'Life Forced a New Purpose on Me'
Episode - 39
'Life Forced a New Purpose on Me'
My friend Jonathan has chosen to remain anonymous in exchange for stepping outside his comfort zone — and that he did!
Eight years ago, he began a gradual exit from his incredibly successful, bootstrapped company.
This strategic approach had an unexpected benefit: it smoothed his post-exit transition, making it more manageable both emotionally and financially.
His search for a new purpose — a lengthy and confusing path for most — became clear and compelling after his family was hit by a mental health issue.
In this interview, Jonathan shares raw, unconventional wisdom about the advantages of bootstrapping and exiting in stages, and how painful personal challenges gave him a new purpose and source of fulfillment.
What We Discussed:
00:00:17: Guest Jonathan's business background
00:01:01: Transition after selling the company
00:01:20: Jonathan's unconventional wisdom
00:02:08: Jonathan's previous careers
00:03:06: Motivation for starting a new business
00:03:53: Challenges faced in hierarchical systems
00:04:44: Importance of money in decisions
00:05:47: Founding a data business
00:06:44: Challenges in raising money
00:08:24: Misconceptions about data
00:10:03: Advantages of bootstrapping
00:11:14: Financial challenges and salaries
00:14:53: Impact of minority exit in 2016
00:17:02: Reasons for full business exit
00:18:12: Dividend checks and responsibility
00:19:04: Working with private equity firms
00:21:04: Importance of choosing the right partner
00:22:10: Reflections on Exiting During COVID
00:23:00: Health Issues and Impact on Business
00:24:03: Regrets and Decisions on Exiting
00:25:10: Continuing Involvement Post-Exit
00:26:14: Merging with a US Company
00:27:02: Adjusting to Life After Business
00:28:32: Personal and Family Focus Post-Retirement
00:30:26: Supporting Academic Research and Mental Health
00:31:29: Motivation of Wealth Training for Children
00:35:17: Disinterest in Material Possessions
00:38:13: Sources of Fulfillment and Life Satisfaction
00:41:47: Outdoor Activities and Personal Well-being
00:42:00: Processing Life's Experiences into Wisdom
00:45:36: Small experiences of delight
00:46:12: Caring for employees through share options
00:46:50: Satisfaction from contributing to others' happiness
00:47:08: Reflection on being remembered
00:48:04: Conclusion and gratitude
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Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:00 - 00:00:16]
Welcome to the Exit Paradox podcast, where we discuss how to build a fulfilling and meaningful life after selling a business. I'm Anastasia Coraleva, an exited founder who spent the last 13 years researching and collecting stories about life after a successful business sale.
Jonathan: [00:00:17 - 00:00:26]
I just took this view, as I said when I was in my sort of mid fifties, that when I got to 60, I would have been doing the business for 20 years. And I just said to everybody, something's got to happen.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:26 - 00:01:22]
My friend Jonathan has chosen to remain anonymous in exchange for stepping outside his comfort zone. And that he did. Eight years ago, he began a gradual exit from his incredibly successful bootstrapped company. This strategic approach had an unexpected benefit. It smoothed his post exit transition, making it more manageable both emotionally and financially. His search for a new purpose, a lengthy and confusing path for most of us, became clear and compelling after his family was hit by a mental health issue. In this interview, Jonathan shares unconventional wisdom about the advantages of bootstrapping and exiting in stages, and how painful personal challenges gave him a new purpose and source of fulfillment. Hi Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me today.
Jonathan: [00:01:22 - 00:01:25]
Hi Anastasia, lovely to be here.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:25 - 00:01:59]
So you and I have known each other for a few years now, and one of the many reasons why I value our friendship so much is because you have this unique kind of wisdom which is rooted in kindness and acceptance of reality and people generally. I don't think I've ever heard you speak poorly about anyone or judging people. And that wisdom is also coming from a wealth of experience. From the professional business standpoint. You actually lived, what, three lives now?
Jonathan: [00:01:59 - 00:02:07]
Yes. Yeah, I'm on career number three. I always hope there might be a fourth career in me and quite possibly there might be.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:02:08 - 00:02:17]
I'm sure about that. So tell me a bit more about your two careers before you became an entrepreneur.
Jonathan: [00:02:18 - 00:03:12]
Yeah, I mean, my first career was I trained in medicine as a doctor and I went through the training, graduated, spent a about two and a half years working as a junior doctor in the UK. And that was a great experience because you're given a lot of responsibility at a very early age and it's kind of sink or swim. And so I can go into why I changed careers, but I then went to business school and then became an investment banker, was involved in always in one industry, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, and had a good time for most of that. But after a while I had enough and I wanted to do something much more entrepreneurial.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:13 - 00:03:15]
So what exactly motivated you to start.
