Best quote from Lloyed:

“I became depressed after I got the money and eventually left the company. I was too emotionally attached to it, which is a learning I had to go through. And it was also haunting me that being in the Bay Area, all my neighbors are founders, VCs, or big tech executives. 

“They all asked me. ” When are you going to do the next big one? An exit is never enough. I call it “unicorn porn.”  The media has perpetuated this addiction to unicorn porn. We all hear about the rare unicorns, but in reality, the world is run by camels, horses, and donkeys.

“So I was going crazy. And my wife who is a doctor told me to see a therapist. I did see a therapist and now I’m in a great spot. Demons were just my demons. Whatever. And that helped me get to my current happy phase and prioritize my family and my health for the first time.”

In this episode, Lloyed explains:

• How Boast was created starting as a services solution that transitioned to an automated product over years
• Why they stayed away from raising funding at first, then sold a piece of the company to a growth equity partner after they had grown to $10M ARR
• How their active Traction community was a key part of their efficient growth formula
• How Lloyed’s’ immigrant parents and professional wife perceived his startup experiments and then his windfall partial exit
• Why he and his cofounder took growth equity capital to take money off the table and find a new CEO
• How growth equity investors are different than private equity and venture capital investors
• How his life-threatening COVID experience finally changed his addition to work to focus on his family and his health with the help of a therapist