3 People, $4.6m Bootstrapped to Exit | Esben Friis-Jensen, S3E5

Esben Friis-Jensen spent seven years building Cobalt, a VC-backed cybersecurity company with four co-founders, $37 million raised, and over 200 employees. He left without a financial outcome. Then he built Userflow, a no-code onboarding tool, as the complete opposite: bootstrapped, three people, no meetings, no VC. It grew to $4.6 million in revenue and sold in a deal reported to be over $60 million.

In this episode, Esben and I get into what those years at Cobalt taught him about the relationship between effort and reward, why he and his co-founder chose to pay themselves first instead of reinvesting everything back into the company, and how he kept his ambition alive when there was no financial pressure to keep going.

We also talk about what happened when the wire hit the bank, why it didn't change his life as much as you'd think, and what life looks like now that he's retired in his early 40s with two kids, no obligations, and no plans (yet) to start another company.

This is a conversation about designing a business around the life you want instead of the other way around, and what happens when you finally get there. 

_______

(01:17) "I wanted to be the CEO of a large company"
(05:16) "I didn't even know that world existed"
(07:01) What 200 employees actually felt like
(08:35) "You can build this amazing company and get very little"
(10:56) Building the complete opposite of Cobalt
(14:24) From wanting to run Accenture to a two-person company
(14:49) Where $1.5 million per employee actually went
(20:58) What kept them going with no financial pressure
(22:16) Saying no to sales calls and hiding the demo button
(24:11) "Were there moments it almost didn't work?"
(27:24) Why most acquisition offers went straight to trash
(29:10) Handing over a product he dreamed about every day
(30:31) When the wire hit the bank
(31:55) "I don't need to work to be happy"
(36:12) Financial freedom as a sub-goal, not the end
(38:03) Same definition of success, completely different path

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
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This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar:

Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Today's guest is Espen Fries Jensen, co-founder of Userflow, a no-code onboarding tool he bootstrapped to $4.6 million in revenue with just three people before selling to Beamer in a deal reported to be over $60 million. Before Userflow, Espen spent seven years building Cobalt, a VC-backed cybersecurity company that raised $37 million and grew to over 200 employees. He left that company without a financial outcome. Then he built Userflow as the complete opposite: no VC, no hiring, no meetings, maximum ownership. In this episode, we get into what the Cobalt experience taught him, how he and his co-founder pay themselves first and design a company around the life they wanted, and what life looks like now that he's essentially retired in his early 40s with nowhere he needs to be. If you've ever wondered what happens when you finally achieve the freedom you are chasing, this one's for you. Welcome to another episode of ProfitLed. I'm your host, Melissa Kwan, co-founder of eWebinar. This season we're exploring the intersection of passion, profit, and purpose, and how those things change as founders evolve and come into financial success. Let's get started. Espen, at the start of your career, when you were at Accenture, what did success look like for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

I think when I started my career, I had big ambitions. I wanted to be uh the leader of some kind of big company or something similar to that. In Accenture, they have this kind of traditional pyramid model, right? You have uh some young people doing a lot of work and then you kind of grow uh in the pyramid. And I loved that at the beginning of my career, that you could kind of easily see the next path, the next kind of step in the ladder. And I would work late hours to achieve the next level and deliver high performance. So I think in that part of my uh career, I was all about work late hours, work more than uh I need to, and and grow my career so I can become at that point in time, I wanted to be like the CEO of a large company or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

I mean, the last job that I had was at SAP. Yeah. So I fully understand that pyramid. It wasn't really for me, I didn't have that ambition, but it's it's interesting to see that you already had kind of that drive in you, but just within a corporate structure. So in 2013, you and three friends moved from Copenhagen to San Francisco to start a company. And at the time, I guess there was no VC scene in Denmark. So take me back to that moment. What was going through your head and and what did you think was waiting for you kind of on the other side in San Francisco?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

