. So

559
00:34:46.190 --> 00:34:49.710
people would ask me, like, hey, you've done it already a couple of times. You've

560
00:34:49.710 --> 00:34:53.510
scaled companies. You sold your company for 60 million. Could you actually help

561
00:34:53.510 --> 00:34:56.630
me in the M and A process? Could you help me in fundraising? Could you

562
00:34:56.630 --> 00:34:59.990
help me in go to market? So that's when I started to actually consult companies

563
00:34:59.990 --> 00:35:03.700
and then consult founders and actually, you know, making these

564
00:35:03.780 --> 00:35:07.380
transitions or these challenges happen. And from

565
00:35:07.380 --> 00:35:11.100
that, I thought it's nice to help people one on

566
00:35:11.100 --> 00:35:14.900
one. But how about I create products that can actually help a thousand or

567
00:35:14.900 --> 00:35:18.740
million people straight away? So now what I'm doing is actually building

568
00:35:19.140 --> 00:35:22.580
products like frameworks and digital courses, like a

569
00:35:22.580 --> 00:35:26.220
fundraising course to actually help people at scale. And that's what

570
00:35:26.220 --> 00:35:29.800
I'm currently doing. And I'm super happy by, you know, doing that. And

571
00:35:29.800 --> 00:35:33.320
it's been a relief. And, you know, like,

572
00:35:33.480 --> 00:35:37.080
I just want to don't go back anymore into like building a B2B

573
00:35:37.080 --> 00:35:39.960
AI company. It's just not anymore for me.

574
00:35:41.640 --> 00:35:45.480
Many founders talk about reflection, but few were

575
00:35:45.480 --> 00:35:49.160
built as publicly as you did. Why did you choose

576
00:35:49.160 --> 00:35:52.680
to create the actually a newsletter?

577
00:35:53.000 --> 00:35:56.570
And did it help help your own recovery?

578
00:35:57.930 --> 00:36:01.170
Yeah, I mean, it links to the things a little bit that I said, like,

579
00:36:01.170 --> 00:36:04.650
I mean, of course, like, my goal was actually to write a book

580
00:36:04.650 --> 00:36:08.490
because you could put down your thoughts and you can think about

581
00:36:08.490 --> 00:36:11.930
them a couple of weeks and months and you can write down your story and.

582
00:36:12.090 --> 00:36:15.450
But the problem is with a book, you take ages until you write a book,

583
00:36:15.450 --> 00:36:18.890
and it doesn't really like you. You could create.

584
00:36:19.050 --> 00:36:22.450
You create value at the end once you kind of publish the book, but you

585
00:36:22.450 --> 00:36:25.710
can't create value during the process.

586
00:36:26.670 --> 00:36:30.470
So. And all of a sudden substack came up. I think a

587
00:36:30.470 --> 00:36:34.190
friend of mine told me, and I Looked at Substack and what's good about Substack

588
00:36:34.190 --> 00:36:37.790
or in general newsletters is actually that you can just share

589
00:36:37.790 --> 00:36:41.550
tiny stories every week and reach a lot of people. And

590
00:36:41.550 --> 00:36:45.230
that in connection with my LinkedIn where I had already like 15, 000

591
00:36:45.310 --> 00:36:48.910
followers, I could, you know, kind of link all of these

592
00:36:48.910 --> 00:36:52.600
together to actually get a lot of following and then, you know, help a lot

593
00:36:52.600 --> 00:36:56.120
of people through that. So I didn't need to start at zero. I started at

594
00:36:56.120 --> 00:36:59.880
already, you know, quite a, quite a good following. So I just needed

595
00:36:59.880 --> 00:37:03.440
to kind of, you know, tell everyone that I'm

596
00:37:03.440 --> 00:37:07.280
actually, you know, helping them through a newsletter and at the end then

597
00:37:07.280 --> 00:37:10.560
through coaching. And that's why I started all of this. Yeah,

598
00:37:12.080 --> 00:37:15.440
I see that actually. Very interesting choice.

599
00:37:16.720 --> 00:37:20.300
I was wondering for our audience, what was this one success

600
00:37:20.540 --> 00:37:24.300
moment that nearly broke you? Feel free to share it with us

601
00:37:24.300 --> 00:37:27.940
and tag us on X or LinkedIn. Guys,

602
00:37:27.940 --> 00:37:31.380
we will be back after short ad break where Xava

603
00:37:31.380 --> 00:37:35.180
reveals the playbook shift that made him a better coach,

604
00:37:35.180 --> 00:37:36.780
better founder, and a better human.