Jonathan: [00:03:16 - 00:03:17]
To start my business. A new business.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:17 - 00:03:18]
To start a new business.
Jonathan: [00:03:19 - 00:04:20]
I think that I'm just not very good with hierarchy. I think I probably had a bit of a problem at school with authority. I went into medicine and I found that, I mean, the student life was great. I liked it, I liked the practical side. But when I got, you know, when I graduated, I had to start working in a very hierarchical system. I just found I didn't find many role models. I really only found a role model right at the very end. When I decided to go to business school, I just. It was, and it was a different system, a different, different culture in those days. We're talking, you know, I graduated 45 years ago, so we're talking, we're talking, you know, the world has changed a lot since then, and it was quite a misogynistic, racist culture in the medical profession, UK medical profession, and I didn't like it. And I. I just felt I wanted to get out.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:04:20 - 00:04:28]
How important money was for your decision to start a business or financial freedom.
Jonathan: [00:04:30 - 00:05:47]
That's a really good question, actually, because, I mean, money is so complex, the way it sort of infiltrates one's psyche. I would like to say it wasn't very important, but it probably was, because in fact, I had one attempt at starting a business before I went into investment banking. When I was at business school, I wanted to start a bionic technology company. And I don't think money entered my head at all, actually. It was just a sort of great adventure to start a business. And I quickly realized that actually money was really important. And that's what took me into investment banking, so that I could understand what money was about and how you could use it and how it could make things happen. And I got a good grounding in that, in investment banking. And I think when I left investment banking, I mean, I suppose I wouldn't like to say I'd developed expensive tastes, because I hadn't. I was still single in those days, but I think it was probably quite important. But it wasn't the most important thing by any means.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:05:47 - 00:05:49]
Tell me about a company you built.
Jonathan: [00:05:49 - 00:07:24]
It was a data business. It served the. And it's still in existence. It served the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries and the kind of ecosystem around that industry. So consultants, investment bankers, investors, they all became customers clients. And it was, I mean, in a nutshell, I guess what we were trying to do was to become the Bloomberg of the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. So it was, we collected and aggregated all of the information that people in those industries needed to make really important strategic decisions, whether it was decisions around allocating capital, to new products, to acquisitions, to investments, or to advisers who were advising these companies. And I started it with my brother in law, and we bootstrapped the operation. We tried to raise institutional money. This was during the.com boom. I think we were probably about the only business that failed to raise money in the.com boom. Obviously, I didn't know how to sell a concept, and in fact, it was the best thing that could have happened to us because we didn't take institutional money. We bootstrapped it and gradually over a long period of time, and it was hard. It was really hard. It gathered momentum and became successful.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:07:25 - 00:07:28]
Why do you think you failed to raise money?
Jonathan: [00:07:29 - 00:08:42]
Perhaps I didn't articulate it quite well enough. I think that the whole climate was all about, you know.com, and crazy. It was. The Internet was just taking off and it wasn't crazy enough, really. It was too. There wasn't an understanding about how the importance of data. And at the time, people, the attitude was, when we put it in front of investors, well, everybody's got all the information they need, and I would say, no, they haven't, actually. It's really hard to get it. It's all over the place, it's not aggregated, it's not usable. You can't make decisions quickly. But they just didn't get it. And it was, oh, well, you'll just sell to a few of your mates in drug companies or in the investment banks, and then once you've sold to a few, you've maxed out and where's the growth? And what they didn't understand was that when you sell to, you know, when you sell a service into very large companies, if you start very small, you can grow it. So you can grow contracts to be multi million dollar contracts over a period of time. They just did not get that.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:42 - 00:08:42]
They missed it.
Jonathan: [00:08:42 - 00:08:43]
Yes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:43 - 00:08:44]
So their loss.
Jonathan: [00:08:45 - 00:08:47]
Their loss, yeah, I like to think so, yes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:47 - 00:08:49]
Yeah, absolutely.
Jonathan: [00:08:49 - 00:09:35]
And I was quite gratified, actually, one of the, one of the investment houses that turned us down, we thought we'd had a recommendation from their analysts to invest. They turned us down. It was quite gratifying to see, a few years later, they went bust. And in fact, the other thing, we had a series of bad luck, actually. We were about to sign a term sheet on September 11, 2001, and of course, the whole thing blew up in New York and the market just crashed. And so I had to remortgage my house for about the third time, and my wife was seven months pregnant. But that was all the fun so.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:09:35 - 00:09:40]
In the hindsight, it sounds like you're happy you bootstrapped.
