The Limitless Mindset: How AI is Rapidly Transforming Preventive Medicine

In this episode, Alex Cardon shares his inspiring journey from founding multiple companies to building Limitless, a health-tech platform making preventive blood testing accessible across Europe. Discover his insights on entrepreneurship, health, family, and the Belgian startup ecosystem.

Key Topics

• Alex's motivation behind creating Limitless to democratize preventive health
• The concept and functionality of Limitless blood testing service
• How Alex's personal health experience inspired his entrepreneurial ventures
• Differences between attempts and successful companies in Alex’s journey
• The importance of planning, scenario analysis, and legal agreements when working with friends
• Strategies for balancing entrepreneurship, family life, and personal well-being
• The Belgian startup landscape and how regulations impact entrepreneurship
• Future ambitions for Limitless and regional expansion plans
• Lessons from Alex's diverse business ventures in loyalty programs, pet food, and health tech
• Books and routines that inspire Alex’s focus and resilience

Notable Quotes

• "Act today, not in the future, to be better tomorrow."
• "Longevity implies waiting, prevention is acting now."
• "A quitter never wins and a winner never quits."

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

So the idea is to really uh make it possible for for I would say hundred thousand of people to have access to prevention as I did at uh relative low cost. Because the chance I had to go to a functional doctor and discover high cardiovascular risico, I wanted to make it uh available to um much more people. And so that that's the idea, and to be so I would say the leader in Europe of prevention health.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Welcome to Pulse by Alpha Wire, the podcast where science and education meet cutting-edge technology and artificial intelligence. My name is Aldo DePop, and each week I sit down with innovators, thinkers, and doers who are working to change our world for the better. Together we explore their journeys, uncover the lessons they've learned, and take entrepreneurial pulse that drives them on their path to success. What if you knew something was wrong with you before you even felt it? In this episode, I sit down with Alex Cardon, serial entrepreneur and founder of Limitless. Alex and I explore how he is making preventative health accessible across Europe. After starting multiple successful ventures, such as Customer and Dog Chef, and a personal health wake-up call, Alex is on a mission to simplify blood testing. He wants to help people to act today, not years from now. Enter limitless. Alex and I dive into the realities of building startups, talk about failures and lessons learned, to finding the right product market fit. We share honest insight on finding co-founders, working on the right family balance, and navigating the Belgian startup ecosystem. Surely learned a lot from this interview and sincerely hope you will as well. Enjoy my interview with Alex Cardon. Yes, and it is a lovely Friday afternoon, and for me even lovelier because I get to talk to an entrepreneur that I personally deeply admire, an entrepreneur even from my home country, Alex Cardon, my home country of Belgium, sorry for those who do not know. Alex Cardon, a very warm welcome to you.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Hello, Aldo. I'm very happy to be here with you.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Yes, and Alex, we know each other through a variety of ways. I've been following your journey as an entrepreneur, always in great admiration. You are, I think, a serial entrepreneur. If you look into a dictionary and try to look up serial entrepreneur, there will be a picture of you because you're now already on your third company by my count. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 2:49

It's the third company. No, it's not the third attempt. There were some more attempts, but I would say, yeah, it's the third company.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Oh, that's a very interesting thing. I want to talk about attempts versus companies, because I know that many of our listeners are also aspiring entrepreneurs, maybe entrepreneurs themselves. And we also want to know about what have you attempted versus where you've been successful. But you've been successful in three companies. And of course, we want to go uh through all of them, but mainly I want to also highlight your current company because that's a very exciting one, with I must say, also a very exciting name, Limitless. Tell me more about Limitless.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Yeah, so uh Limitless is the third company. The idea of Limitless is to actually make it possible for members to order a blood test online, go to a lab uh where they give their blood, and then our medical team gets the results, and with AI they build a personal action plan where the member gets advice on lifestyle, supplements, nutrition, and the idea is that he retests himself every year so that he can stay in good health.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

That's amazing. Is it almost a daily checkup system to see where you're at with your health targets?