So just taking a step back, I think what I realized in Accenture when I was there is I kind of lacked owning the end result. I think as a consultant, you you do, and even in Accenture, we're very much hands-on and implement stuff, but we were just, you know, implementing it, and then we didn't really own it afterwards, right? Like we were not kind of accountable in all ways to the end user. We just had to deliver this kind of typically SAP software, and then uh whether the end users were successful with it or not was not the most important thing. The most important thing was the executives at the company we were servicing felt that they got the service they expected. So I was always like feeling I was missing something. I I felt like I was looking for basically something where I could be more part of a company, be part of something where you actually owned the ultimate end result. So I started looking for kind of more traditional companies like product companies and stuff like that where I could potentially work. But I I could also feel when looking at those companies that what they had in like being hands-on to a product, they lacked in ambition and these kind of things that I was looking for. So it's really hard to find that perfect match where they had ambition, but they were more of a product company. But then uh my friend uh Jacob, who had met in Accenture, he had uh left one year prior and moved to Argentina. He kind of convinced me that we should do uh a startup. We were always the two last ones in the in the office in in Accenture. So we had a lot of like late-night talks, and uh that's how we got to know each other. And and basically when he reached out and said, like, why don't you uh want to do a startup with me? I I took some convincing because it it was like a risky move, right? I I felt. But the more we talked about it, the more kind of convinced I got that this could be something fun to try out, and the risk of doing it was not really um too big. In Denmark, we have a very wide safety net. Uh, if you lose your job, you you uh don't really uh suffer too much. And I felt I could always go back and work at Accenture if I wanted to. So what I actually did initially was a three-month sabbatical from Accenture, and then uh I packed my bag and flew to Argentina to join uh Jacob and uh two other of his friends, one of them being his brother, and then uh we kind of started on this project that became Cobalt.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Were you kind of dead set on like I'm gonna go raise money, build a startup in San Francisco? Like, what did you think was kind of there waiting for you?

SPEAKER_00 5:14

I didn't even know that world existed when I started the startup, to be honest. I knew some entrepreneurs in Denmark, but the startup scene was, from my perspective, non-existent. There was a couple, the Just Eat founder in Denmark, he had written a book that I had read. Uh so he was like one of the stories I'd heard. And I'd always been like fascinated by some of these startup stories, but there were fewer ideals at the Skype story. One of the Skype founders is from Denmark. Uh so those were the like only stories I had heard about. So it wasn't like I was familiar with the startup scene or anything like that. But I think what was happening at that year or 2013 was that definitely startups were getting more attention in the media, so it was becoming more of a cool thing to do. Uh, and I think one of the big things that had happened was Tim Ferris wrote the book for our work week, right? Which I think many people read. And that also became an inspiration for many to do how can I build that? How can I build that kind of lifestyle? And that was also part of me making the decision to look into the startup world. So yeah, I didn't have a strong ambition to do anything uh with this, really. I just wanted to do something different than Accenture and do something that could potentially become big, where you could kind of have ambition and build a true product where you owned the end result.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

And before UserFlow, as you mentioned, you spent seven years at Cobalt. You had it was four total co-founders, right? So you had three other co-founders, 37 million raised, 200 employees. And I mean, that's a company that many founders listening would envy having, in theory. But you left. So what happened there that drove you to walk away from the company that most founders want?

SPEAKER_00 6:59

So I think seven years is first of all, it's a long time uh to be in a company. Uh, and and we had we did have a lot of fun on the way, and uh and uh I I enjoyed a lot of the ride. But what I think started happening was we were growing the company and we were hiring more and more employees, which I mean uh in some ways is a good thing, right? It means the company is growing, but in other ways it also typically means that you as a founder have to take a step back and uh empower your employees to take the control and and kind of do the tasks. And that means that you have a risk. I I felt that was happening to me, that I became disconnected uh more and more from the product and the customers, where we in the beginning, you know, we were four founders and we had, of course, I had to agree with the four founders, but it was a much easier kind of path to change the product, change go to market, or change anything compared to when you're in a 200 employee company and you want to do a change, it's uh significantly harder, even as a founder. Uh so I think I kind of got tired of that, that the organization uh actually resulted in things moving a bit slower and me not having the same kind of power to impact stuff that I wanted. So that's the reason I I eventually ended up leaving COBOL. And by the way, COBOL is still a very operational uh company and and growing company. So I think I left in in good conditions, uh, but it was important for me to do something else because I was just tired of it, basically.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

I mean, you said publicly you can build this amazing company and get very little out of it. What did you mean by that? And what did that experience, I guess, teach you about the relationship between effort and reward?