Jonathan: [00:09:40 - 00:09:49]
I'm very happy with it. Very happy. It's not for everyone. I wouldn't recommend it requires a lot of resilience.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:09:49 - 00:09:52]
So why are you happy you bootstrapped?
Jonathan: [00:09:52 - 00:10:44]
Because we ended up as a family. We ended up as majority shareholders. We ended up having majority ownership of a business that became very valuable and also it gave us freedom. We weren't under pressure to sell. And it was just fun. It was just once the business got going, it was fantastic. The business was just growing like a weed. We were opening offices in the. In the US, on the east coast, on the west coast. We had teams in India, we had offices in the Far east, and it was just fantastic. I loved it, actually. Absolutely loved it. And of course, because my brother in law and my family and I, we were the majority owners, we could choose who we wanted to work with. And it was all about people, actually.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:10:45 - 00:11:37]
I can very much relate to that because we had a similar situation in the first business. We also basically walked away from fundraising and then ended up bootstrapping through the exit. And what I heard quite a bit from other people later is when somebody owns a company for a long period of time, say over ten years, and it's bootstrapped, they assume it's because it took so long, because it was so hard to do it without outside money. And I think your case, because you owned your company for 24 years before you completely exited. And also, in my case, it's almost the opposite. It actually, you know, there was no rush to sell. Right. So it's a good thing. And people think that it's not. Right, because you're just saying you had so much fun, you didn't want to sell.
Jonathan: [00:11:38 - 00:11:38]
Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:11:38 - 00:11:43]
Investors push us to sell earlier because they have a different incentive system.
Jonathan: [00:11:43 - 00:12:55]
Yes, they do. I mean, they've got a much shorter time horizon. I'll come on to talk about that. But just to go back to the bootstrapping, the hard part was I wasn't making any money. I went from, I think it was seven years from leaving investment banking. I did a year at London business school and then started the business. I went seven years without earning a penny. At the same time, I was having to fund. So I made a little nest egg from my investment banking days and I was having to fund a company. And it was. It was hard not have. And of course, you, you don't know when the sales are going to kick in. Of course we had. Our sales projections are always way too optimistic. They always are. So I would always pencil in that, you know, by such and such a date, I'm going to be able to pay myself a salary. And it never happened. So it took about. It took two or three times longer than I expected, and that was hard, particularly, particularly with, you know, with children on the way, of course.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:12:56 - 00:13:00]
So when you started having money, did it all come as a windfall or.
Jonathan: [00:13:00 - 00:13:41]
No, it started. It came gradually. But once. Once we paid the first salary check after 2002, it was. I remember September 2002, you know, that was a really big day. I was on the payroll, and it wasn't very much, actually, but we never looked back. Actually, we never looked back then. And also the business got to the point where I was able to get a little bit of bank debt, and that helped and everything from then on, the business just grew. It just grew and grew and grew every year. Didn't matter what happened. We had the Lehman crisis. We just grew. We just grew through everything because it's a great industry. We are selling it, of course.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:13:41 - 00:13:45]
So you started taking money out of the business.
Jonathan: [00:13:45 - 00:14:24]
Yeah, I mean, I was never the highest paid employee. I always made sure that other people, you know, people who were, who had really valuable sales skills in particular, and other, other skills were better paid. But I think around about 2010, 2012, we started to pay a dividend, and so I started to get about every two years, I get a good, you know, good dividend check. And so we, you know, we started to be comfortable. So after years of saving and having to batten down the hatches, we had a comfortable life.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:14:24 - 00:14:43]
The reason I'm digging into this is because on this podcast, we focus on what happens after an exit. And my observation is that it makes a huge difference whether your wealth comes suddenly and you're not prepared for it or you are eased into it over time.
Jonathan: [00:14:44 - 00:16:25]
Well, I mean, I would say that it did come suddenly, you know, the sequence of events. In 2016, we did a minority exit, so we sold 40% of the company to a private equity firm. And so suddenly you had a windfall. And suddenly I felt, oh, my God, what are we going to do with all this? But I was prepared for it because we'd been preparing for three or four years, and in fact, I've been preparing for longer. And I, although I didn't want to exit, I had to recognize that, you know, you don't go on forever. I was in my mid fifties, and I had to prepare. You know, I kind of took a judgment call that by the time I got to 60, I needed to step back and I, and let somebody else take the responsibility. And certainly as the business got much bigger and it got into, you know, as we had several hundred, you know, we had a few hundred employees, it was a big responsibility. You know, I was, I would kind of worry that somebody might do something terrible in America or something like that, and I'd be the responsible person. And I get hauled off to jail in America or something. You just don't know. You don't know what's around the corner. So I would worry about the responsibility, and I just felt I need to share this with other owners who've got big shoulders and, you know, because, you know, I was getting to a point where I didn't have the capacity to work as hard as I had, let's say, in my forties, when I started the business.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:16:25 - 00:16:52]
You were talking about why you exited, and you mentioned a high level of stress because you were tired of the responsibility and you were thinking of potential risks, which you would not want to face alone. Right. And then you were talking about your own energy that it was going down completely to when you. Comparing to when you started the business.