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Well, it's a yearly checkup based on blood, because on blood you can you can check a lot into your biomarkers, and we test between 60 and 140 biomarkers. So we have three plans one with 60, one with 100, one with 140, and that's up to the member to decide.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Okay. And so what gave you the idea, and now for our listeners, because the company that you kind of founded, you know, very successfully and that is still growing, but that you've am I correct to say Exited is a company in dog food. Is that correct? Which is a completely different uh different end of the spectrum, I would say, of entrepreneurship. So my question would be how do you pick your business? How do you how do you come up with these ideas?

SPEAKER_02 4:46

So actually, for limitless, I went three years ago, I went to a functional doctor, and a functional doctor is a doctor which sees your body as a 360-degree approach, and he did like um yeah, a very thorough uh blood analysis where it took me about uh 14 vials of blood, and um he discovered that I had a high cardiovascular risk. And I was a bit um, I would say, I thought it was interesting because there are solutions to that, so now I know what I have to do to decrease that risk. But before that, I went to a regular doctor uh who only tested 30 PO markers, and he didn't discover that. And so because of that, I was a bit like, hmm, the functional doctor is like a very expensive doctor. Also, with the biomarkers I got from him, I decided to put them in a ChatGPT two years ago to see, okay, do I get an action plan over that? And ChatGPT was not, I would say, mature enough at that point. And uh a year ago, I put the same biomarkers into ChatGPT and I got a full action plan, including the cardiovascular risk I had. And then I thought, okay, ChatGPT is ready to really analyze biomarkers, but there are sometimes some hallucinations. And then I thought, okay, but can't we, you know, make it possible for more people to have access to the same quality as a functional doctor, but at a cheaper price. And so what we do with Limitless, we make it more accessible because yes, AI is helping. So there is, I would say, the the report that is written is done by AI, validated by doctors, but so there is a cheaper cost. And we also have price deductions with the labs because we have high volume that we bring to them. And so this makes it possible to actually reduce the cost of a functional doctor by two or three times.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Wow, that's quite a difference that you're making. And also so great to hear that it was your personal experience. So you wanted to know more about yourself and traditional medicine, like normal doctors, didn't give you those answers. So you felt you wanted to dig deeper and then weighing out the cost of it next to the benefits made you want to jump into limitless.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Exactly. Because I think there was as my third company, I wanted to more like being into an impact company to really make a difference. And in Belgium, we have a very, very good, I would say, clinical system. When you get sick, uh you get really well taken care of. But before getting sick, so it's called prevention, there is not a lot that is being done. And so that's where I want to create an impact, but uh by making it um preventive medicine that is accessible to a lot of people by reducing the cost price.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah, and then the name limitless, I mean, I think it goes without saying, will you have limitless options? Shall we be forever be healthy? Is it an ode to longevity? Or or is that point?

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Yeah. Well, I I'm a bit against the word longevity or the sector of longevity, because longevity gives you the feeling that you have to act in the future to live longer. What I believe is that you have to act today to be better tomorrow. And that's a big difference. That's why Limitless, the company of your blood test analysis, is not really into the longevity sector. The idea is more into the prevention, is to try to see in your blood if you have some shortcomings or certain biomarkers like vitamin D, vitamin B12, are you pre-diabetic or not, so that you can act today and not in the future.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Yeah. What I find what I admire so much about you is that you've and correct me if I'm wrong, but you founded three companies and they're of an entirely different nature. So your first one was in was it banking? Was it in was it more finance?

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Yes, so the the first one was a digital loyalty card. Okay. That uh I found that when I was 27 um with three other friends, and we sold it to ing. Um and there the idea was more, it was one of my friends who uh I was working at a strategic consultant uh at Roland Burger at that time, and a friend of mine had the idea, and he came and said, Look, do you want to build this? Uh and as I was 27, either you think consulting for I would say, and you become a partner or you become an entrepreneur. And I this the word startup, even at that time, was about 15 years ago, didn't even exist. It was uh the iPad 2 just came out. So that's that's where we we built this this this company, and it was the idea of another friend. Then after we sold to uh to ING, um I wanted to rebuild something. Uh and the first idea we had is as you know, HelloFresh, we wanted to cook for humans and and actually offer ready-made meals. But instead of cooking for humans, we started to cook fresh food for dogs. And we thought, okay, let's start with the dogs, and then we can evolve to the humans after. And actually, we never uh started cooking for humans because Dog Chef was a real success. Uh, we're now more doing more than 25 million euro revenue, and I didn't exit it. Uh, I became president and uh I delegated the operational role to another CEO.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