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Yeah, I think you can say in cobalt, I've I continued on the path that I had kind of had in Accenture, where I would work late hours, work, work, work, so work extremely hard, especially the early years of of Kobold. And we we decided to raise capital, which meant we diluted ourselves as founders, and we raised uh Series Angel, Seat, uh Series A, Series B. And suddenly also because we were four co-founders, uh, the stake you had in the company were not that uh big anymore. But you were still working many hours, uh, but you were just earning basically like a normal executive salary, right? And I think even sometimes a bit lower salary because as a founder, you're not expected to pay yourself a huge chunk of money in a in a VC-backed company. So, what I meant when I said that was basically like when you decide to raise VC money, you're kind of already going on the path that you're starting to work for somebody else. Uh you're no longer in control of the company to do whatever you want, to pay yourself a high salary, to sell the company when you want, and these kind of things. So, what many VC back founders end up with is basically that they end up in this kind of stale state where you still have ownership in the company and and you are maybe working a lot, uh, but you don't have the decision power to potentially exit the company and and get some financial reward out of that. And you cannot even determine your own salary and these kind of things, right? So even though you you worked hard, you built a huge company uh with COBOL, it's 200 employees, right? I still haven't gotten a huge payout from building COBOL, right? I I still think it's fantastic we build a great company. Uh we help many businesses become more secure. So, yes, I can value that part of the journey and got to work with a lot of amazing people. But uh for me personally, uh the financial reward has been very little, right? Uh so far. We'll see in the future. They can still uh you know exit the company or do something.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

And instead of taking a break, you immediately started another company, which was Userflow. But this time you chose to do everything opposite. Like it cannot be more different, right? No VC, no hiring, smallest team possible, maximum ownership with one other founder. So, how much of User Flow's experience was a direct reaction, I guess, to what you did at Cobalt? And what were the specific things you said, I'm never gonna do that again?

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Uh basically it was a very strong reaction because it was like the complete counter to what I was doing. And I was also actually, before I made the decision, I was a bit in doubt is this a good choice to leave this company, which is uh highly successful, right, in in all uh aspects. But I'm just personally not so happy with what I'm doing and and and my impact, right? But my good friend Sebastian, who was my co-founder at USLO, he had uh tried to convince me one year prior, and and then I he finally got me convinced because I got basically uh so tired of being in a in a larger company and uh said, why not? Let's let's do this, uh let's see what we can do. Uh and Sebastian, he was very much on that. He's always been on that path, actually. He he never wanted to build a big company, he never wanted to raise money. So I kind of also learned from him that that's a viable path that you can basically bootstrap a business and you can do it in a very product-led way instead of you know relying on sales. In Cobalt, we were actually product-led in the beginning, but became very sales-led, and that meant you were always having to do sales meetings, uh, alignment meetings, uh, customer success meetings. So there was a lot of meetings in the in Cobalt, and that basically meant the flexibility you could have in your life was very limited, right? Because you were always required to be available for meetings and participate in meetings. So that was one of the big things I loved about joining Userflow was Sebastian and I had no meetings. Oh, we had one meeting a week, which later turned into a Slack conversation. And I think that was one of the key things is like we want to build a smaller company, we don't necessarily want to hire anybody, we want to do it in a profit-first way, we want to do it in a way where we don't have to do a lot of meetings. Ideally, we don't want to do a lot of sales calls and stuff like that. So, yeah, a complete opposite to to what we were doing uh at Cobalt. So, so that excited me as well. Yeah. So it was definitely a counter reaction and and something I was looking for to have a more interesting, uh kind of impactful role, but also a more flexible lifestyle.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

