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.
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(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:
Connect with our host:
- Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
- Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.comand 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.
- Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.
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