So again, so my hats off to you because these are and I would say that the the link between the three companies it's it's a subscription model. What I like is is to have um I would say recurrency on the future. And so for digital loyalty card, there was a monthly membership for the retailers paying for our loyalty system. For dog chef, it's a membership where um dog owners have uh dog food uh I would say uh arriving at their doorstep every month. And here with Limitless, it's a yearly recurring uh membership.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Yeah. Where does your journey start? Because I mean I could you could also think like, okay, I've done this, been there, I'm gonna do something completely different. I'm not gonna be an entrepreneur, I'm just gonna be, you know, maybe a consultancy gig or work work for a company, maybe a bank or whatever, but that doesn't seem to be your choice. You do not seem to be someone who who wants to slow down. You seem someone who likes to, you know, uh get into in in the midst of the fight and and really be an entrepreneurial gladiator. Where does that energy come from? Or or am I am I am I correct in saying that?

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Yeah, it's uh it's uh it's it's a good question. Uh I never I thought about it, of course, but um I get really easily bored. So when when I get bored, then I start to have IDs and then I want to act upon them. Okay and it's not really a strategy, it's more like let's do it. You know, you see there is a there is a gap in the market or nobody's doing this this business, so I I want to jump in it.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Yeah. And you started saying like, well, okay, three companies work, but I also had many ideas. How kind of when do you know that an idea isn't going to work? Because you I can imagine that if you have an idea, you start and there's something happens that you say, okay, this is this is a dead end.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Yeah, the thing is difficult because when you you have an idea, let's say, and then uh you you're never really sure if it will work or if it won't work. What you know is that at some point there's a product market fit where clients want to to pay you. But you might have stopped too early. That's uh with Edison who tried apparently thousand times before he invented the lamp, but it's good he kept on going. But in between Dog Chef, uh in between the customer, the company we sold of the digital loyalty cards and Docchev, with my with two other friends, we tried two different companies. One we stopped after three months, and the other we stopped after six months. And it wasn't, I would say you put the cons and the pros next to each other, and then you decide, okay, this is not gonna be uh a terrific business, so let's let's move on.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

And you say friends, so have you like did what DocChef did you start at with friends as well? And is Limitless a friend endeavor as well, or is it you solo?

SPEAKER_02 12:42

So for uh customer, the first company, we were four friends. With DocChef, we were two, and now I'm solo founder.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

And what is it like to work with friends? Because I mean, I have the experience of starting something with friends, I like it, but it's also sometimes hard because you also need to give each other feedback like, hey, listen, you haven't done anything. How does that work?

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Well, let's say I have uh I have friends which are workouts, so they always do something. Okay. Um, one important thing we did was it's a shareholders' agreement. And that was what we did with the first company, the four of us, we got into uh long evening and even several evenings, where we discussed all the possible outcomes. Like if somebody wants to live in three years, what happens? If somebody dies next year, does his wife uh inherit shares? Um, so we try to think about all the possible outcomes. If you start to work 9 to 5, what do we do? And there were always like good leaver, bad leaver, a lot of clauses that you can have in a shareholders' agreement. And once all of those, I would say, elements have been discussed and written on paper, you're gonna be fine in your relationship.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Yeah. And so it's always worked like that. So you have this um grounded level, like there's transparency on a certain level of what it means to be an owner or a shareholder of the company, significant shareholder of the company, and because of that, there's that understanding, and and that doesn't affect the friendship whilst you do business, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