Jonathan: [00:16:52 - 00:16:53]
Yes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:16:53 - 00:16:59]
Was there anything else? Because I would love to hear why you decided to exit, even though the, the business was doing so well.
Jonathan: [00:17:02 - 00:18:22]
I just took this view, as I said, when I was in my sort of mid fifties, that when I got to 60, I would have been doing the business for 20 years. And I just said to everybody, something's got to happen. Something's going to happen. Not sure what it is. And we'd also reached, I mean, I think there were several reasons. We'd also reached a size where I was having to recruit people with really quite serious kind of corporate expertise and experience. And it's difficult to recruit individuals like that if you can't demonstrate, there's a pathway for them to be well rewarded. And the obvious way to do that is to say there's going to be an exit and give them shares or share options, and that's the way that they can participate from the value that they're creating. So that was very important, that piece. I think also I just had a desire to, although the dividend checks were very nice and we were getting good, we had a comfortable lifestyle by then. I'd spent 20 years building this business, and I just thought it could just go in and, you know, some disaster could happen.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:18:22 - 00:18:23]
And you had a lot to lose by then.
Jonathan: [00:18:23 - 00:19:14]
There's a lot to lose. And I want to take, you know, for my kids, for my family. I want to take some money off the table. So the, the partial exit route, rather than selling to a trade buyer in one, in one go, and, you know, the business was still growing at 20%, and I wanted to participate in that. So it seemed to me the best way to do that was it was either to float on the stock market. And I thought, no, I'm never going to do that, because having worked in investment banking, I see what a treadmill that is, never going to do that. So private equity seemed to be the way to go, and I'm pleased with that decision. It's because with each transaction, I've been able to sell down a little bit more. And we're still owners, part owners of the business, but it's now a very small percentage. So it's quite complex. All the reason.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:14 - 00:19:18]
How did you handle this diminished control over the business?
Jonathan: [00:19:19 - 00:20:06]
It all depends on how much you own. I mean, if you don't own, if you don't own, if you don't have a majority ownership position, you can't control it completely. But if you've got. We ended up with, as a family, I think after the first exit, we ended up with about 40%. I was chairman of the business. I was with private equity partners, call them partners. I would say that it was different, but it was fine. I mean, we did have a falling out, and then we made up again. And there was a time when they were. I think they were quite annoyed with me and they chucked me out of their offices and. But that was fine. You know, it was. We made up and, you know, we became very good friends and they were helpful. So, you know, it was just a different experience. And I.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:20:06 - 00:20:17]
So if we just focus on that experience, you working with private equity, when you still had 40% of the business, what would you say the most important lessons you've learned from that?
Jonathan: [00:20:17 - 00:21:16]
You have to let go. Actually, you go from majority to a minority shareholder. You're not in control. You've got to accept that things have shifted and lean into it. Hopefully, if you go down that route, you will pick a partner who really brings something to the table. I think it would have been in our case if we had brought in a partner who all they brought in was just capital and they had no understanding the business, and they wanted to do things in a particular way that didn't make sense. That would have been really difficult. So I took a long time to select a firm that I felt could really add value, and they did. They added a lot of value. You know, we were able to do things that we wouldn't have been able to done at pace. And they also, they taught me some good disciplines, actually.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:21:16 - 00:21:18]
So it was a good learning experience for you?
Jonathan: [00:21:18 - 00:21:20]
It was. It was definitely, yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:21:21 - 00:21:34]
Okay, so you basically then continued your strategy of gradually leaving the business, driven probably by financial reasons at that point, right. You were looking for the right moment to.
Jonathan: [00:21:34 - 00:21:46]
Well, no, the thing is, the. Because we had done a partial exit, part of the, you know, the deal was that they had to have an exit within five years.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:21:46 - 00:21:47]
Okay.
