Welcome to the free Tuesday edition of The Honest Founder.
Today I want to take you into a chapter most founders never talk about. The long, exhausting, and often confusing road of recovering after an exit.
Happy reading.
Xaver
If you missed my last article, feel free to read it here.
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So I moved back into my parents house and tried to recover slowly.
One call a day.
Golf a couple of times per week.
Seeing one or two friends when I had the energy.
Weekly therapy sessions to process everything that had happened.
Eating well and moving my body every day.
At first only yoga. Eventually light weights again.
After a few months I started to improve.
But it was nothing like recovering from a broken arm.
With physical injuries you feel progress almost immediately.
Mental illness is different.
You can feel stuck for weeks or months or years.
You do everything right and nothing seems to change.
And when you finally feel better and push a bit too hard, you can fall back again for weeks.
It is exhausting and demotivating.
And it makes you question everything.
It makes you wonder if you will ever be the same.
People thought I was fine.
They saw me smiling and travelling but they only saw the surface.
To them I looked like the luckiest guy in the world.
They asked what I would buy now.
In reality, I was taking tiny steps every day just to feel human again.
Meanwhile everything around me was shaking.
After our acquisition, the buyer’s share price fell sharply as the markets collapsed.
What looked like a stable future suddenly felt unstable. Their attention shifted away from us and toward their own survival.
Layoffs started across the entire company.
Some of the people we were working with in the US simply disappeared from one day to the next.
We would email them and the only reply we got was an automated message saying they were no longer with the company.
And it went on like that for weeks.
When they acquired us, the vision had been clear.
Scale our product globally. Win the SME market. Combine their distribution with our technology and build something massive.
They positioned themselves almost like an investor, someone who believed in our long term potential. We felt supported and protected. We felt like this partnership would let us move faster, not slower.
That belief was a big part of why we agreed to the deal.
But when the market turned, everything changed overnight.
The excitement faded.
The energy shifted.
Suddenly we were not part of a long term plan. We were a line item. A cost center. Something that had to be justified.
Then one day a C-level executive called me.
He said we needed to talk. I felt a knot in my stomach. I knew something was coming, but I had no idea what direction the conversation would take.
I never expected what he said next.
If you ever need support, let me know. I just opened my Hubble coaching profile.
I’m taking 3 people each month. If you’re stuck on your next move or need fundraising help, now’s the best time to book.