That's the idea, to really to separate both, even if it's actually it's it's fantastic to do business with friends until it goes wrong. And so that's you have to plan what happens if it goes wrong.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Even if you hope never to get there, but it creates some sort of uh I would say peace among among your friendships, uh, that you know that you've been thinking about it.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah. And so you discuss also scenarios, potential uh um catastrophic scenarios with your friends. So, like, well, this is the worst that can happen, for instance.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Okay, yeah, but yeah, we said if you die in one year, I think that's the worst that can happen. I would say, yeah. Yeah, we even had like I think if you're uh if you're partial handicapped, let's say at 30%, yeah, then you lose 30% of your shares or something like that. I mean, it was a long time ago, but we never had to go back to that shareholders' agreement. But the point was, I believe, that when you start with friends, and most forget that they don't even write down what percent of share each has. So that's uh so that's important.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Yeah. Going back to limitless, so you are in Brussels and in Belgium, so it's it's a product for the the Belgian market, that's where you want to start. Do you have international aspirations as well?

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Yeah, the idea is to become the European platform for prevention, but indeed, we're gonna start with the the product market fit in Belgium.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

And where are you in the development? Uh you've started this journey and we've been talking about it uh bits and bobs, but uh what where are you right now in your journey?

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Yeah, so today we are uh integrating with the labs. We're gonna have uh more than uh 260 locations where people will be able to give their blood. And I would say we are in soft launch now, and we're gonna launch officially uh by the end of the of the month. So by end March 3, uh we're gonna have the official launch.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yeah. One of your talents, Alex, when I speak to you, is it's like it it feels like you have all the time in the world for me, but I know you're extremely busy. But whenever I contact you, you kind of try to get back to everyone. That's the kind of what I take from communicating with you. Like you try to give everyone this amount of time and attention to crack on with things. You don't linger, you don't leave things on your desk unanswered. That's that's what it feels like. Am I right in saying that? Is that a good hunch or are you always?

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Yeah, it's it's it's it's indeed the case. So I try to be zero inbox every night, no, so zero task, or at least uh every morning I started the task I want to finish in that day. I made me a promise to myself when I start as a solo founder is that I don't want to be the bottleneck of the company. And in order to also not be the bottleneck, I surrounded myself with really talented uh people. So at Limitless, we're about 20 people today, which is of course uh there's a lot of legal people, a lot of doctors, uh, product as well and marketing. But I decide to recruit really talented people to go fast and to be able not to be a bottleneck uh in the company.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Yeah. And what happens, God forbid, if you are a bottleneck talking about worst case scenarios, what would you do then?

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Well then you try to unbottle yourself. Then I I really feel I would say if I don't have enough free time, then I don't feel at ease, and then I try to uh to find solutions. What can happen is that several days in a row you're like underworked, and that's fine, then you you you overworked, so you work a lot, and then you have again free time, and then you find new activities. So it's constantly balancing between having too much and too little.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

And that's that's I would say, yeah, that's what you need to uh I would say sometimes if too much balls in the air, then you're like, okay, I'm not gonna add one ball, you solve one, you have one less, and that's how you have to juggle all the time.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

That's yeah. And and is that something that came natural to you, or is it something that you that you learned as you went along in the 15 years as an entrepreneur?

SPEAKER_02 17:57

No, that's really something something I learned. Uh uh, but first you have to learn to, yeah. Um, I would say the company is several phases. Um for me, the first phase is to have the ID, then it's really to build a team, then to have the product, then find the product market fit, then break even, and then go profitable. And that's what I've seen uh in in the two companies I did in the past. Now at Limitless, we are the beginning, of course. And you have different roles in to those uh in those uh companies, and usually I do all of them, but I do realize that if I do a role for too long, then I really want to delegate it. And I also need to delegate it. Because if you stay in a role too long, then then you become again the bottleneck, and you have to delegate that task and grow and grow constantly.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Yeah. How do you combine private life and professional life? I know you're a loving dad of three kids, right? So they need your time and attention as well, your wife as well. When do you make the call like, okay, as you say, I'm on zero inbox, zero messages in my inbox. You close your laptop and you go away with the kids. What how do you make that work?