Jonathan: [00:21:47 - 00:23:37]
So I signed up to that. Maybe, you know, maybe I could have gone with a private equity partner that had a more kind of evergreen type fund. But I think in general, any financial, institutional investor is going to want to predictability. Well, they want to have a pathway to exit. And so, I mean, I wasn't keen to exit at all, but I'd signed up to it. I had to do that. And so we had an exit. And at that time, it was just. It was during COVID I think, you know, we. So I was, what, 60? Was that 2020? Yeah, I was 65. So, you know, you're kind of thinking, well, I'm not going to go on forever. You know, I need to take a. You know, it's now the time to take more money off the table. And I've also. I've forgotten to say that the time going back to the first exit, the timing was absolutely right, because within. Within almost the moment I signed the deal, this was in 2016. I developed a heart condition, and I had to have treatment for that. I had to have stents put in and the rehabilitation, the recouping of that, I lost focus. So if we hadn't done that exit in 2016, it would have been really difficult to have been the majority owner and to have lost focus because of illness.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:23:37 - 00:23:44]
Sounds like you had intuition about it because you repeated several times that you were boring about something, right?
Jonathan: [00:23:44 - 00:23:44]
Yes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:23:44 - 00:23:45]
And then you exited.
Jonathan: [00:23:46 - 00:24:03]
Maybe the worry contributed to it, maybe not. I don't know. It was probably a longstanding condition that had been accumulating. But it's an age thing. As we get older, we have to accept that we lose capability.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:24:03 - 00:24:06]
Do you ever regret exiting?
Jonathan: [00:24:07 - 00:24:09]
No, absolutely not. No.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:24:09 - 00:24:11]
No was the right decision.
Jonathan: [00:24:11 - 00:24:22]
I mean, I started business late. I started at 40. I became an entrepreneur at 40. You know, you just have to accept that, you know, you cannot go on forever.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:24:22 - 00:24:25]
And some people prefer to work forever.
Jonathan: [00:24:26 - 00:25:09]
I mean, I come across people who are in their eighties, who are still running big organizations. And what I've noticed with them, with family business, is that they've been able to pass on the responsibility to family members, to their kids? Well, I wasn't able to do that because my kids were still young. And also, it wasn't the type of business, really to pass on to kids. There's too much technology, too much, you know, there's just too much going on. It's not something for young kids or even people, kids in their twenties, really, to be running.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:25:10 - 00:25:27]
So what you consider exit is 2020, when you stopped being actually involved in the business, right. Because you still own a bit of the business, you started exiting financially earlier than that, is that correct?
Jonathan: [00:25:29 - 00:26:19]
I was involved in the business up until 2020 as chairman. Then we did a majority exit, so we sold down to less than 25% from memory. But I stayed on the board because we still had, as a family, we still had a significant shareholding. Then a year later, the private equity firm turned around to me and said, we want to merge with a company, a business in America, in the US. I didn't know much about it, but they persuaded me it was a good deal. But that was also private equity owned as well. So as a result of that merger, as a family, our percentage fell to a much smaller percentage. So I came off the board, and, in fact, I wanted to come off the board. I didn't want to stay on the board any longer.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:26:19 - 00:26:27]
So that's when, emotionally, you exited that moment when for you personally, you were like, okay, I'm out.
Jonathan: [00:26:27 - 00:26:49]
Well, we rape. We remained invested, although I came off the board. And so I'm still emotionally, a little bit in there, but not much. And I'm. I keep in touch with the individuals. So it's. It's been a. It's been a sort of. It's been a gentle Runway down, running down. And for me, it's worked. It may not work for others.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:26:50 - 00:26:54]
So if we go back to that moment when you felt you exited.
Jonathan: [00:26:54 - 00:26:54]
Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:26:55 - 00:26:58]
How did you feel about it back then?
Jonathan: [00:27:02 - 00:27:22]
I suppose I'd become accustomed to. I'd had six years of going from majority shareholder, chairman to large shareholder, then to small shareholder. So I had a period of time to acclimatize, to adjust to that. And that really worked, actually.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:27:22 - 00:27:23]
You're happy you did it?
Jonathan: [00:27:23 - 00:27:49]
Well, I found other things and other things to occupy me, and in some ways, things that it was just basically life took over. One of the things I've discovered is that, you know, as you get older, as you retire, the decisions don't stop. They keep coming at you and then usually involve family, and they're every bit as difficult as business decisions. Many ways more difficult.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:27:49 - 00:27:52]
More. Yeah, because we're also not prepared for it.
Jonathan: [00:27:52 - 00:28:48]
You're not training for those things, and of course, you. It's frustrating that you perhaps don't have enough time to do. Do things for yourself, but that's fine. So I've had plenty of time to change direction and adjust to it. And we've had some. We've had some issues in our family, particularly with mental health, which I won't go into, if you don't mind, but that's become a focus for us where we want to. As my wife and I, we hope that we can do something, we can use our wealth, perhaps, to make a difference in getting some answers for mental health, particularly for young people, which I think it's an enormous problem at the moment.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:28:49 - 00:28:51]
Do you feel it gives you a sense of purpose?
