How I got here
I didn’t study founder dependence.
I lived it.
I grew up around founder-led businesses. From the age of three, my mum and dad were building businesses together. Dad would get home late, and after dinner they would spend most evenings at the dining room table quoting, invoicing and keeping everything going. The businesses provided a good living, but at the expense of freedom. Eventually, my dad lost both his passion and his energy, and when they sold, too much of the value still depended on him.
I watched all of that happen. Then I went and did the same thing. At 19, I took over a struggling engineering business and spent the next three decades growing it into a successful security technology company.
By 2017, the pressure had caught up with us. We had to make redundancies, cut contracts and rebuild how the business worked. I had a team of 40 people, but in reality, I was still the leadership team. I had lost my passion, and the business I had spent my life building was not yet giving me the freedom or value I had hoped for.
In 2021, I found EOS and began building the aligned, high-trust and accountable leadership team the business really needed. Within two years, my working hours at ATEC halved, then halved again. Today, ATEC has more than 50 people, it is profitable, and my role is focused on helping shape where it goes next. Founder Trap exists because I found a better way through. Now I help other founders build a business they can be involved in because they choose to be, not because everything depends on them.
