No one talks about what comes after you leave your company. So here’s my story.
I’ve spoken with more than 50 founders who sold their companies or left them, sometimes by choice, sometimes because they were pushed out.
The same struggles came up every time.
- Losing your identity and motivation.
- Feeling like you’re worth nothing without the company.
- The pressure to start something new.
- The tension between decisions driven by ego and decisions driven by instinct (this is really, really hard).
A lot of founders go through this.
They don’t talk about it publicly because they’re afraid of complaining about “rich people’s problems” or sounding out of touch.
For me, the strangest period of my life came after I left Lucis, my first startup.
I’ll be honest: it wasn’t easy.
And almost nothing can fix these problems.
- You can travel. It’s nice for a while, then you start feeling useless and guilty.
- You can go to the sauna as often as you want (I still do 1 session a week hehe), try every kind of therapy and all the wellness stuff you want.
None of it changes the way you think.
Or maybe you start looking inward, and yes, that helps.
But you can spend so much time analysing yourself that you end up doing nothing.
A lot of founders stay silent because they feel ashamed to talk about it.
I’ll never forget that period. Here are a few things that helped me:
- Talking to other founders who’ve been through the same thing.
- Spending time with people outside the startup world
- Making time for loved ones and meeting new people 👸❤️
- Talking or writing to make sense of what I was going through.
I’m curious how other founders felt after an acquisition, a sale or leaving their company.
Tell me your story at [email protected].