Jonathan: [00:28:51 - 00:28:53]
Yes, that definitely does, yes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:28:53 - 00:29:14]
So that would probably explain why you don't necessarily miss your business, because one of the main reasons people miss their businesses is because it takes a while to find a sense of purpose. And in your case, it came to you in the form of a challenging situation, but you ended up accepting it as your purpose.
Jonathan: [00:29:14 - 00:31:11]
Yes. Yes. I mean, one of the things we did was after the. The first exit was we made quite a big donation, a sizable donation to the medical school where I trained. And I wanted to do that, actually, because I wanted to give back. And we funded some PhD students because we were supporting the next generation of. The idea was to support the next generation of researchers. You see, I mean, my business had been founded on data and we had been sort of, we had used the output of academic research on an industrial scale. So we had extracted data from academic, medical, academic research to create solutions for pharmaceutical companies. So although I'd never been a medical researcher myself, I felt that I kind of got developed an awareness that solutions to many of the world's problems, not just in medicine, but in everything, are rooted, deeply rooted in high quality academic research. And it's a really important endeavor, I think, to support. If you don't, there's only a finite amount of money going into bringing people into early stage careers in academic research. And so it's like a tap if you, if it's. The more you turn it on, the more people will come in, the more research that will be done. So, you know, we. So through that experience, we've developed. Well, I've developed, I've become familiar with, you know, some of the issues in academia and how we can support it, and that's. That's given us the. That's taken us into focusing a little bit more now on mental health and how we can find solutions to some of the issues in mental health.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:31:12 - 00:31:23]
So do you plan to give it any structure in the future, your purpose in mental health, like having your own?
Jonathan: [00:31:23 - 00:31:28]
Yeah, I mean, we're still working on that, still trying to work it, work out how best to do that.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:31:29 - 00:32:04]
There are two schools of thought, right? There are professionals who feel very strongly about bringing children in as early as possible and actually training them to manage money early on to get used to it. That's sort of their arguments. And then the other school of thought, where I believe most entrepreneurs belong, naturally, is this focus on motivation and drive and hunger and making sure kids don't get spoiled. So it sounds like you belong in.
Jonathan: [00:32:04 - 00:32:49]
Well, I think I do. And the reason I think the first group would, particularly if it's inherited family wealth or if you've had wealth from an early age or early in your career, it's been around you all the time. In our case, it was something that came right at the end of my career. So, you know, we didn't grow up as. They didn't grow up as you know. I mean, they were privileged, obviously, in many ways, but partly because of where we lived in the countryside and. But they weren't, you know, they didn't grow up with a sense of entitlement, I hope so. It's something that's happened to us recently.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:32:50 - 00:33:07]
So if you advise someone who has little kids and they just had the financial windfall, where would you recommend they go? Which direction? Bringing children into the wealth training early or keeping them hungry?
Jonathan: [00:33:07 - 00:33:53]
I mean, you know, my own kids weren't particularly comfortable, actually, with the idea that there was family wealth. Actually, it was something that I think they felt set them apart a bit. I think it depends, perhaps, on the kind of life that you're leading. We weren't living in London. We weren't living in a particularly affluent area of the country. We were just trying to be normal, actually. So I think for us, I think it was the right thing to, you know, to delay, but it probably. That's probably not right for up for everyone.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:33:54 - 00:33:56]
So you're saying it depends on the family?
Jonathan: [00:33:56 - 00:33:56]
I think so.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:33:56 - 00:34:25]
And their circumstances? Yeah, yeah, I agree. Absolutely. But there are discussions about that all the time, and I can just see that most exited founders in our community, they lean towards keeping children hungry, even if they're very young when money comes. And even if parents want to enjoy their money fully, they're usually very, very worried about this entitlement problem.
Jonathan: [00:34:26 - 00:34:52]
I think that's, I think they should be worried, actually. And I think that, you know, the environment of teenagers and young people now is so different from when I was growing up, you know, with absolute, with all this. Well, it's been so well written about and discussed, you know, what's happening in social media and phones and, you know, it's, I can see, I can see that whole generation have been deeply affected by it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:34:53 - 00:35:16]
So I know you well enough by now to know that you're not particularly interested in material possessions, and you were just also confirming that. Where do you think it comes from? And is it something you're proud of, or is it something you feel is a burden you would rather get?
