#15 The darkest days of being a founder.

COVID, M&A and a tragic loss that changed my life.

Dear readers,

I want to share the darkest chapter of my journey. A period I still remember with fear to this day. It was the hardest chapter of my life.

But it was also the chapter that taught me the most. It forced me to confront my limits, rethink my priorities, and discover resilience I didn’t know I had.

Through that struggle, I learned lessons about life and what truly matters. Lessons I carry with me every day.

Best regards,

Xaver

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For my startup, COVID turned out to be a surprisingly successful time.

At first, it didn’t look that way. Everything stalled. Deals got delayed. The world slowed down.

But when we shifted focus toward high-velocity deals and smaller companies, growth came back.

Personally, though, that period was extremely challenging.

At the beginning, it almost felt like a relief. I realized I was far more productive at home than at the office.

No constant interruptions. No people walking in asking for things. No commute. No small talk. Just work.

It felt good like I finally had time to think and focus on what mattered.

But slowly, my structure disappeared. My routine of gym, office, and occasional dinners with friends vanished.

I was sitting at home, working day and night. There wasn’t much else to do.

My screen time probably went up by 50%.

Even when it became possible to meet people again, I couldn’t.

My mother had been diagnosed with cancer, and her health was deteriorating.

I couldn’t risk infecting her, so I stayed isolated.

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After months of solitude, we needed money again.

So we started fundraising hoping someone would invest quickly.

We had strong growth numbers, one of the few startups performing well during COVID, so we were optimistic.

But raising virtually was tough.

Our strength had always been meeting investors in person, pitching with energy, building connection.

Over Zoom, that spark was gone. And investors were cautious. Nobody knew how long the pandemic would last.

It was probably the worst time to raise.

And this time, we weren’t raising a few hundred thousand or a few million we were going for a $25M Series B.

Few European funds write checks that size, so we had to reach out to the U.S., Russia, and Asia.

That meant working days and nights across time zones.

We felt confident because our numbers looked good. But call after call, rejection after rejection, it started wearing us down.

In desperation, we even began sending cold messages to investors. Everyone we knew had already said no.

But after months, we finally found one. The process took forever. We had almost forgotten about them. But after several Zoom calls and tough negotiations, we were close to signing a term sheet.

Then all of a sudden everything changed.

Right in the middle of those talks, we received an email from an Israeli contact we’d met years earlier at a Berlin conference.

He got straight to the point:

“Would you be interested in meeting the CEO of a publicly listed U.S. company?”

We knew the company. They were a NASDAQ-listed company, around 1,500 employees, and a global leader in AI-powered customer service.

Basically, a larger U.S. version of what we were building.

At first, we didn’t even consider selling.

But after some days of getting to know them and thinking about it on long walks with my co-founder, we started to feel that this might be a good idea.

And when we compared offers, the acquisition proposal actually was much better than the investor one.

Even though the company was growing fast and in good shape, the idea of financial freedom of finally letting go of the daily stress and uncertainty was too tempting to ignore.

Plus, merging with them would make us the largest AI customer service company in the world.

We decided to go all in.

When we informed the U.S. investor about our decision, he understood but pulled out immediately.

From that moment on, there was no turning back. We had to bet everything on the sale.

The only problem?

We had just a couple of months of financial runway left.

Money was running out fast, and we had 130 people on payroll.

Our investors went crazy when we told them we’d turned down the funding offer.

But deep down, we still felt it was the right call.

Then things started to fall apart.

The acquisition process dragged on much longer than expected.

And one day, everything changed.

Their CRO left and the new one completely restructured the deal in their favor.

The new terms made no sense for us anymore.

I was in shock.

We had worked so hard, for so long, for this moment and suddenly it was slipping away.

There was no time to find a new investor anymore. We were about to go bankrupt.

The disappointment and anger were overwhelming.

I still remember that day vividly.

I was at my family home.

When I got the news that they had pulled out, I walked downstairs, sat at the kitchen table, and tried to eat breakfast.

But I couldn’t.

The anxiety sat like a rock in my stomach. I couldn’t swallow a single bite.

When my dad came down to join me, I tried to act normal.

I didn’t want to burden him even more.

Just a few days earlier, my mother had passed away after a long battle with cancer.

And there I was, having lost my most important person in my life, and now on the verge of losing the company I had built for five years.

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Read next story here:

#16 Walking away from a $60m deal.

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