605
00:37:42.140 --> 00:37:45.660
Hey guys, welcome to our

606
00:37:46.310 --> 00:37:49.350
part of the interview with Xavier Lehman. The

607
00:37:49.910 --> 00:37:53.550
co founder of Ebol7 talked about his

608
00:37:53.550 --> 00:37:57.270
experience with Exit Burnout and a lot of other private stuff.

609
00:37:57.590 --> 00:38:01.270
We are now talking about frameworks, coaching and clarity.

610
00:38:01.910 --> 00:38:05.670
After stepping back, what changed in how

611
00:38:05.910 --> 00:38:09.510
you think about success, team leadership and productivity?

612
00:38:10.230 --> 00:38:13.950
Are there some frameworks that now guide you coaching sessions with

613
00:38:13.950 --> 00:38:17.490
founders? I mean, what

614
00:38:17.490 --> 00:38:20.770
changed was actually I always thought success is about

615
00:38:20.850 --> 00:38:24.450
wealth, is about like, you know, being on stage

616
00:38:24.450 --> 00:38:28.290
and in Forbes 30 under 30 and staying in luxury hotels and having

617
00:38:28.290 --> 00:38:31.970
sporty cars and stuff like that. But actually, like, you know,

618
00:38:31.970 --> 00:38:35.250
my kind of definition of success completely changed

619
00:38:35.410 --> 00:38:39.130
throughout the last years and especially throughout the last couple of months when

620
00:38:39.130 --> 00:38:42.870
I spend a lot of time in Africa. So I think it's much more valuable.

621
00:38:42.870 --> 00:38:46.430
I mean, of course I have, I've had the success and I've, you know, I

622
00:38:46.430 --> 00:38:50.270
think for me it was important to have had success already. So

623
00:38:50.270 --> 00:38:54.030
I know it's actually not the solution. Right. I think what's

624
00:38:54.030 --> 00:38:57.350
more important and what I learned is actually spending a lot of time with your

625
00:38:57.350 --> 00:39:00.830
family, with your friends, you know, doing the things you love, being free,

626
00:39:01.230 --> 00:39:04.950
you know, just waking up and, you know, working on something fulfilling

627
00:39:04.950 --> 00:39:07.790
and, and it doesn't need to be a big startup, it doesn't need to be

628
00:39:07.790 --> 00:39:11.590
a unicorn. It can be anything. Right? And so this is kind

629
00:39:11.590 --> 00:39:15.070
of what changed for me in terms of success. And I'm using

630
00:39:15.550 --> 00:39:19.190
different tools now that I've kind of developed over the last 10

631
00:39:19.190 --> 00:39:22.990
years to help founders on their journey. Right. I

632
00:39:22.990 --> 00:39:26.429
also kind of try to, you know, kind of

633
00:39:26.830 --> 00:39:30.550
get new ideas and more ideas through different coaches. So I

634
00:39:30.550 --> 00:39:34.390
spent some time with Tony Robbins two weeks ago. I spent four

635
00:39:34.390 --> 00:39:38.110
days, actually day and night with the guy. And. Which was

636
00:39:38.110 --> 00:39:41.900
crazy and was a really good experience. And, and you know, also

637
00:39:41.900 --> 00:39:45.500
there a lot of really good concepts can come into

638
00:39:45.500 --> 00:39:49.300
play and I kind of can use them on

639
00:39:49.300 --> 00:39:53.140
my journey and also in my coaching sessions. But it's most of, most

640
00:39:53.140 --> 00:39:56.340
of the stuff that I'm kind of teaching is like,

641
00:39:56.660 --> 00:40:00.500
my stuff is, you know, the things that I learned over the last 10 years.

642
00:40:00.900 --> 00:40:04.660
But also in addition, I take some things from Tony Robbins and other

643
00:40:04.740 --> 00:40:07.070
great coaches actually into it.

644
00:40:08.670 --> 00:40:11.150
You're now also a coach

645
00:40:12.750 --> 00:40:16.510
helping early stage founders

646
00:40:16.750 --> 00:40:20.190
post burnout. What patterns do you see that repeat?

647
00:40:20.350 --> 00:40:23.630
Are there mindset traps specific

648
00:40:24.110 --> 00:40:27.470
to founder? For example, of AI SaaS or tech in general?

649
00:40:29.070 --> 00:40:32.830
I mean, the mindset trap is probably like that you

650
00:40:32.830 --> 00:40:36.430
need to be really quick and need to raise money as much as possible.