I mean, that's the thing that people don't understand about going up market. Everybody thinks going up market means more revenue, but more revenue means you're actually giving up your life. So your business model determines your lifestyle. So I had two SaaS companies before this, but we sold enterprise. So I was the one doing those meetings, doing those calls, going to conferences, needing to be available. Sometimes customers would text me. You know, when you live through that, I think some people really love that. And or maybe it doesn't bother them. But for me, I was building a company to free myself and my life, but then I had built this thing that did the opposite. It's funny because you're like, okay, now I want to build a two-person company, but you know, counting back, I guess 10 years before that, you're like, I want to be the CEO of Accenture, which is yeah, which is even worse. Yeah. So let's talk about money for a second. You left Cobalt without cashing out. And then user flow starts printing cash. Yeah. Like four and a half million or a little bit more, three people. I think the majority of that journey was just two of you, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah. The designer was always there, but he was freelancing, so he was only working part-time, eventually full-time, but still part-time.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

So that's a million and a half per employee. So where did that money go? Were you and Sebastian just paying yourselves huge salaries, or were you keeping it in the company?

SPEAKER_00 14:56

We were paying ourselves huge salaries. So I think both Sebastian and I, that's how we thought about it. Like we want to build a business, and to make it fun, we also have to be financially rewarded along the way. We cannot just wait for this kind of exit. And we felt that we could run the company pretty much just uh the three of us. So uh instead of going out and hiring someone, we decided we just want to pay ourselves really high salaries so we can live a really good life while building a great company. And and we were very lucky that Userflow were in a market that took off with the entire product led growth, you know, with that user onboarding. And we had built like something that was differentiated enough in the market to get a lot of customers uh and in a highly product-led way. So yeah, we were very um quickly a highly profitable business and uh could therefore pay ourselves very well.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

I mean, that's a remarkable story. And you know, having lived through year, like so I had two startups before eWebinar, and I always thought I couldn't pay myself. I always pay myself less, pay other people more. And I wanted this suffering because if I suffered, I felt like that was a necessary ingredient to success. Right. And as you said, like a lot of VC back companies, which were like friends around me, they also weren't getting really even livable salaries because we were all in New York.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

And so I now know that the founders actually have to take care of themselves first so that they can have the mental capacity in the space to make good decisions, right? Especially when you're bootstrapping, right? Like if you if you are constantly in survival mode, you can't make good decisions.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

