When in 2022 Louis Debouzy, the founder of French home care startup Amabilis, sold his company to French home care services agency Auxi’life, he wasn’t expecting what came next.
“I found myself from one day to the next with a feeling of emptiness,” he tells Sifted. “I wasn’t just feeling a bit depressed — I was having anxiety attacks. It was something I’d never experienced before.”
Debouzy continued to work with Auxi’life for another six months before leaving the company for good at the start of 2023. He was “a few million euros” richer from the exit — but it came with a cost.
“You’re really left with two questions: what do I do with my money, and what do I do with my life?”
Last September, Debouzy decided to open up about his experience. He launched ‘The Exit Club’ — a community dedicated to founders facing similar struggles. To be a part of the club, founders must have sold their company for at least €1m.
Less than five months later, Debouzy says that 200 founders have signed up, and 180 members chat daily on a WhatsApp group. The majority of members are French entrepreneurs in their 30s and 40s, and some have sold their companies for as much as €300m.
His main takeaway? He is by no means the “isolated case” that he thought he was all along.
“Someone said they’d been fainting and waking up at night. Someone else, that they had difficulty breathing for a year and a half, that they had feelings of oppression, that they were incapable of getting up from their sofa.”
“There’s a high proportion of people who recognise themselves in this feeling of emptiness — and who are really panicked about finding out what to do with their lives.”
The post-exit blues
Getting the post-exit blues is a common occurrence for founders. In a viral blogpost published earlier this month and titled ‘I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life,’ Vinay Hiremath, the founder of US video messaging tool Loom, shared the feelings of disorientation and loss that he has experienced since selling the company to Australian software multinational Atlassian for $975m in 2023.
“Life has been a haze this last year. After selling my company, I find myself in the totally unrelatable position of never having to work again,” he wrote.
“I have infinite freedom, yet I don’t know what to do with it, and, honestly, I’m not the most optimistic about life.”
Even without a high-profile exit like Loom’s, founders often find themselves experiencing similar confusion and anxiety.
Debouzy created Amabilis in 2015 to provide home care services to people affected by severely disabling pathologies — a need that he is familiar with, he says, as a wheelchair user since the age of 10.
By the time he left the company in 2023, it had grown to 250 employees across France. “There is a rockstar effect,” he says. “You’ve gone through a period of very intense work, plus there is the impact on your ego — you have social status, you’re the one in charge, you’re the boss.”
Turning that page can be a painful process for many entrepreneurs, and Debouzy says that the majority of members in the Exit Club are showing symptoms of depression. But a taboo remains around the mental health issues that can come with an exit. “It’s seen as a rich people’s problem,” says Debouzy.
A common challenge for many members of The Exit Club, he says, is how misunderstood founders feel by those around them. “People say: ‘I don’t understand, you have everything you need, you have money, a family, you’re happy’. But there is real pain there,” he says.
Managing relationships with friends and family who “are still working day in, day out,” says Debouzy, can also be a struggle.
“This is why we call ourselves the ‘Anonymous Club of Entrepreneurs’,” he says.
Finding the meaning of life
The Exit Club, in addition to providing a WhatsApp group for founders to exchange experiences and tips, also organises monthly events and webinars.
The goal is to help founders manage their freshly-earned money, with conversations focusing on topics like investments and tax — but also to bring in speakers from all walks of life, ranging from sociologists to artists.
“Last time, we spoke with a rabbi,” says Debouzy. “The idea is to raise questions around psychology and the meaning of life.”
Debouzy says that most founders are keen to start a new project and many focus on investing their money — with another few setting off to travel the world.
“A small number tell me that they splash out and get private jets and things like that,” he says. “But it’s not the majority.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/founders-exit-club-interview/
