Seven Years After the Exit – 10 Things I Wish I Had Known
Life After the Exit: What Really Happens When Founders Sell Their Companies — and How to Find Purpose Again
Hey everybody,
Last week I met a founder in Stockholm, and we had one of those conversations that leave you with a great feeling of connection and gratitude + inspire you to think and dream bigger.
Johan Nordenström’s (current founder of Medoma) story was similar to many of us at the beginning of his career.
He studied at Stockholm School of Economics (together with Andreas & John, founders of Agaton, a startup I invested in, and the ones who introduced me to Johan), and went on to work in Investment Banking at Merril Lynch in London.
As many of us that went the corporate route early in our careers, he hated it (although I’m sure he learnt a lot).
However, he found an alternative route: his mom had a small 1 on 1 marketing company (with 8 employees), and he convinced her to let him run it.
He took the company from 8 employees to +100, becoming the leader distributor of Adobe in the Nordics and finally exiting the company to Accenture.
If building your own company is hard, growing a family business being a kid just out of uni & first job is unbeatable.
Johan told me he didn’t know much about the business but he was great in 2 things: he spoke english and was great negotiating: this is how he closed the Adobe agreement.
After exiting, he felt he lost a big part of his life and wrote an article that went super viral on Sweden’s news, and he was kind to write it now here.
It reminded me of the blog the founder of Loom posted when he sold the company for $1 billion, saying he had no idea what to do with his life.
Enjoy and let me know your thoughts.
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Seven Years After the Exit – 10 Things I Wish I Had Known
Seven years ago, my family, business partners and I sold our company, Kaplan, to Accenture – the world’s largest IT consulting firm, listed on the NYSE. I was 36 then. Now I’m 43. Older, yes, but hopefully a little clearer about what truly matters.
Here are ten things I now know about life on the other side of an exit.
1. The post-exit blues are real.
When I meet entrepreneurs who’ve just sold, my reaction isn’t “congratulations” anymore. It’s “give yourself time – you’ll be fine.”
Selling a company isn’t just about cashing out. It also means losing your community, identity, and a big part of your purpose. Almost every founder I know who’s been through an exit has felt that void in some form. Yes, it’s a privileged problem. But it’s real.
At some point, you’ll need to fill that gap. Some start another company. Some stay with the acquirer (rarely for long). Others take time with their family. Golf or endless vacations are not the answer however. I’ve seen that movie. It rarely ends well.
2. Don’t underestimate the role of luck.
Hard work matters. Grit matters. But so does chance. However smart or disciplined you were, something outside your control tilted in your favor. You stood on the shoulders of others – probably more than you realize. Don’t forget that. Stay humble.
3. The greatest privilege of entrepreneurship is choosing who you work with.
When you’re running a company, you get to surround yourself with people you admire and want to spend your days with. That privilege is easy to overlook until it’s gone – replaced by an online broker account log-in where you can check your exit proceeds every 5 minutes to see if they are still there.
If you’re building something right now – whether you’re riding high or slogging through a terrible year – remember this: the journey, and the people you share it with, are the real reward.
4. What got you here won’t get you there.
Anyone willing to endure the punishing journey of building a company—the stress, the risks, the sleepless nights—doesn’t do it for comfort. They do it for the chance to shape something, to dream, and to grow alongside remarkable people they’ve chosen to work with. The kind of personality most likely to succeed at building a business, exit or not, is rarely the kind that finds lasting happiness in an endless vacation once the company is sold.
5. Life is built in the everyday – you cant spend yourself out of that
Treat yourself to something—you’ve earned it. But remember: life is built in the everyday. Morgan Housel, in The Psychology of Money, describes the phenomenon of Hedonistic Adaptation: our ability to adjust far more quickly than we think to higher levels of consumption. That new car won’t feel quite the same after a few months. The lake view isn’t as breathtaking once you’ve lived with it for a while. The next higher level becomes the new normal, and more material ambitions appear. Repeat. Forever.
6. Being skilled at building companies is not the same as being skilled at investing.
And the reverse is equally true. Very few people know how to build a business attractive enough to be sold. That makes your experience rare. Rarer still is combining capital with hands-on operational involvement. Perhaps that combination is your future superpower.
Just don’t assume that building a successful company automatically makes you good at investing. Strong entrepreneurs sometimes grow into skilled investors. The reverse is far less common.
7. Learn to understand your new capital.
You’ve turned an illiquid asset into cash. Don’t rush to tie it up again. You’ll get plenty of offers to do just that.
Also: a larger lump sum is not the same as a salary. A salary disappears the day the job ends. And it tends to be consumed. A higher salary not seldom simply increases the eagerness to consume, with net savings at a constant low. A capital base on the contrary, managed patiently, can generate returns for the rest of your life. Think of every dollar you don’t spend as an employee working for you, day and night.
Compounding works quietly, then suddenly. Not in a straight line – good years and bad will come – but with discipline, it can build something far greater than
you imagine. Warren Buffett called it the eighth wonder of the world. Now it’s in your hands.
8. The most valuable thing you gained is time.
Money can buy you many things, but its greatest gift is freedom: to decide what you do, when you do it, and who you do it with.
Guard that freedom carefully. Don’t trade it for a bigger house, flashier cars, or illiquid bets that tie you down again. The real dividend of an exit is the ability to choose. Protect it as if your life depended on it.
9. Experiences beat possessions.
Research shows that experiences contribute more to long-term well-being than material things. A house that becomes a gathering place for friends and family can possibly count as an experience, if you really have that “upgrade the house itch”, but for the love of god, be very careful of what you allow yourself to include in the “experience account”.
10. Nothing matters more than family and friends.
But you knew that already. An exit doesn’t change that – but it does make it clearer.
The author is a repeat offender when it comes to building companies. After exiting Kaplan in 2018, he co-founded the healthtech company Medoma in 2021 together with two colleagues. Medoma offers an AI-driven SaaS solution that helps healthcare providers address the global care crisis by shifting more treatments into patients’ homes. He has recovered from his exit, rediscovered his sense of purpose—and now dances his way to work every Monday.
Hope you enjoyed it!
If you want to reach out to Johan you can in his Linkedin!
Let me know your thoughts!
Cheers,
-Guillermo
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Agree with the sentiments and experienced it first hand. Crafting a vision statement for myself is helping me a lot in my next step. Still figuring it out 2.5 years after my exit.
Great insights. Thank you for sharing!