No.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Right. And you have to make so many concessions in your life, especially if you're in your 30s or your 40s, like you see all your friends living these normal lives and you can't do that. I think nobody really talks about that, right? Like it's like it's like a mental baggage that you carry that you feel like I'm a failure, I'm not good enough. But if you can turn that around, build a successful business, and actually start paying yourself, you can just have fun doing it. Right. So, how did your lifestyle change? Right, as that revenue grew, you paid yourself, and how did your relationship with money shift? Because I guess this would be the first time you're you have these huge salaries and and you have money to spend.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Yeah, I think you can say what I learned at COBOL, which was probably a good thing, was to be frugal. And I think both Sebastian and I are uh very frugal with money. Uh, we also learned that further at Userflow, right? Because we we didn't want to spend huge chunks of money uh if we didn't see the kind of result. So the way we did business was also very frugal and and focused on profit. And you can say, even though we were paying ourselves large salaries so we could live a really good life, it didn't mean that we, you know, were flying first class and you know uh uh buying uh uh sports cars and stuff like that. We were living pretty much normal lives, but we didn't have to think about money, which was fantastic, right? And I think that that was the primary difference where in Kobold you always had, you know, you I didn't I wouldn't say I had to think about money, but you know, it was not like I could just uh buy whatever I wanted uh and and and don't think about it, right? So yeah, so I think it it became it created some kind of comfort, but not in a I didn't like end up in a luxurious lifestyle or anything of that from getting the money. And I think actually a lot of that came from my startup mindset, where you are very frugal in the way you think and almost to a fault, right? So I could probably spend a bit more on myself.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Well, at some point, I mean, you guys were financially comfortable, the company was profitable, growing without you know, any other staff, you're not managing anybody. You know, you're not really grinding, right? So there's no financial pressure with VCs, the product was kind of running itself, right? So what was driving you guys to keep going or driving you to keep going? And like, what were you waking up in the morning for? Hey, I want to take a minute to talk about the thing that makes my life and this podcast possible: my own company eWebinar. Here's something no one questions. We expect every piece of content in our personal lives to be available on demand from this podcast to our favorite TV show. But when it comes to business webinars, whether it's demos, training sessions, or onboarding calls, anything where a live person has to show up and deliver content, we're still asking people to be somewhere at a specific time on one specific day, hoping they'll make it. And it just doesn't scale. The average attendance rate for a live webinar is 30 to 40 percent. That means the majority of people who want your content never see it. The prospects who never see your demo don't convert, the customers who skip onboarding don't activate. Anyone who misses training won't adopt your product. The EE webinar was built to solve that. We turned any video into an interactive experience that runs on autopilot 24-7 in every time zone. Your audience joins when it works for them. And our live chat lets you respond to questions in real time or later through email. So every question gets answered and nobody feels ignored. It outperforms live by every metric. Attendance, watch times, engagement, and conversion rates are all higher. When live delivery is no longer the bottleneck, you open up a whole new world of opportunities, and that's the real unlock. You're not just replacing the webinars you're already doing, you're finally creating all the ones you never had bandwidth for. The onboarding series, the product walkthrough, the sales demo for that segment you've been meaning to go after. Come see it for yourself. Visit eWebinar.com to join our demo at your own time. No salesperson required. All right, let's get back to the episode.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

So I think the primary thing was to enhance the product, right? Like I was like seeing that was the power of use flow. It's a product you can continuously enhance, uh, which was amazing. Cobalt was the same as like this kind of product where you can just keep adding new features and and see how they go. And that was the fun part, like building new stuff. Among other things, we launched uh AI assistant pretty quickly after GPT 4 came out. So those kind of things were what kept us going, is like building new stuff that could grow the company even further. And that kind of mindset that the more revenue we got, the higher salary we could pay ourselves, right? So that was also a kind of like an incentive for us. So even though we already had nice salaries, it's always nice to you know earn earn more. So you can say in COBOL, I didn't have that, right? Because if I was helping growing the company, I was growing the equity, I wasn't growing my salary, right? And that's a much more intangible kind of value, which when you've been doing it for seven, eight years, you kind of learn, okay, that's Way too intangible, right? It's not something you can easily get anything out of unless you sell something on the secondary market, which some founders are lucky enough to do. But yeah, so I think that was the primary incentive. And then the second part was how can we make this even more flexible, right? Stuff we started doing at Userflow. We some would say we became kind of arrogant because things were working so much self-service. I started saying no to all sales calls. Unless they had done like a trial with us. I didn't want to, you know, speak on a call with anybody because we would still we we did have a book um a demo form, but we kind of moved it uh to a hidden place on the website. And the people who would then go on our support channel asking for uh you know a call, I would always push back and say, Have you done the trial? Uh because the trial is pretty self-explanatory. Uh and if they hadn't, I said, then do please do that first and come back if you still need a call. And many would come back and say, Ah, we don't need a call, we see everything now, it's very clear. So so so sometimes that kind of arrogance helped you become more successful in your product led motion, right? So I think that helped us also create a more, even more flexible lifestyle around the company, which meant I could travel a lot more. I had a kit uh around that same year when when we really hit it off. So that helped us be able to, you know, live a life where I could travel the world, travel, or at least the US, have a kit and and still uh run a highly successful SaaS company. And you could have pushed all those calls to eWebinar, but we weren't around.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Exactly. You're such a pragmatic person, right? Every time I talk to you, you're just like, this is what we did. One, two, three, we followed the system. Like you make it sound so doable. Yeah. But the thing is, like building a company, three people, really crowded market, actually, a very red ocean market with VC back competitors. It doesn't seem like it could be as smooth as you make the story sounds. Like, were there parts that were hard? Like, were there moments where you felt like maybe this wouldn't work, or you you questioned if you were on the right path?