651
00:40:36.590 --> 00:40:40.310
I think these kind of. It

652
00:40:40.310 --> 00:40:44.070
changed a little bit. Times changed. So I think today with, you know,

653
00:40:44.070 --> 00:40:47.830
all the vibe code coding tools, like lovable, like, you

654
00:40:47.830 --> 00:40:51.550
don't need to have a big team anymore, right? You can, you know, test

655
00:40:51.550 --> 00:40:55.350
out different technologies, different products, you know,

656
00:40:55.350 --> 00:40:58.830
in within a couple of hours even. So I think the

657
00:40:58.830 --> 00:41:02.590
founder journey, you know, completely changed in a different direction, I

658
00:41:02.590 --> 00:41:06.310
think in a better direction. But like, you know, the

659
00:41:06.310 --> 00:41:09.510
trap is to think that you always have to raise money, you always have to

660
00:41:09.510 --> 00:41:13.310
be successful, you always have to kind of build a unicorn. That's actually not true.

661
00:41:13.310 --> 00:41:17.110
It depends what you actually want in life. Like, you don't even, you

662
00:41:17.110 --> 00:41:20.430
know, of course investors want unicorns because they need to pay back their

663
00:41:20.590 --> 00:41:24.310
fund, right? So they need outliers, like billion companies to

664
00:41:24.310 --> 00:41:27.870
actually return their funds. But as a founder, of course. And that's

665
00:41:27.870 --> 00:41:31.670
why, you know, kind of sometimes the values and

666
00:41:31.670 --> 00:41:35.270
also kind of the goals are different from investors and

667
00:41:35.430 --> 00:41:39.070
you know, like, compared to founders, because founders are happy with, you

668
00:41:39.070 --> 00:41:42.630
know, like a few millions or 10 million or 50 millions or 20

669
00:41:42.630 --> 00:41:45.390
millions. Like, it depends on who you are and what you want to want to

670
00:41:45.390 --> 00:41:49.030
do. Right? But that's where the interests are not really aligned.

671
00:41:49.190 --> 00:41:51.790
So the trap is to think that you always have to build a unicorn, which

672
00:41:51.790 --> 00:41:55.630
is totally not true. It depends on what you want. You

673
00:41:55.630 --> 00:41:59.320
can also build a cool bootstrapped company which is, you

674
00:41:59.320 --> 00:42:03.160
know, successful because you're waking up every day and you feel like,

675
00:42:03.160 --> 00:42:06.600
you know, you're really interested in working for it and are really

676
00:42:06.600 --> 00:42:10.400
thriving and exciting. And so it doesn't

677
00:42:10.400 --> 00:42:14.080
need to be, you know, investors money. It doesn't need to be a

678
00:42:14.080 --> 00:42:17.840
unicorn. It can just be a small kind of company that you're

679
00:42:17.840 --> 00:42:21.680
building over the years. And, you know, I

680
00:42:21.680 --> 00:42:25.370
think that that's, that's kind of the trap that everyone kind of could

681
00:42:25.370 --> 00:42:29.050
go into. I'm

682
00:42:29.050 --> 00:42:32.050
curious, looking back now with us, the most

683
00:42:32.370 --> 00:42:35.930
valuable decision you made during your time, for example, at Ebol

684
00:42:35.930 --> 00:42:39.010
7, that wasn't so obvious at the time.

685
00:42:40.930 --> 00:42:44.570
I mean, perhaps it's obvious, but for me it wasn't.

686
00:42:44.570 --> 00:42:48.370
Back in the days, I was really drowning in work after

687
00:42:48.370 --> 00:42:51.890
like two or three years at working at ebot7 because I'm. I was kind of

688
00:42:52.050 --> 00:42:55.850
the guy for everything. I did finance, I did operations, I did admin, I did

689
00:42:55.850 --> 00:42:59.150
hr, I did sales, I did fundraising. So almost everything kind of.

690
00:42:59.550 --> 00:43:03.270
And what was a big relief for me was actually when

691
00:43:03.270 --> 00:43:06.950
we raised that Series A and I could finally hire

692
00:43:06.950 --> 00:43:10.190
people that could take over my work, which is

693
00:43:10.350 --> 00:43:14.110
redundant, which was kind of repetitive and always the same and didn't

694
00:43:14.110 --> 00:43:17.950
create that much strategic value in our company. So there was the time,

695
00:43:17.950 --> 00:43:21.750
you know, getting the money, but also spending the money on really

696
00:43:21.750 --> 00:43:25.470
strong people who have done it before was. Was a game changer for me

697
00:43:25.550 --> 00:43:28.430
because I. Because back in the days, we didn't have a lot of money and

698
00:43:28.430 --> 00:43:31.870
we needed to find ways to get people on board which were

699
00:43:31.870 --> 00:43:35.590
probably not, you know, the most skilled, the most

700
00:43:35.590 --> 00:43:39.190
experienced people at the beginning because you needed to train them a lot.