Jonathan: [00:35:17 - 00:36:35]
Well, it's both. I wouldn't say I'm completely disinterested in material possessions. I mean, we have very nice, you know, we have a nice home. But I've never had a problem wherever I've lived, whether it's been a very modest place. And I've lived in some, I would say more than modest, some pretty appalling places in my time. It's never made it. And I've lived in some really nice places. It's not really been an issue at all for me. Where does that come from? I don't know. Maybe going, you know, my own background is we were brought up in modest circumstances. We weren't poor by any means, but it was modest. I was sent to boarding school. My parent, my grandparent, my grandfather funded that. It was a kind of militaristic, quite spartan lifestyle. I traveled a lot in my late teens and early twenties, really roughed it. So I was comfortable in those situations. For me, it's always, you know, I think the joy in life comes from interaction with people, actually other people.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:36:36 - 00:36:53]
I had a discussion about this issue with someone last week who had a very different opinion. And that person came from a very, very poor background, and he believes that it's extremely important to train that poverty mindset out of yourself.
Jonathan: [00:36:53 - 00:36:55]
Oh, right. Okay. That's interesting.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:36:55 - 00:37:07]
And he was saying, what's the point getting wealth if you never allow yourself to be rich? So it was very interesting for me to hear how you would argue against that.
Jonathan: [00:37:09 - 00:38:15]
I think ultimately, because the experiences you have, you can have from wealth, being wealthy, fundamentally, I think they can breed a sense of dissatisfaction. When you have a very pleasant experience that costs a lot of money, it's nice. But how do you improve on that? And if you do it frequently, after a while, you could become jaded. And so for me, experiences that I derive the most satisfaction from, it's from its interactions with people, obviously, travel. It's fun to see new things, to experience new things, but ultimately, I think it has to be the experiences I think you have with people that are more satisfying. And I don't think you can buy those experiences.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:38:15 - 00:38:20]
Okay, so how do you go about choosing whom you surround yourself with?
Jonathan: [00:38:20 - 00:39:40]
I have a family around me. I see a lot of my kids, but also some of our, as I've mentioned, you know, we have some issues with mental health in our family, so that sometimes quite difficult to separate from that. But, you know, I'm fortunate that because of the varied things I've done, I've got a, I've got a rich network of people who I've known for a long, long time. So one of the joys actually, recently has been reconnecting with a lot of my classmates from medical school. And, you know, now most of us have retired, we've got time on our hands. Before we had all such busy careers, we never saw each other. And now we have a very active sort of WhatsApp group, and we see each other a lot, and that's a join. Then I have business school, I have people I used to work with in investment banking who I see. And then also latterly, there's a kind of quite a big alumni group of people who work to devaluate and who I'm in contact with. And then of course, the people in the community I live in. So, you know, I'm really lucky, actually, to have so many relationships.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:39:40 - 00:40:02]
So you mentioned basically two different sources of satisfaction or fulfillment in your life. One is the purpose of supporting academic research, particularly in mental health, because it's close to your heart. And the second one is this high quality interactions with people that are important.
Jonathan: [00:40:02 - 00:40:31]
And there's a third one also, I think as you get to the age that I'm at, you need to look after yourself, so you need to spend time, you know, doing something physical. So I've rediscovered squash, for example. I used to play squash in my, in my twenties and thirties. I've taken it up again. I've really enjoyed that, you know, doing, doing physical things.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:40:31 - 00:40:33]
So it brings you joy and energy.
Jonathan: [00:40:33 - 00:40:40]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna stand you in good stead as you get older, of course.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:40:40 - 00:40:43]
So knowing that you are helping yourself.
Jonathan: [00:40:43 - 00:40:44]
Yes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:40:44 - 00:40:45]
Being healthy also helps.
Jonathan: [00:40:45 - 00:40:46]
Yes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:40:46 - 00:40:52]
Okay. Is there anything else that you would say helps you feel your life is.
Jonathan: [00:40:52 - 00:40:55]
Fuller and being outdoors.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:40:55 - 00:40:58]
Being outdoors, meaning with nature?
Jonathan: [00:40:58 - 00:41:07]
Yeah. I mean, you know what? I always said that, you know, all of my career, I've had three careers, they've all been indoors. I also hope that my fourth career would be outdoors.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:07 - 00:41:08]
Okay.
Jonathan: [00:41:08 - 00:41:31]
Well, I haven't really quite figured out what that career is. Maybe career walking. Yeah, maybe it never has to be, but walking has been, you know, after I had the heart issue, I would go walking every day without fail for two or 3 hours, and that restored me. That was very restorative. I can't recommend. I can't recommend walking highly enough, actually.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:31 - 00:41:43]
Yeah, I'm a big fan, too, so I totally understand. Yeah. I also might. I think my most creative, best ideas always come when I'm outdoors. Walking during nature.
Jonathan: [00:41:43 - 00:41:44]
Yes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:44 - 00:41:59]
There's some magic that happens. Absolutely. So I'm curious if you're doing anything deliberately to process your life's experience into some kind of principles or mental models.