SPEAKER_00 24:08

No, I don't because we were seeing like continuous growth. I don't think we ever like let's say we lost a loot a large customer, right? Uh we would of course have concerns. Are we gonna lose more large customers, right? We would always have that. But was a large contract at that, like what was the range of the contract value? I think our largest contract was around 60k or something. So it's not insignificant, it's pretty big. No, no, and and uh we we might have lost one or two of those where we are like, okay, ouch, that was a big customer to lose. If we had customer success, would we have kept them, you know, like more hands-on customer success? But then on the other hand, if we had had that, we wouldn't be able to live that flexible lifestyle, right? And and be highly product-led. And and and I think what we saw at time is like we were able to get new customers at a rate, so it doesn't hurt so much that we lose uh one of these customers. We weren't like the customer saturation. It was not like we had one or two very large customers, we had a lot of like mid-size and small customers, right? And and in that way we were not so vulnerable to one customer journey, even if it was a big customer. But of course, that hurts. It always hurts when a large customer leaves, and and you always uh kind of think, should we change something? Should we uh should we do something? So I think we did have experiences like that, but in overall, we mostly saw success in what we did. And I think the reason for that was that we stayed very close to our customers. We were always the ones on support, right? Because we were a small team. We were always using our own product to see how can we make it smarter, how can we make it better, so we would discover the new features and how they should be built before our customers would. So we were always like one step ahead uh when it came to like building the product. We we just felt that everything was working and it kept on working. So it sounds easy, but I also think it's a good mindset to have that it is easy. And I think that's actually the biggest blocker for many companies who want to be product-led, is they don't have that mindset. They always think like uh we can't do that because X, Y, C, right? We can't have a free trial because of security is an excuse I've heard, right? Uh like of course you can. Like, if you cannot have that, then I don't uh your security is terrible if you if you cannot do a free trial because of security, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:35

I mean, I think the unique thing about you and Sebastian was you are so lifestyle focused. And you you understood that everything has a trade-off. Yeah, right. Of course, every company can go upmarket, but what is the trade-off, right? Like how many people do I have to hire for how much money? How much money do I have to raise? And you've got customer success, right? So you were willing to have that trade-off for the lifestyle that you were living, and and that's awesome, right? So the beamer deal, who you know you eventually sold to, I guess this conversation happened through a conference, right, uh, at in Dublin. And but you weren't really looking to sell at the time. You said you were just ignoring like some acquisition email. So what was different about this particular company or this deal that made you say, okay, like let's start having this conversation?

SPEAKER_00 27:21

Because we were paying ourselves uh really well and and and we knew we had a good growth in the company and we were living already a flexible lifestyle. So we didn't have like that pressure to sell or uh or do anything. We were not like actively uh looking, but we did had have acquisition offers also before the beamer acquisition offer. Most of those were in pure stock, which didn't really interest us because if you sell for pure stock, you basically just end up working for somebody else, and then you have to rely on them to um build a successful company, right? So what the beamer deal gave us was more cash on table and and an opportunity for us to also not be operationally involved. Uh we were operationally involved for for a short while, but then left the operations later, right? And and I think that was the kind of deal we we were interested in. And then of course, also at a multiple that we thought justified us uh not giving up on our nice salaries, right? So we had to kind of look at the math to see how many years do we have to work to earn the same. And and and then we we made that calculation and decided this is a good deal. Uh let's do it. And then the other positive thing was that they wanted to continue the brand as it is and actually build further on that brand and and the product. So that was also super nice that that we were uh giving it to somebody who actually wanted to continue the product and not just close it down, as you see with with larger companies, when they buy something, they they often close down the product or it disappears.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

So, what was it like to hand over something you built that was so hugely successful with such high velocity?