SPEAKER_02 19:06

But let's say that I'm always connected, which is not a good thing, but but okay, I'm always connected. Yeah, but I see my wife and my kids, I could see them as a project as well. What I mean by that is it's non-negotiable that I spend time with them. Yeah. And so if I don't spend enough time with them, then I'm not accepting other projects. Otherwise, it's always an excuse not to be with them. And I love to be with them. A half one. Half one, half one, half one.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

You know, it comes up.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

But you were you were Yeah, we we if I let's say that after after uh eight years at Dog Chef as a CEO, I delegated to another CEO, became president uh or chairman, and the idea was to have a sabbatical. So we went six months to Bali and six months to uh South Africa. That's also because there I really decided to to slow down a bit, even that was very difficult for me, because that's also where I had the idea of Limitless, and I also had two others' ID before that. So again, this mind that never can stop. But I did discover the importance of recovery, and once you recovered after such a year, you have so much energy, it's uh it's really fantastic. Yeah, recruitment is is really crucial because once you have recruited someone, the journey has started with him. I would say that I do a thorough recruiting process, where first of all, myself responsible for recruiting, usually, especially in the beginning of the first recruits. I'm talking about limitless here. So you have a thorough funnel of a lot of candidates, then I interview all of them, and then I make them uh a real life case where they really have to perform, like for an IT, he had to develop an entire roadmap of what limitless would look like for a marketing, he has to develop real life ads for uh limitless, and that's where you you can see the difference between the people. Some of them will already say that they don't even want to do that, that they don't want to work for free as they call it, but then you already know the motivation. And some people go really far, and then you start to brainstorm on that with him or with that person, and then you start to see okay, how are we gonna work together as a relation, and then and then you hire them. And I would say that I had very little mishires uh on the hundreds of people that I hired. I also do uh I would say personal test, and I also do uh like a profiling assessment with some tools that they have to fill in questionnaires. Yeah, a thorough recruitment analysis and then also check the references. I also call, as I have a broad network, especially in Belgium, then I try to call people that have worked with them. Once you have recruited the person, the ideas, then I really let go. I'm not a micromanager, not at all. Maybe I should manage a bit more, but I really go for trust until I don't have the trust anymore, and then we start, I would say, going more into details into management. But when you recruit a person, I believe he should do the job better than you should do, and you should leave him the space to be able to do his job.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Yeah. A few weeks ago I had to go. Great pleasure of doing a course in entrepreneurship development at MIT. And the professor there, so it was in Boston, and the professor there, it was his way of making jokes, but he because it was a very international group of people, he kind of uh always went, like, oh, where are you from? And then he had a joke about the country. So I have Belgian nationality, I'm also British, and I was raised in the Netherlands, so I'm by no means traditional Belgian, but I of course I said I am I'm Belgian, and that to which the professor went, Oh, there's never been any successful entrepreneur out of Belgium, which was complete nonsense. But the first person I thought of was you. It's like, well, you haven't met Alex yet, right? What do you think it is? Why I'm bringing up the story is not necessarily to brown nose, as they say in the UK, but I'm kind of saying, like, what for you is Belgian entrepreneurship? Do you like someone in Boston at MIT says, oh, Belgium doesn't have a sound for me on the kind of the you know the entrepreneurial world stage?

SPEAKER_02 23:00

What what what well I think in terms of GDP uh per capita, and let's say just the region of Flanders, we must be in the top 10 of the world. So uh I think there's a lot of value that's being created. Uh it is true that we're more an SME country, and less I would say a startup scale up, uh scale up an environment like they have in the Silicon Valley, but that is changing. When you see hubs like Ghent, where they build terrific companies in SaaS for the moment, it's doing really great. We are having now, I think, seven or eight now unicorns, uh and that figure is growing every year and at a faster pace. I'm also part of uh Syndicate 1, which tried to emulate the PayPal mafia of the Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurs uh invest in a fund to fund other entrepreneurs. And those kind of initiatives are going to put Belgium more and more on the map. But it's true that in the last 40-50 years, value has really come in a tremendous value from SMEs.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