701
00:43:39.590 --> 00:43:43.430
But at some point we could just take money, get the best

702
00:43:43.430 --> 00:43:47.270
people on board. And this changed everything for me. Who was

703
00:43:47.270 --> 00:43:50.710
the most impactful customer or partner for

704
00:43:50.710 --> 00:43:53.830
EBIT 7 and why? What made

705
00:43:54.310 --> 00:43:57.670
their relationship really transformative? Definitely O2

706
00:43:57.670 --> 00:44:01.390
Germany, I would say. So they were kind of the first customers we got

707
00:44:01.390 --> 00:44:05.110
on board. They were also the ones that shaped our product. They

708
00:44:05.270 --> 00:44:09.109
kind of offered us also to visit their customer support center. They were

709
00:44:09.109 --> 00:44:12.910
super helpful, super easygoing. They were one

710
00:44:12.910 --> 00:44:16.390
of the best customers. And in connection to that, Vayra,

711
00:44:16.550 --> 00:44:20.230
which is kind of the accelerator of O2 Germany, which

712
00:44:20.780 --> 00:44:24.500
kind of we, yeah, we got into Vayra first and then we got

713
00:44:24.500 --> 00:44:28.100
actually into O2 Germany. That's kind of their vehicle to look

714
00:44:28.100 --> 00:44:31.860
for innovative startups. And so I think Vira, in

715
00:44:31.860 --> 00:44:35.500
connection with O2 Germany, was definitely, you know, kind of

716
00:44:35.500 --> 00:44:39.300
the most important partner for us at the time. I think back in the

717
00:44:39.300 --> 00:44:42.820
days until, you know, five years later, they were the

718
00:44:42.820 --> 00:44:46.550
biggest customer of ours. So yeah.

719
00:44:46.630 --> 00:44:50.110
And whenever there was any problem with the technology, they were the first

720
00:44:50.110 --> 00:44:53.750
ones to tell us, but not in a bad way, in an angry way.

721
00:44:53.830 --> 00:44:57.550
They were super, like productive and just telling us what to do.

722
00:44:57.550 --> 00:44:59.910
And yeah, that was amazing. Actually.

723
00:45:01.510 --> 00:45:05.150
You scale it quite impressively with this company. But

724
00:45:05.150 --> 00:45:08.470
many founders to hit a wall when scaling somewhere between 30

725
00:45:08.950 --> 00:45:12.750
and 100 people would advise that do

726
00:45:12.750 --> 00:45:16.310
we give today for managing culture and energy at that stage?

727
00:45:17.430 --> 00:45:21.110
Yes. I'm a little bit torn between two worlds because on the one hand

728
00:45:21.510 --> 00:45:25.110
you kind of, you need to, to grow the startup into

729
00:45:25.110 --> 00:45:28.870
something like a corporate, right? You need people, you need different kinds

730
00:45:28.870 --> 00:45:32.710
of people for, for a bigger company because you need

731
00:45:32.710 --> 00:45:36.390
skilled people, you need experienced people who have done it before because you add at

732
00:45:36.390 --> 00:45:39.030
another stage you're also working with different kind of companies.

733
00:45:40.080 --> 00:45:43.920
So. But also, on the other hand, you shouldn't lose your

734
00:45:43.920 --> 00:45:47.120
startup vibe culture because that's essentially why

735
00:45:47.440 --> 00:45:51.160
actually people decide to work for your startup, right? To have, you

736
00:45:51.160 --> 00:45:55.000
know, cool people around you who, you know, you can go for

737
00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:58.760
lunch with them and they're not colleagues, but actually friends. So this

738
00:45:58.760 --> 00:46:02.000
is kind of, you know, it's, it's quite hard. You need

739
00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:05.690
hierarchies, but also you don't want that many and too

740
00:46:05.690 --> 00:46:09.530
deep hierarchies. You don't want to be a corporate, but you also want to

741
00:46:09.610 --> 00:46:12.410
kind of keep the startup culture. That was also kind of

742
00:46:13.210 --> 00:46:16.410
a little bit of difficult to find a balance between those two.

743
00:46:17.610 --> 00:46:20.650
So this is what I would actually say, you know,

744
00:46:21.289 --> 00:46:25.090
you know what, I. Personally have always Google in mind

745
00:46:25.090 --> 00:46:28.730
when I saw this, because under the founders, it was big company

746
00:46:28.730 --> 00:46:32.010
with listed companies, was a very successful company, but it still

747
00:46:32.490 --> 00:46:36.220
had some startup vibe to it. But then at one

748
00:46:36.220 --> 00:46:40.020
point under new leadership under Alphabet, it completely changed.