Jonathan: [00:42:00 - 00:42:05]
For myself or for. For other people, any reasons.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:42:05 - 00:42:10]
Like, for example, if you think, like, what lessons I learned from this or that or.
Jonathan: [00:42:10 - 00:42:11]
Yeah, I mean, I did.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:42:12 - 00:42:13]
Wisdom gems.
Jonathan: [00:42:13 - 00:44:50]
Yeah, I mean, I did discovered I accepted an honorary degree from my university last year, which was. I could have just gone up and shaken hands and taken the degree, but they wanted me to make a little speech, so I had to make a little speech to the. To the graduates. They were all undergraduates who were graduating, and obviously, you have to give them some words of wisdom. And I think, I'm just trying to think back what I said. I kind of said that things that have worked for me were, you don't have to follow any particular path that Seth set for you by, let's say, a career. You know, do your own thing. Be disruptive, be a, you know, start an insurgency if you must, because I remember early in my. In my twenties, I'd been kind of in a little bit inspired by the doctors, the naughty doctors who'd gone off piste and had become sort of marxist revolutionaries or opera impresarios. And there are a few famous examples of doctors who become writers. And so I said, look, it's okay to want to overturn the established order, become an insurgent. But if it fails. One of the lessons that I had learned was in my first effort at entrepreneurship, it failed quickly, failed quickly. So you can move on to the next thing and take pleasure. I talked about a secret sauce. Develop all your skills. Develop the unique offering that is yourself. Wrap around it all the skills that you can, and then you've got something unique. And I would call that your secret sauce and then just take delight from, from what happens. And I talked also about unsung heroes because in my life, the people who have helped me and perhaps have, they perhaps didn't get the limelight, particularly within the company I started. So many people were fantastically helpful. I call them the Yangsung heroes who celebrate and recognize them. And you'll be surprised at the results, how fantastic they might be.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:44:51 - 00:44:56]
In what sense? In terms of how you feel or in terms of what comes back to your life?
Jonathan: [00:44:56 - 00:46:42]
Both. Both. I mean, you know, I talked about, you know, at evaluate. I used to. It was, it was a little bit like, it was a little bit like my first child that every, you know, at the beginning, you had these sleepless nights. You were exhausted beyond your ability. You know, you thought, how am I going to cope? But you would see, you would make these little small steps, you know, like a baby. These little small steps would produce a result. You might get. A customer would be delighted with the, with the outcome. And that used to create delight. So all of these little, small experiences of delight, they would come. They came, you know, like a child growing as the business grew. You know, it was just, you know, successive experience of delight. And of course, the times when, when people are being naughty and you have to deal with that as well, and then you would have. And then at the end, there was a big step, you know, like an exit or whatever, big things that would be absolutely thrilling. So the so, and also the way you look after the people you work for. I mean, everybody in our company had share options. So everybody on exits, on two exits that I was involved in, they received significant sums of money. And that was just a sheer pleasure, actually.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:46:42 - 00:46:45]
Because you felt you contributed.
Jonathan: [00:46:45 - 00:46:46]
Yes. Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:46:46 - 00:46:48]
To their happiness, to their lives.
Jonathan: [00:46:48 - 00:46:49]
Yes.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:46:50 - 00:46:54]
I can see how it would give you a lot of satisfaction about that decision.
Jonathan: [00:46:56 - 00:47:08]
Yeah, I mean, you know, without doubt. I mean, the more you give, the more you get back. I mean, I think if you want to. If you want to encapsulate, how do.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:47:08 - 00:47:09]
You want to be remembered?
Jonathan: [00:47:09 - 00:47:50]
I mean, with the people I know and have known, I hope with, you know, with love and affection. Am I going to be remembered once they've all gone? Probably not, but I. That doesn't bother me. You know, the reality is, being in business is not like, you're not like an artist. I mean, it is a creative process. It's a very creative artist. It's creative, absolutely. Starting a business and developing it. But, you know, who gets remembered? I mean, it's people who create great works of art and who else? Not many other people do get remembered, do they? What? After a period.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:47:50 - 00:47:52]
But the question is how you want to be remembered.
Jonathan: [00:47:52 - 00:47:53]
How I want to be.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:47:53 - 00:47:55]
Not whether you'll be remembered or not.
Jonathan: [00:47:55 - 00:47:58]
Well, I think, I think I've answered that. I think with, with love and affection. Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:47:58 - 00:48:12]
That's the most important thing for you. Beautiful. I love it. Wonderful answer. Thank you so much, Jonathan. Thank you for opening up and sharing all these stories and the wisdoms. I really appreciate it.
Jonathan: [00:48:12 - 00:48:15]
Yeah, my pleasure. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Great questions.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:48:15 - 00:48:15]
Thank you.