It's good that you bring in that nuance. That's good that you you you share that with me. Because to be fair, I didn't have a response for him. It's like, well, have you heard of this company or that company? I just thought of a person, which was you. But then, you know, I I kind of want to say what is he after? Like, you know, he he indeed through big companies like Uber and and Whoop, and what like he had uh all of these these words because yeah, in the US, obviously you're gonna lose if you should have talked about Abe Inbeth, which is like the the biggest brewer in the world.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

So every beer that Professor has been drinking, I imagine, is from from Belgium.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Yeah, I should have I should have countered that. Yeah, and and it's it started in Belgium, but it's that's already so massive that it merged with a Brazilian company or whatever, right? So it's yeah, but but you're right. The beers always work on an international level. I want to talk about regrets. Again, I'm going back to what I learned at MIT. There's this song of Bob Dylan, and it says, if you're not busy being born, you're busy dying, which is kind of a referral to entrepreneurship. Like, okay, if you fall over, get up, dust yourself up, and keep going, right? That's busy being born. If you stop and just stay flat on the floor, you're dying, right? That's how it was explained.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

But there's there's a lot of very difficult moments, and you always want to lie down. But the thing is, you lie down for one minute and then you get up again because there is no alternative. You cannot lie down because everybody depends on you.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Yeah. So that's what keeps you going, is other people.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

I would say yes, other people, responsibilities, uh, the project. Because if you lay down, and I I believe enormous in lead by example, if you lay down, everybody sees that. It's fine to show humanity more than in the past. In the past, it was more like, as you said, the gladiator entrepreneur, you couldn't show any weakness. Now you can, at least among co-founders, uh, you definitely show weakness. And one once a co-founder is done, you're up or the country. In terms of employees, it's more difficult. But yes, there were moments where I took my management team and said, Look, here we have an issue. If we don't solve that, and then you have to come with a strategy or a brainstorm. But you need to to get up and to propose something.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

And every entrepreneur has cars, and that's what I would say uh make us more resilient in the future. And unless you're bankrupt, I would say you can still continue, and even after bankruptcy.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Yeah. So it's also your formula to keep on moving, even if the odds are stacked against you.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Unless it is stopped, you can still continue.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

But again, as I said, I have I have uh several projects that I stopped after three months, six months, but that was not a project yet. But if you have Doc Chef and it's already six years or seven years, you don't stop that, you just keep continuing, find solutions. Uh, there's so many uh opportunities in entrepreneurship, so many ways that you can select before stopping.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yeah. I like that. And I I'd like to think that I I'm made of the same cloth, but I also sometimes have like, oh my god, it's like you know, that you're just inundated with things that are not working in your favor, and that you're like, okay, how how am I gonna get out of this? Right? So, but to keep on moving is the most important thing.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

And yeah, what I like is always to have like two good news per day and one bad news, then I'm then I'm happy. If you start to have two bad news, one good news, it's it's it's a bit more complicated. Yeah, but I also believe that after rain, there's sunshine, there's always some good news coming. But if you decide to stop, it has a self-filling prophecy, then you will stop. My phrase is like uh a quitter never wins and a winner never quits. But it depends if you quit for something else. But I would say you have a doc chef with 125 employees. If I say, look, uh we we stop and you don't give the reason, no, it has to be like uh it's either the market is stopping you or it's the banks, or but for me, I'm not gonna stop myself, no.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

Yeah. Yeah, I have a couple of questions, but I'm also conscious of your time. One of them is going back to Belgium, country that I dearly love, and that I see is really putting itself on the map on the level of entrepreneurship. You've already spoken about the city of Ghent and these initiatives and unicorns growing there. Belgium at the same time, I think is also a complex country, right? It has you know several governments, there's you know, there are loads of things. What do you think should change there? If anything, do you think the Belgian government should do more to make uh entrepreneurship flourish, or do you feel there's there's enough people just don't know where to look?