749
00:46:40.020 --> 00:46:43.780
And a lot of the stuff that made the startup feeling at least

750
00:46:44.020 --> 00:46:47.820
watching from the outside disappear, then that's the point where I

751
00:46:47.820 --> 00:46:51.100
thought you cannot keep it for

752
00:46:51.100 --> 00:46:54.020
eternity if you want to be big, if you want to be growing.

753
00:46:54.980 --> 00:46:58.100
Yeah, probably. I don't know if it's possible.

754
00:46:58.900 --> 00:47:02.640
You need to change your startup, your environment a little bit. But, but

755
00:47:02.640 --> 00:47:06.360
I would always suggest not to do it too much and just, you know,

756
00:47:06.360 --> 00:47:10.000
to keep the startup culture. Because I've seen it a lot, founders growing

757
00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:13.760
into like big companies, like having 100 or 200 and 300

758
00:47:13.760 --> 00:47:17.560
people and getting these, you know, corporate structures because they

759
00:47:17.560 --> 00:47:21.360
hire corporate people at some point and corporate people are, you know, kind

760
00:47:21.360 --> 00:47:25.160
of, they expect corporate structures and they establish

761
00:47:25.160 --> 00:47:28.970
corporate structures. So at some point, you know, all of A sudden

762
00:47:28.970 --> 00:47:32.650
you're getting, you, you're becoming a corporate and I think that's

763
00:47:32.650 --> 00:47:36.130
where you have to be careful not to be too much of a

764
00:47:36.130 --> 00:47:39.730
corporate, you know, and have too much processes and too much structures

765
00:47:39.730 --> 00:47:43.490
and. Because at the end of the day that's why you were successful, because

766
00:47:43.490 --> 00:47:47.170
you were quick, you could, you know, break things and you, you could hire

767
00:47:47.170 --> 00:47:50.650
people that, you know, really like a different mindset, different

768
00:47:50.650 --> 00:47:54.430
attitude. So yeah, that's kind of the, the different

769
00:47:54.430 --> 00:47:57.270
balance that you need to keep actually.

770
00:47:57.990 --> 00:48:01.750
Personal experience, personal feeling is you're still a startup. If you

771
00:48:01.750 --> 00:48:05.430
do the management decision at a stand up in the morning, like 10, 15

772
00:48:05.430 --> 00:48:08.710
minutes, you're fixed, everybody's on the same page, we keep going

773
00:48:09.110 --> 00:48:12.910
and you're corporate. If you have to track all your decisions in an Excel

774
00:48:12.910 --> 00:48:15.910
sheet or something like that. Yeah, probably. I mean,

775
00:48:16.790 --> 00:48:20.550
he's smiling. That's one of the things you can, you can say. Yeah, but it's,

776
00:48:20.700 --> 00:48:24.540
it's, it has a lot of different variations to it. Right. So

777
00:48:24.540 --> 00:48:28.340
yeah, but probably if you have a lot of recurring meetings and a lot

778
00:48:28.340 --> 00:48:31.900
of, you know, hierarchies in your companies, then that's a bad,

779
00:48:31.980 --> 00:48:35.500
bad sign. I guess for the vault members.

780
00:48:35.580 --> 00:48:39.420
You walk us through your founder hiring diagnostic and the

781
00:48:39.420 --> 00:48:42.860
early signals that tell somebody's building the wrong team.

782
00:48:44.060 --> 00:48:47.820
Everybody will be able to find the link to the founders Vault

783
00:48:47.980 --> 00:48:51.700
down here in the show notes. We'll start it pretty soon for subscribers only

784
00:48:51.700 --> 00:48:55.400
and we already very excited about it. Looking

785
00:48:55.800 --> 00:48:59.400
now a little bit forward, what excites you most about the

786
00:48:59.400 --> 00:49:03.040
intersection of mental health coaching and

787
00:49:03.040 --> 00:49:06.800
the next generation of founders? Yeah, so

788
00:49:06.800 --> 00:49:10.640
I mentioned it a little bit earlier. So a lot of things have changed

789
00:49:10.640 --> 00:49:14.480
over the years. Right. So you've got LLMs now like ChatGPT where

790
00:49:14.480 --> 00:49:18.320
you can literally build something from nothing. You don't

791
00:49:18.320 --> 00:49:22.170
need big teams. I think you will definitely see unicorns, like

792
00:49:22.170 --> 00:49:25.890
really big companies with just a few people on board.

