It is a bit more than one year ago since I left as CEO & Founder the company I built with all my passion and dedication in the last 11 years from a sketch on a piece of paper into a mature groundbreaking product with fast growing international success. Even though there were many personal and professional reasons for me to make the exit decision, I came out with a dark rainbow of feelings you don’t wish to your worst enemy. I felt completely lost, uncertain about my future self, devastated, useless, heartbroken, robbed, and really had to pick up my own pieces bit by bit under the uncertainty of an unknown future while I had no idea of who I was or would be without my own built venture identity, team, client relationships, and the extraordinary product which was a product of my personality, passions and talents. My gut feeling told me that it was the right path for me, but it was so difficult to fight the thoughts that keep popping up in mind which had a completely opposite opinion. Yet, today, I can tell you that my gut feeling was always right as I enriched my professional life so much more with new and better opportunities. It has been a year full of personal and professional development, new opportunities, deliverables and successes, and a year where I learned to embrace the uncertainty and simply trust that what life brings is a whole lot better than what you can plan for.
It goes without saying that I would like to sincerely thank all the people who have supported me this last year, listened to me when I needed it, dealt with my negativity at times, followed and supported me in my new ideas, and walked with me along this new journey!
I would like to share an inspirational moment which really means a lot to me to help other entrepreneurs who experience or have experienced a similar situation:
July 2023; As soon as the last signature was placed, we packed the car and my wife, my 3-month-old daughter and I left the city as soon as we could. We drove South and planned for several overnight city stops to manage the EV radius and a milk needy baby. At every stop, sometimes we stayed for several nights, it felt like I was able to let something go and move on to the next, deeper stage. On the 7th stop, we coincidently ended up at a beautiful agritourism close to Lake Como with only a dirt road to get there and surrounded by vineyards and forest. We entered our beautiful, authentic one-bedroom, ground floor apartment of the farmhouse which was several hundred years old. After rolling in the bags, I took a bowl from the shelf in the kitchen and when I looked in it, there was a huge black wolf spider hiding there. I believe I screamed and with some spastic wild acrobatic moves, tossing it from my left hand to my right, I was able to land it in one piece on the kitchen table and immediately put another plate on top. After catching my breath again, I securely transported the bowl outside in the fields to let the spider escape and find his new home. The crazy thing was that over the next days I started to see spiders everywhere. I saw them in the bathroom, they crawled by on the floor when I sat on the couch, again in the kitchen, outside on the grass field, and eventually I was sleeping with one eye open every night afraid to meet up with another uninvited guest. It was really getting on my nerves, and I asked the breakfast lady if she knew about this and if it happened more often. She said she never heard anyone ask or complain. I was really getting confused here, and we didn’t stop talking about it and wondered whether it was my nerves or just being too much focused on them.
One evening, we picked up pizza and decided to end the evening with a glass of wine at the back of the house in the yard overlooking the hills. Of course, I saw at least 6 or 7 spiders in several corner. I decided to give in and just accept them sharing the yard. We ended up talking about it and decided to look up what could be the meaning if this. I googled the deeper meaning of seeing spiders and found a beautiful and very inspiring meaning which resonated immediately and never expected. “Every day, a spider builds his most beautiful web to see it being destroyed every end of the day, while the next day he starts all over to make again his most beautiful web”.
From that moment, the dots connected for me. I understood my mission and it gave me new strength to get up and start building again and go for it. The crazy thing was that I did not see any spider anymore after that. Only on the last day, just before leaving after breakfast, we found the back yard full of meters wide spider webs build between the poles. They were all beautiful and pieces of art!
This last year’s journey brought me things that I would have never believed possible one year ago, and happened thanks to the tough, challenging but also amazing and rewarding journey that brought me at least a 100 levels above where I was one year ago.
My top 10 gains of this last year:
Moved to Miami and now live a 5-min walk from the beach where quality of life moved back to the first place for me and my family. Spending time with my bright and always smiling one-year-old daughter is the most fulfilling and rewarding thing
Got to know so many great people in South Florida who are on a mission to build Miami as a rising tech leading star of the US with a focus on climate readiness and resilience. Such a great cause and group to be part of!
Completed the AltMBA program and gained lots of knowledge, skills, and inspiring new friends.
Started the new business Nexuma in Miami with a great new team, mission and happy clients.
Help and coach several startups and scale ups to grow faster by bringing in entrepreneurial expertise and experience of building successful companies.
Became a mentor at the ClimateKIC - Climate Launchpad in California and will start teaching on technology entrepreneurship at the University of Miami coming semester.
Advise investors by finding new champion startups and perform their due diligence.
Invented a new technology for preventing flooding in South Florida due to rising sea levels and intensifying weather events, recently filed a patent, writing a grant, and we are moving fast forward on the business and product development.
Serve as board of directors and advisory board member in 4 companies
Completely let go and closed all connections with the previous company and its new management. It was only generating negativity as it is difficult to watch the sinking ship it unfortunately turned into. Letting-go gave me my time and energy back to build new things, but it was important to stay with my values and principles in the process.
As you can read, the new web I built in this last year is much more beautiful and developed than the one I had last year. Don’t hang on an old web, you won’t catch anything but dust with it. The art of letting go will reward you well.
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