SPEAKER_02 28:37

But maybe the government should do less. Or less. Yeah, yeah, it should do less. We should we should should have less government. I just read an article this morning that compared Belgian politicians to Dutch politicians, and the the cost of the state and per capita or uh cost structure is way too high. So maybe we should do less. Do less and let enterprise less regulation, uh I would say less subsidies, uh and just have more uh living playing game.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Yeah. Well, do less, but you you hinted earlier in our interview, you said like if you get sick in Belgium, people take very good care of you. For us in the UK, that's a little bit of a concern. My wife, who's French, says if we get sick here, what are we going to do? Right? Because our you know maybe you will work. Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Indeed, there is there's a complexity here where there is a social network which is very, very important. Yeah. And I believe that everybody deserves to have a social network, uh social, I would say, yeah, safety net. The problem is uh we still need to be able to pay it. And if too many people land into the safety net because of burnouts, because of sickness, well, then there's an imbalance and and then you put the entire system at risk. But the complexity is certainly there. Uh I think there's sometimes a bit of too much of a reflex to say, look, we're gonna we're gonna tax more instead of looking inward and do some restructuring. I think uh both should be done. And I think it's very sane to also restructure like every now and then. And it has been a long time in Belgium that we're always restructuring, but not probably maybe enough uh that we really see this this cost structure. As I said, compared to the Netherlands, apparently we're much higher and with the same countries. So there's some benchmarking to be done with other countries, some best practices maybe to check. But uh uh the state is trying to do it, uh it's it's not easy, but uh but it's a tough project.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah. Do you think that complexity uh does it rhyme with what you're trying to achieve with limitless? You know, is Belgium an easy country to start with, with limitless? I mean you know the country well, so that works in your advantage.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

For me, it's easy. Uh first I'm bilingual, so you already have the touch and the French part. Um so I think it's a difficult country to enter indeed. Yeah. Uh apparently I heard that some FMCG companies love to start their products in Belgium because if it works in Belgium, it works also outside of Belgium.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

It works everywhere. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

Yeah, yeah. I've one more question about limitless, and then one more about you personally. Limitless in I I know this is like a it's it sounds like a job interview question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. Limitless in five years, where are we? What what is it looking?

SPEAKER_02 31:26

So the idea is to really uh make it possible for for I would say hundred thousand of people to have access to prevention as I did at uh a relative low cost. Because the chance I had to go to a functional doctor and discover high cardiovascular risico, I wanted to make it uh available to um much more people. And so that that's the idea, and to be so I would say the leader in Europe of uh prevention health.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Yeah. So leader in Europe and so Europe being is the UK still Europe for you or is it is it? UK is definitely Europe, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Because UK also is very much more advanced on the prevention side than than the mainland Europe. So UK is definitely part of it.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

I think the consumer here in the UK would be very interested in a product like Limitless because of the earlier mentioned concern about the public healthcare system. Even though it isn't bad in and of itself, it it doesn't compare to what you see in France and Belgium. Um and I I think there's a correlation, of course, in paying tax and all those things, but yeah, there's a significant difference. So the private money that is kind of allocated to people's health for people who have that budget, there's a bigger appetite, definitely for sure. Stepping away from limitless, going back to you, what are you most proud of, Alex?

SPEAKER_02 32:45

Good question. Um, I would say the the family that I'm building every day. Because for me, you can be the best entrepreneur, but when I come home and I close the door, what I see is my family, and that's that's for me the dearest because as I've seen it's my third company. So companies they come, they go. But your family, yeah, it stays. And for me, it's it's really great to see how my children are evolving, my wife, how happy we are together, because that's for me that's true happiness.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Yeah, that is such a beautiful answer. And I see if you're listening to this podcast, I see it's very sincere, Alex. It's uh thank you, thank you for sharing that. And I I have it the same that you know my family is everything, and yes, entrepreneurial journey one after the other, that's great, that's great energy, and we want to achieve that, we want to be successful, but your family is is the core also of who you are, so that's also makes it very important.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Yeah, I think it's a big basis of the pyramid of my energy. If if I don't have the family, I I I would be a fire. I don't know if I would have the energy to to be an entrepreneur because I would be like, what is the aim? Why would I do it?

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Yeah, do you feel you've changed in that? Because 15 years ago there was no family yet, am I correct?

