{"id":371921,"date":"2026-03-29T20:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T20:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/371921\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T20:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T20:51:09","slug":"yachts-psychedelics-grief-what-happens-when-founders-cash-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/371921\/","title":{"rendered":"Yachts, psychedelics, grief. What happens when founders cash out?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I spoke to Charlie Bowes-Lyon, co-founder of natural deodorant brand Wild, shortly after the company was sold to Unilever last year for a reported \u00a3230 million, I jokingly asked whether he was planning to celebrate by buying a Lamborghini. He laughed and said he was treating himself to a bacon sandwich that morning \u2014 but there were no supercars on the horizon.<\/p>\n

How founders adapt to life after an \u201cexit\u201d \u2014 business jargon for the moment they finally realise the financial rewards of years of risk, stress and sleepless nights \u2014 is far more fascinating, and far more varied, than the celebratory headlines suggest. <\/p>\n

It might also be a question occupying Julian Hearn, co-founder of nutrition brand Huel<\/a>, which last week agreed a \u20ac1 billion (\u00a3870 million) sale to Danone. Hearn is widely reported to be in line for a windfall totalling hundreds of millions.<\/p>\n

For many founders, the exit is not an ending but the start of an \u201cearn-out\u201d \u2014 a contractual period during which they must continue working inside the company they once controlled, now owned by someone else. Almost every founder I speak to describes this phase as agonising. One entrepreneur told me he crossed off days on his calendar like a prisoner counting down to release.<\/p>\n

The discomfort often stems from that sudden loss of control. When Nik Whitfield sold cybersecurity firm Panaseer during the pandemic, he retained a stake and a board seat but watched a new chief executive take over day-to-day leadership.\u00a0\u201cThis felt akin to giving your prized, meticulously home-built car to an enthusiastic driver and sitting in the passenger seat while they speed around town.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another founder, who sold his cider business to a larger brewer, recalled that the process \u201cthrew up lots of conflict around credibility, mission and principles\u201d. He said that the acquiring company \u201cmade efforts almost immediately to rationalise the way we made our product, resulting in what we felt was a lesser-quality product\u201d.<\/p>\n

Many founders describe an acute sense of loss; some even liken it to bereavement. Martin Leuw, a serial entrepreneur and technology investor, said founders often pass through \u201cseveral stages of grief before they move on\u201d. The business, after all, is rarely just a job; it becomes an identity. If you are no longer the founder, who exactly are you?<\/p>\n

Perhaps this explains the spending sprees that we imagine accompany sudden wealth. Leuw recalls appearing on a panel alongside entrepreneurs fresh from exits: \u201cOne bought a yacht, another bought a villa. I bought a pizza and went back to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mythology exists for a reason. Elon Musk famously bought a $1 million McLaren F1 car after selling his first company, Zip2, in 1999 \u2014 only to crash the uninsured vehicle months later while reportedly showing it off to tech investor Peter Thiel. <\/p>\n

Mike Lynch, the British tech tycoon behind Autonomy, tragically died aboard Bayesian, a superyacht with one of the tallest masts in the world, reportedly costing about $40 million.<\/p>\n

Money, however, turns out to be far less effective at purchasing fulfilment than outsiders assume. Ben White, a serial technology entrepreneur, discovered this after selling his third company, MessageLabs, to US cybersecurity giant Symantec in a deal reportedly worth $695 million. The promised \u201cnirvana\u201d never quite arrived.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone thinks it must feel amazing,\u201d he later recalled. \u201cBut you call friends and say, \u2018Do you want to do this cool thing?\u2019 and they say, \u2018Ben, we\u2019re working.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

The anticlimax coincided with major surgery \u2014 a double hip replacement \u2014 after which White became dependent on painkillers and developed an alcohol addiction. He has since described the period as his \u201cdark decade\u201d. After rehabilitation, he eventually returned to entrepreneurship, founding a fourth venture, Upp Technologies.<\/p>\n

Not every post-exit reinvention looks like another start-up. When Rachel Murphy sold her second business for \u00a313.3 million in 2022, she was surprised by the emotional fallout. \u201cI hadn\u2019t legislated for the psychological impact \u2014 it was incredibly hard,\u201d she said. Completing an 18-month earn-out after years without a boss proved particularly challenging, and she felt a curious sense of loneliness; it\u2019s hard to moan to friends about something that has given you financial freedom and millions in the bank. <\/p>\n

Another founder wrote to me in a similar vein about the swirling complexities of being handed a life-changing sum of money: \u201cYes I am thrilled I don\u2019t have to worry about supporting my family in the future, but this was twinned with a complete fear of messing up the good outcome I had created.\u201d <\/p>\n

What these experiences demonstrate is that gratitude and difficulty can coexist, and a bumper payday doesn\u2019t make the adjustment any less complicated.<\/p>\n

Instead of launching straight into another company when her contractual obligations ended, Murphy travelled to Portugal for a psychedelic retreat involving a guided psilocybin \u2014 better known as magic mushroom<\/a> \u2014 session in what she described as a semi-clinical setting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to reset,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to rush back into building something new. I wanted to understand what I\u2019d been through and where I was now.\u201d<\/p>\n

She later founded The Grafter, a consultancy advising founders on growth and exits, and has become an advocate for carefully supervised psychedelic experiences as tools for reflection and clarity. She has since returned for a second retreat. <\/p>\n

Some founders start again immediately, drawn back to the structure and intensity of building a business. Others move into investing or philanthropy, transferring purpose into new arenas. And some, perhaps wisely, resist the urge to replace one mission with another too quickly. I remember one serial entrepreneur worth hundreds of millions quietly advising a newly minted millionaire: \u201cDo absolutely nothing for the first 12 months.\u201d<\/p>\n

The point is not that exits are unhappy events. Many founders experience genuine relief. One female entrepreneur told me recently that she is the happiest she has ever been \u2014 travelling, reading, doing yoga, being a more present parent and finally living without constant urgency. <\/p>\n

But for most, the emotional aftermath is more complicated than the narrative of triumph suggests. Success removes constraints, and people often discover that those constraints were, perhaps subconsciously, providing meaning.<\/p>\n

As Huel begins its next chapter under Danone, attention will focus on strategy, growth and integration. Yet for founders watching from the sidelines, another question inevitably lingers: what happens after the deal closes? Hearn already has a new business on the boil: a luxury sambuca brand called Cimbroni.<\/p>\n

Building a company demands extraordinary resilience. Learning how to live after it may require something harder still: finding a sense of purpose that no longer depends on being the person in charge. <\/p>\n

So the real challenge of entrepreneurship may not be achieving the exit, but understanding what comes after the applause fades and the calendar clears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I spoke to Charlie Bowes-Lyon, co-founder of natural deodorant brand Wild, shortly after the company was sold…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[72,191,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-371921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entrepreneurship","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}