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Yeah, I uh it was hard. Uh I mean, first of all, when you sell it, you're just uh you're so happy, uh it's great, right? Like it's a good payday. Uh but then uh of course it's hard to give away uh a product that you've been working on and thinking about every day for the last uh years, you know, had many kind of future dreams of what should happen with the product, right? And now you're leaving that ownership to somebody else to decide if if what's gonna happen with the product. So that was of course uh hard. I'm happy that we didn't have to stay operationally involved for for too long because I think it's really hard as a founder to not and and that was you know going back to what happened at Cobalt, it's hard for a founder to stay out of the decisions, to not be impactful in in what happens. Uh, but when you're giving the ownership and controls to somebody else, you need to do that. And sometimes it's easier just to get out. Uh, and I think I learned that at Cobalt. I and and that's the same I learned that at Useflow, it's kind of like it's easier just to get out of the operations and not be involved, and then let let the people make the decisions without you uh trying to influence them yourself.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

So you had a pretty significant exit. How did it feel for you when that wire hit the bank?

SPEAKER_00 30:29

So I think because we had already had good salaries uh for for years before that. I mean, it it is of course life-changing. It meant that I basically don't have to work for the rest of my life unless I want to. So that that's of course life-changing. But because we had already, you know, had paid ourselves good salary, it wasn't like a huge change. I I had already, you know, lived a life where I was traveling uh the US and the world, uh living a good, flexible lifestyle. Selling the company just meant that I could be even more flexible, uh spend even more time with my family, which is something um I think was was one of the most positive sides was now like with usable, I could definitely spend more time with my family than I could with cobalt, but now I could spend even more time with them, and and um yeah, and now I have a second kid, so that's it makes it even greater, right? But but yeah, so so yeah, it's I think it w it was a great day, but uh it wasn't like I was already living a good life, uh, so it wasn't like changing my life significantly.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

So now you're in this post-exit chapter, you're consulting companies on product-led growth, sharing your knowledge, traveling, like you said, spending time with family. Yeah, you you're basically retired. So, what does a typical week look like for you? You know, like does it feel like you finally achieve this nirvana of like ultimate freedom?

SPEAKER_00 31:53

Well, I am uh still I'm not fully retired because I'm consulting with PLG, of course.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

But only because you want to.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Because I want to. Um, but yeah, I I was uh retired for for uh at least uh one and a half years or after we sold or something or one year. What I learned, and I actually learned this back in Cobalt already, so in 2018, before I left Cobalt, I actually went on a sabbatical for six months because I was worked out, I had worked way too much and it was hurting like relations and all this kind of stuff, right? So it was like I needed a break to realize that the company can live without me. I think that's one thing I realized. And I can live a life where I'm not working and I'm actually happy. I'm traveling, I'm experiencing new stuff, I'm learning new stuff, reading books. I think I learned that from that six-month sabbatical that I don't need to work to be happy. So, so with Userflow, it already started like the flexible. That's also a part of why I joined Userflow is like, okay, now I can have an even more flexible lifestyle where I don't have to work so much. Um and then when we exited, it was amazing to not work at all and and live this kind of sabbatical lifestyle where we just travel. We decided uh my family and I went decided to go to some further away places like Australia and French Polnisha and this kind of stuff, right? So you could you could go a bit further away and not be in the same time zone as the US. So I think for me it was not like I missed working, I really just kept on enjoying my life. I I hear a lot of founders like they sell the company and then they have to get quickly back to building a new company because they kind of miss working or having a purpose. And I think for me that the purpose was just, you know, work doesn't have to be there to have a purpose. You can do exercise, you can enjoy time with your family, you can travel. And I and I think that's part of what I learned from from that sabbatical back in 2018 is there are equally important things in life uh than uh doing work.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

I mean, now with all this cool AI stuff happening and the world is growing at an exponential pace, there's all this new technology coming up. Are you having conversations with yourself at all about whether you're gonna start building again, or is this just a completely new chapter of your life where you want to just focus on you, your family, and and just have fun?