SPEAKER_02 33:54

Or was there Yeah it's uh the kids started 10 years ago. Yeah, 10 years ago. I had kids just after I sold my first business.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Yeah. But has fatherhood changed you, you would say?

SPEAKER_02 34:03

I would never have thought it would it would be so fun. Uh and I would have liked it so much. Yeah, so it it really it really is an enhancement.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Yeah. I read somewhere it becoming a parent, father or mother, makes you more empathic. It makes you better understand, you know, how the world works, and I I think that's definitely true for me, right? Fatherhood helps you uh very much on that level.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Yeah, and you also have a responsibility towards another generation, so you have to take care better of the planet, you also have to understand the next generation to see what are their dreams, which are not always your dreams. So you have to adapt. And I see parenthood me more as a coach. And I also joke with my wife saying, actually, you have three startups, because I have three kids. So I said my wife that she has three startups, and I only have one, or at least three companies, and and and I see her really dearly be with the kids, and it's really a joy every day.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Yeah, it definitely is. Yeah. My two very last questions, Alex, and thank you so much for your for your time once again. One is about reading. So on your journey, founding three companies, selling one of them, and then growing the other one to such great heights, being the president of the company now, now starting a new journey. Has there been any book that the Alex of 15 years ago had read, or you know, maybe the Alex of today, it doesn't really matter, that you really say, okay, that was a great read, and maybe also to inspire other people who are listening or are looking to uh maybe embark on a same career path like yours?

SPEAKER_02 35:31

Yes, it's a good question. I have I think I have five books that I really like, but uh I have to seen out the list because it's a long time ago that I've read them. But uh there is the one thing, which is really uh a great book about focus, then there's Measure What Matters, which is about the OKRs that they implement at Google and that we implemented uh at Docchev and really was uh successful. Then uh recently I read the book of Outlive of Peter Atia, which is a tremendous book about prevention and health. Um those about the three books that I would uh recommend.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

We'll be sure to include them in our show notes and share them uh with people. The one thing sounds amazing. Focus, I definitely need that. That sounds like a great book. Uh yeah, OKRs. Uh I don't know so much about it, but that uh definitely measuring your growth, that sounds great. And for you as a as a health tech entrepreneur, I I guess that the last book is is very spot on. So all great recommendations. And then my very last question. I'm curious, this is my own little research, informal research. So every guest I ask this question, it's about the morning and morning routines. Do you have a morning routine? And if so, do you care to share?

SPEAKER_02 36:39

I definitely have a have a morning routine, I even have an evening routine. Yes, my my morning routine is uh it takes about one hour thirty. I'm not always being able to do it, not all parts of it, but there's a part of taking uh supplements, there's a part of doing meditation, there's a part of doing mobility slash strength exercises, there's of course taking breakfast with the family and preparing my day. So yes, it's uh there is a morning routine. So what time do you get up? I try to get up at 6 50. Also, what I believe at the morning routine it shouldn't be like a strict one. What I mean by that is you can have a morning routine, and if you fail to do it one day, it it's fine. In the past, I always was sad about like, oh, this is a bad beginning of the day. No, actually, when I skip my morning routine, it's because I've got something super exciting coming up and that I want to start directly with that one. Or because we had a fantastic evening uh the next day and that I couldn't wake up early. So I'm quite flexible on this morning routine.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

You're also saying don't beat yourself up about it. Just you know, just move on, and you know, there's a next morning and other things to enjoy. Yeah, don't be too hard on yourself. I hear that often.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Do be be flexible, just do your best and and and then all will be fine.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Just do your best and all will be fine. On that note, uh, thank you so very much for your time, Alex Cardon. I think we're gonna hear a lot more about you and Limitless, I have no doubt. Thanks so much for your time.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

Yeah, thank you, Aldo. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_01 38:13

You've listened to Pulse by Alpha Wire, produced by Natalie Piles and Amela Faisal, with great music, The Optimist, written by Holly Hamill, performed and produced by Alo. Episodes hosted weekly by me, Aldo DePau.