793
00:49:26.290 --> 00:49:30.130
So it's really exciting. But also I hope that, you know,

794
00:49:30.370 --> 00:49:33.970
founder teams can actually incorporate some of the mental

795
00:49:33.970 --> 00:49:37.410
health strategies and like recoveries into their

796
00:49:37.410 --> 00:49:41.170
daily practice, because that's super important. I didn't do it, I went into

797
00:49:41.170 --> 00:49:44.610
burnout. So I hope, you know, founders will not take the same route.

798
00:49:45.170 --> 00:49:48.910
And because of AI, because it's super dynamic and super fast

799
00:49:48.980 --> 00:49:52.700
past the probability that you go into something like a

800
00:49:52.700 --> 00:49:56.540
burnout and like something like a depression is much, much higher than if

801
00:49:56.540 --> 00:50:00.180
it's like a low passed environment. Right. And so

802
00:50:00.900 --> 00:50:04.300
I would strongly suggest to keep your body and mind in in

803
00:50:04.300 --> 00:50:07.620
balance and you know, kind of try to,

804
00:50:08.420 --> 00:50:11.700
of course try to take advantage of the whole development around AI

805
00:50:12.100 --> 00:50:15.220
because you can build something from nothing. You don't need a big team anymore, you

806
00:50:15.220 --> 00:50:19.060
don't need big fundings anymore. And that's the beauty of it. And at the same

807
00:50:19.060 --> 00:50:22.610
time you have to keep, keep, keep, keep, you know, your body in balance.

808
00:50:24.290 --> 00:50:27.490
A discussion that I had with some friends recently

809
00:50:28.850 --> 00:50:30.930
was one should

810
00:50:32.450 --> 00:50:36.290
move the school into teaching more about mental health, about

811
00:50:36.290 --> 00:50:40.130
meditation practices than actually writing essays. Because right now you

812
00:50:40.130 --> 00:50:43.930
just need to talk to an AI and we'll spit out a perfectly structured

813
00:50:43.930 --> 00:50:47.740
essay. But nobody takes care of your mental health. There's

814
00:50:48.770 --> 00:50:52.330
just food for thought for the people out there. I was

815
00:50:52.330 --> 00:50:55.930
wondering, don't worry. I know predictions are always

816
00:50:55.930 --> 00:50:59.690
difficult, especially concerning the future, but what predictions would you

817
00:50:59.690 --> 00:51:03.370
make about AI startup culture over the next three to five

818
00:51:03.370 --> 00:51:06.450
years? Are we heading for more founder,

819
00:51:10.050 --> 00:51:13.690
Are we heading for more founder attitude or a

820
00:51:13.690 --> 00:51:17.410
healthy research? So I hope,

821
00:51:17.410 --> 00:51:21.210
of course it's going to be a healthy environment, but there's

822
00:51:21.210 --> 00:51:24.730
a high probability that it's going in the, in the other

823
00:51:24.730 --> 00:51:28.330
direction. So the thing is with AI, it's really

824
00:51:28.330 --> 00:51:31.890
fast paced. You know, it's, with technology you

825
00:51:31.890 --> 00:51:35.490
get, you know, not happier, but lonelier I would say,

826
00:51:35.890 --> 00:51:39.610
because you don't meet you, you meet less friends, you are

827
00:51:39.610 --> 00:51:43.370
less in public, in, on the outside. And I think you

828
00:51:43.370 --> 00:51:47.130
can see it already with the current generation now. You

829
00:51:47.130 --> 00:51:50.130
go to a coffee place and then everyone's on their phones and

830
00:51:50.610 --> 00:51:54.290
especially like, you know, seven, eight years old already like with phones. And

831
00:51:54.610 --> 00:51:58.210
you know, back in the days we went playing football and we went,

832
00:51:58.210 --> 00:52:01.650
you know, going out with friends and stuff like that. We didn't have devices.

833
00:52:01.730 --> 00:52:05.410
So there's a lot of things that change and I think it's going to get

834
00:52:05.410 --> 00:52:08.890
worse and I just hope that there's like kind of a

835
00:52:08.890 --> 00:52:12.470
contra movement towards like more, you know,

836
00:52:12.470 --> 00:52:15.830
spending more time in nature, spending more time with family and friends

837
00:52:16.230 --> 00:52:20.030
because at the end of the day it's about, you know, being

838
00:52:20.030 --> 00:52:23.510
healthy and not being lonely, you know, being

839
00:52:23.510 --> 00:52:27.110
happy. And if you just spend your whole time,

840
00:52:27.110 --> 00:52:30.830
your whole life on devices, it's not gonna be, it's not

