Every founder has a war story
Even that carefree guy had been through the trenches…
Hi, it’s Melissa, and welcome (back) to “your founder next door”, a weekly publication with stories and tidbits of my human journey bootstrapping eWebinar to $5m ARR. No BS, just straight-up truth bombs on what it’s like to build a company without an abundance of resources or friends in high places.
The guy who looked like he’d lucked out 🌴
I met Chris Erler two years ago at Wonderfruit, a festival in Thailand that’s become a yearly pilgrimage for me and a pretty big extended community.
He was a friend of a friend. Young, energetic, carefree. He mentioned, very casually when we met, that he’d built a sales tool, grown it to €10 million in revenue in four years, and sold it to private equity.
I was shocked. That’s an incredible story, and not one you usually hear from your party friends on vacation. He looked so stress-free and light that I figured this guy must have lucked out. We were on holiday, so I never got to know him professionally, and I didn’t stay in touch.
The article that changed how I saw him 📰
A few months ago, I randomly came across an article Chris wrote on Substack about his journey. It was nothing like the version I’d built in my head.
He wrote about how hard it was. How he’d gotten so used to suffering that he stopped registering the physical pain manifesting in his body. His spine had literally started to fuse. A genetic condition triggered by chronic stress, where the immune system attacks the spine and builds bone where it shouldn’t. The radiologist told him he’d been in significant pain for a year and had simply stopped noticing it. That level of pain had become his normal.
I read this and thought back to the guy I’d assumed had gotten lucky. He hadn’t. He found the right product, and worked really hard.
My conversation with Chris on ProfitLed 🎙️
I was deep in research for Season 3 of ProfitLed, Passion, Profit, and Purpose, when I read his article, so I reached out for a chat. I learned he’s now dedicating his time to helping other founders build their companies without burning out, the way he did.
His is a roller coaster.
ComX was fully bootstrapped. He started it with two co-founders, quit his job with €10k in the bank, and they grew it to €10 million in revenue in four years. He said the money didn’t change him at all. I loved that. He told me he tried to spend it and didn’t like it. He didn’t even like the people he met at the fancy hotels. What it bought him wasn’t a Lamborghini. It was freedom. That was the whole point.
When he sold the majority stake to private equity, he stopped being a founder and became an employee in his own company. Suddenly he was pleasing shareholders instead of building, and the “why” that had carried him for years was just gone.
Two years after the exit, ComX went insolvent. He had to watch the company he poured himself into get loaded with debt and collapse. The way he talks about it is remarkably clear-eyed. In Europe, he says, failure is treated like shame. In the US, if you haven’t failed, you just missed an important lesson.
All this reminds me that every founder has been through the trenches. Every founder has a war story. It’s like all the lessons from The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, one of my favorite business books.
It doesn’t matter how easy the media makes it look, or how fast a company seemed to go from zero to whatever number made the headline. What you’re reading is never the whole story. What you don’t see is the backstory. How many years that founder grinded. How many things they tried before the one that worked. How much of their body and their peace they handed over along the way.
If it were easy, everybody would do it.
Why this matters 💡
Here’s the thing. When we read about other people’s success on the internet, we always think they’re doing better than us. We know comparison is the thief of joy, but we do it anyway. We always feel behind.
The truth is, you’re only behind if you’re comparing yourself to someone else.
The only person you’re competing against is you.
Every company is different. Every business is different. There’s no standard timeline for how quickly you need to succeed before that success counts. Unless you’re being dictated to by venture capital, the clock you think you’re racing against doesn’t actually exist.
That’s why it’s so important to have a community of founders around you, people who’ve been through it or are on the same path as you. Those are the friends who keep your reality in check. They remind you that you’re doing the right thing, you’re on the right path, and you’re not behind.
I met Chris as the carefree guy who looked like he’d lucked out. It turned out he’d been to war too. He’d just made it to the other side.
Wherever you are, you are exactly where you’re supposed to be.
To hear our full conversation, tune into this episode of ProfitLed here: Apple, Spotify, YouTube
Till next time,
— Melissa, your founder next door ✌️
What did you think of this article? Let me know!
Season 3 of my podcast, ProfitLed, is now live.
We’re exploring the intersection of Passion, Profit, and Purpose, and how those shifts as founders come into financial success. Find it on: Apple, Spotify, YouTube
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