SPEAKER_00 34:15

No, I'm I'm definitely staying connected to what's going on. Uh, I think I need I I want to do that because uh it's also just to stay up to date on what's going on. I think even if I'm not gonna do a new startup, it's uh you need to be aware of what's happening with AI because it's gonna impact uh everybody in the world, what you can do and and how the world's gonna function in the future. So it's important to stay up to date on what's going on. So I am playing with with AI tools, and then I I am thinking sometimes maybe we should do you know one more startup. Sebastian and I often talk about it. Uh, and especially when you see these like high, high growth stories where it's a lot of it is product led, right? It's uh lovable is product led, Gen Spark is product-led. It's these highly product-led motions, and that's amazing that that uh this combination of AI and product led is really kicking it. And and and I think Sebastian and I would fit perfectly in that world. But I also know that once you start on a on a company, it is gonna be a lot of work, especially in the beginning, to build the initial audience, build the first customers, get them to use the product, find that product market fit. Uh, and it's not just a walk in the park. We were lucky with Userflow, but even Userflow, you know, did take some work in the beginning. So, so yeah, I think I always have that in the back of my mind that yes, it's everything is very exciting now, but it it's also gonna take a lot of work to actually run a company. And right now I'm much happier doing more exercise, enjoying time with my family, and these kind of things. So, so I don't think I'm ready to do anything right now.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

So, when you think about your purpose, right? What is your purpose now versus you know what it was before and and like how has it shifted over time, if at all?

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Yeah, purpose, it's a hard word. What is your purpose, right? Uh I think there's definitely a chase for financial freedom has always been there now when you have it. You don't have to think about it. And I think many founders actually struggle when they achieve if that was the ultimate goal and they achieve it, they struggle with what's gonna be my next goal. Uh right. But for me, achieving financial freedom was just a sub goal to the ultimate goal, which is then I can do whatever I want, right? Like I can uh exercise, I can spend time with my family, I can travel when I want, these kind of things, right? For me, that's at least for now, more than enough to enjoy life. So I think that's that's my purpose right now, is just uh travel as much as possible, spend time with family and uh keep on learning new stuff uh and exercise. I think exercise is very underrated. In I think many startup founders, and I I know I did at Cobalt, stop doing exercise when they are building companies and you become super unhealthy, and it's not good for you or for the company because you actually think better when you're healthy. And so it's just one of those things that now I have the freedom to do that much more again. I I'm much happier.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

And what matters most to you now, like that maybe you didn't care about before?

SPEAKER_00 37:34

I didn't have a family before, so I didn't uh family is definitely family is definitely the most important thing uh for me now. And then uh yeah, as I said, traveling and and exercise and and that kind of freedom to do whatever you want is is highly important.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

So, how do you define success today, after that entire journey, and like as compared to when you first moved to San Francisco in 2013?

SPEAKER_00 38:01

I think ultimately it's it's actually the same in some ways. It is, and I achieved it, right? I achieved the freedom to be able to do what I want. Uh and I think that was also the goal. When I initially started Cobalt together with my uh three friends, it was also what we were pursuing, right? Of course, we wanted to build a great company, become, you know, build a large company, but but ultimately there was also this pursuit of financial freedom and be able to basically be able to do what you want, right? So I think back then it was the success criteria, and today it's the success criteria. You can say maybe even in Accenture, it was also the success criteria to become a CEO. And that back then I had like an idea that that would mean that you would have financial freedom. But actually, what I've learned over the years is if you are CEO of a large company, you might have financial means to do everything you want, but you have no freedom because you're uh working all the time. Uh and that's not success to me.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

Absolutely. Well, Esmin, thank you so much for this conversation today.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

Yeah, thanks for spending time with me. Real quick, if what we talked about today resonated with you, the best thing you can do to pay it forward is to share it with someone you think would enjoy it too. The only way this podcast grows is by word of mouth. Whether that's a review, a post, or even a text to a friend, it would mean the world to me and would help me keep this podcast going. Hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. And head over to profitlet.fm for show notes. If you want to connect or share feedback, I'd love to hear from you. Find me at melissaquan.com. That's M-E-L-I-S-S-A-K-W-A-N.com. Thanks for listening. Bye now.