841
00:52:30.830 --> 00:52:34.510
gonna be good for you. Yeah, I also have

842
00:52:34.510 --> 00:52:38.000
a, something for myself, like my own

843
00:52:38.000 --> 00:52:41.800
rule. I also use all the

844
00:52:41.800 --> 00:52:45.640
information that I put in different AI tools because I've worked with them

845
00:52:45.640 --> 00:52:49.440
for hours and hours because I'm basically here by myself. Chris is in

846
00:52:49.440 --> 00:52:53.000
New York, we're in different time zones and editor and

847
00:52:53.000 --> 00:52:56.640
VA are also in different time zones, who help me with all the publications and

848
00:52:56.640 --> 00:53:00.160
the back office and stuff. So I basically here

849
00:53:00.320 --> 00:53:04.120
just simply with my AI, I'm actually, I made a habit

850
00:53:04.120 --> 00:53:07.880
out of it to ask them what they know about me that will

851
00:53:07.880 --> 00:53:11.720
be useful for me, plus give me regular

852
00:53:11.720 --> 00:53:15.520
reminders and practices to stay mentally healthy, to

853
00:53:15.520 --> 00:53:19.080
stay fit and so on and so forth. So

854
00:53:19.080 --> 00:53:22.640
basically you can also make the AI work for you

855
00:53:22.720 --> 00:53:26.320
in that respect. And there's a lot of stuff out there, what you can do

856
00:53:26.640 --> 00:53:29.520
just food for thought and start your own research,

857
00:53:31.130 --> 00:53:34.410
but not doing research. Asking you here, what's a

858
00:53:34.410 --> 00:53:38.130
popular belief in startup land but you

859
00:53:38.130 --> 00:53:39.610
would firmly disagree with.

860
00:53:41.770 --> 00:53:45.570
I would say it connects to something that I talked about earlier. It's

861
00:53:45.570 --> 00:53:48.970
about like the belief that you have to build a unicorn. And you know,

862
00:53:48.970 --> 00:53:52.690
investors always expect to build a unicorn because of course they need to

863
00:53:52.690 --> 00:53:56.530
return their funds. But like, deep down honesty, it depends on what you

864
00:53:56.530 --> 00:54:00.310
want to do in life. Like for founders, you know, unicorn doesn't need to

865
00:54:00.310 --> 00:54:04.110
be the perfect outcome because there's also a lot of dilution, a lot of funding

866
00:54:04.110 --> 00:54:07.910
rounds. Like, you know, unicorn is something that startup lands kind

867
00:54:07.910 --> 00:54:11.590
of startup land kind of wants and expects and something like

868
00:54:11.590 --> 00:54:15.070
that. But it's actually, you know, something completely

869
00:54:15.950 --> 00:54:19.550
stupid because you don't need to build a startup that's worth a billion or something.

870
00:54:19.550 --> 00:54:23.390
You don't need to do that. Like, I know that, you know, some

871
00:54:23.390 --> 00:54:26.970
founders, like, you know, they, they're trying everything they can

872
00:54:26.970 --> 00:54:30.690
to, to build a startup in that area and then expect like, or actually demand

873
00:54:30.770 --> 00:54:34.210
higher valuations, higher valuation. Then at some point they dilute and they,

874
00:54:34.450 --> 00:54:38.050
you know, they have at the end of the day of like 1 or 2%

875
00:54:38.050 --> 00:54:41.490
on the company and then it's a billion worth. Like it's, it's better to

876
00:54:41.490 --> 00:54:45.170
bootstrap your company to 1 or 2 million. It's. You've got more than

877
00:54:45.170 --> 00:54:48.370
you know if you have a billion and like nothing left. So

878
00:54:49.490 --> 00:54:53.110
I would say that's something like a popular belief, but I would not say

879
00:54:53.110 --> 00:54:56.950
it's true. Only agreeing with you here

880
00:54:56.950 --> 00:54:59.910
without any external investors in startup radio. But

881
00:55:01.590 --> 00:55:05.110
I was wondering when you've been talking about that, is this

882
00:55:05.270 --> 00:55:09.030
a firm belief of startup land or is this a belief of investment

883
00:55:09.270 --> 00:55:11.510
land pushed into startup land?

884
00:55:14.390 --> 00:55:18.110
Yeah, probably the second. Yeah, I

885
00:55:18.110 --> 00:55:21.700
mean they need to return their funds. So they of course expect startups

886
00:55:21.700 --> 00:55:25.380
to perform really well and like, well means higher valuations

887
00:55:25.380 --> 00:55:29.020
and higher exit volumes and stuff like that. Right. So it's

888
00:55:29.020 --> 00:55:32.540
interesting for our audience. I was wondering

889
00:55:32.620 --> 00:55:36.220
if you Guys could redo your startup journey with just one

890
00:55:36.220 --> 00:55:40.060
lesson from today. What would you change? Tag us on social media

891
00:55:40.060 --> 00:55:43.420
startup rate IO and use startup reset.

