What should founders actually do after they exit?

It’s the last slide on the pitch deck for a reason. We’ll raise all this money, build this amazing business and then we’ll sell it and everyone will take their money. Simple as that. What will the founders do next? Who cares.

I find it baffling that we have so little discussion about what happens to founders after an exit. There’s no right way to navigate the transition, and no matter whether the payout you get means you’re set up for life or not, at some point you’re fully out, and have to face the question of ‘what next?’

In my own experience and from hearing the experiences of my peers, nobody seems to get it quite right (I wrote previously about how many founders are unhappy with their exits).

After I exited Sanctus, the coaching company I launched in 2016, I felt anxious from day one. Seeing more cash than I’d ever seen before in my personal account did nothing for me. Rationally my brain was trying to tell me that I could relax and breathe easy, but emotionally I was already ill at ease about what I’d do next. 

Some founders have a really clean break. Others stick around for a while. Some end up half in and half out. I stayed on the board of Sanctus for a couple of years in an ‘advisory’ role. It didn’t suit me at all. It annoyed me watching other people play around with the business I started.

I fell into my next opportunity — to write a masters in entrepreneurship course with University of Staffordshire — I took a break and went travelling for four months with my wife. But even though I was only doing a couple of calls a week, I was still on. I checked my emails every day, I was still stressed. I took heed of absolutely none of the advice I would give to others.

Now that long term contract I got off the back of my exit is coming to an end, the void I’ve avoided is in front of me again. It’s vulnerable and exposing, because I’ve always been someone who’s set out a clear path and walked it. That’s a big part of the founder energy — telling the people around you exactly what you are going to do and just doing it. Yet I know I truly need to enter a period in my life after 13 years in startups where I genuinely, hand on heart, do not know what I want to do or what will come out of it. 

You can get away with not entering these deep periods of dark unknown as a founder. You can bounce from one mission to another, one startup to the next. Some seem to be able to do that. Yet most founders I know, especially the ones that seem content as serial founders need a period to totally disconnect and then a period of transition before they go again (if at all).

With that in mind, this is what I’ll do differently, and what I recommend other founders to do after an exit. 

• Have a clean break. Personally I wouldn’t take a board seat in the company I sold. Unless it was part of my package and I had to. I found the grey area of “am I in or am I out” too confusing.
• Get a new email address and spend time migrating everything over to it.
• Have a good leaving party/goodbye ceremony. It was Covid and I never did this. I hugely regret it.
• Take a proper break. Depending on your cash situation, take a clearly defined period of time totally off. I mean completely, fully off everything. Social media, email, work.
• Take transition time. The transition is different from the break. The break is a full reset. The transition is the corridor into the next bit. Again, you can give yourself a clear amount of time here. You can be more active during this period though — play with new technology, learn new skills, connect with your network, do some paid work, do some pro bono work, write, play, think, read.
• Do stuff you’ve been putting off. Get married. Have a birthday party. Visit that Aunty. Go to Patagonia. Use the time to get back to yourself again and away from the founder identity you had.
• Keep structure. Meditation, gym run, walk — whatever it is — use the structure of wellbeing practices so that you don’t get lost in limbo and you still have something to get up for everyday.

Remember, the exit isn’t the end. It’s a new beginning. How to navigate these new beginnings is just as important as getting to the end and exiting.