892
00:55:43.900 --> 00:55:47.440
Sada Final two questions we're talking about almost

893
00:55:47.520 --> 00:55:49.280
for an hour now.

894
00:55:51.520 --> 00:55:54.800
Some final reflection, some final

895
00:55:54.800 --> 00:55:58.560
reflections here. If a first time founder

896
00:55:58.560 --> 00:56:02.080
stopped you at cafe so not playing with his or her device

897
00:56:02.080 --> 00:56:05.920
and asked you what's one thing you wish you knew earlier,

898
00:56:05.920 --> 00:56:09.600
what would you say? I would probably say that

899
00:56:09.680 --> 00:56:13.040
mental health is more important than you think. I mean

900
00:56:13.440 --> 00:56:17.280
I've done the whole journey and always neglected it. I

901
00:56:17.600 --> 00:56:21.360
kind of worked my ass off day and night and I didn't pay

902
00:56:21.360 --> 00:56:25.040
too much attention, you know, towards, you know, meditating

903
00:56:25.040 --> 00:56:28.880
and I mean I did my sport the whole time, I did my workouts but

904
00:56:29.040 --> 00:56:32.520
you know, having enough pauses, you know, doing lunch

905
00:56:32.520 --> 00:56:35.760
breaks, having weekends off, that's super important and I,

906
00:56:36.160 --> 00:56:39.560
that's something I would definitely say, you know, take that more

907
00:56:39.560 --> 00:56:43.400
seriously. Weekends off is also one of my

908
00:56:43.400 --> 00:56:47.020
rules. What's the boldest, most

909
00:56:47.100 --> 00:56:50.780
honest thing you've learned about yourself through

910
00:56:50.940 --> 00:56:53.500
like the complete journey? Everything you went through?

911
00:56:54.540 --> 00:56:58.380
Honestly, I would say that, I would probably say,

912
00:56:58.620 --> 00:57:02.460
and I wouldn't have admitted it back in the days, but

913
00:57:02.460 --> 00:57:06.140
I think I thought that money solves all problems, but

914
00:57:06.140 --> 00:57:09.980
it definitely doesn't and I think freedom solves most

915
00:57:09.980 --> 00:57:13.820
of the problems. Like my values changed a little bit in the sense

916
00:57:13.820 --> 00:57:17.380
of first I wanted money, I wanted to be, you know,

917
00:57:17.380 --> 00:57:21.100
financially free and now it's about freedom of work,

918
00:57:21.100 --> 00:57:24.940
freedom, whatever I can do whenever I can with whom I want.

919
00:57:25.100 --> 00:57:28.860
So my kind of feeling of like

920
00:57:28.860 --> 00:57:32.220
my values changed a little bit in that direction. So

921
00:57:32.540 --> 00:57:35.740
I thought money was kind of the answer, but it's not.

922
00:57:38.470 --> 00:57:42.110
Awesome closing words. Ksava, thank you very much. Was such a

923
00:57:42.110 --> 00:57:45.790
pleasure talking to you. Actually we had such an intense and long

924
00:57:45.790 --> 00:57:49.470
conversation. We need to have a second interview

925
00:57:49.470 --> 00:57:53.150
session just for you to give to give us your wisdom

926
00:57:53.150 --> 00:57:56.910
in the founders world. Everybody would like to learn more. Go down here in the

927
00:57:56.910 --> 00:58:00.630
show notes and subscribe to the Founders World and we'll see you back

928
00:58:00.710 --> 00:58:04.430
shortly. Answering a few questions for our

929
00:58:04.430 --> 00:58:08.070
audience there, Sara, was a pleasure having you as a guest. Thank you very

930
00:58:08.070 --> 00:58:11.710
much. Best of luck and keep us updated and of course everybody will

931
00:58:11.710 --> 00:58:14.910
find your substack newsletter down here in the show notes as well.

932
00:58:15.310 --> 00:58:18.630
Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure and

933
00:58:18.630 --> 00:58:22.150
see you next time. See you next time. Bye bye, bye bye

934
00:58:22.150 --> 00:58:22.510
bye.

935
00:58:27.630 --> 00:58:31.160
That's all for find more news streams,

936
00:58:31.320 --> 00:58:32.440
events and

937
00:58:32.440 --> 00:58:36.760
interviews@www.startuprad.IO

938
00:58:37.160 --> 00:58:39.160
Remember, sharing is car.