hi my name is Joel and I’m the founder of awake origins in this episode of unplugged I sit down with Boris Feldhausen fan Zoltan the founder and CEO of The Next Web an international tech and media company best known for the impressive next web conference but Boris and I spent some time relaxing we reflected on his journey as both a human being and entrepreneur we spoke about a wide array of topics including how to shape your own life is past as a circus performer and why he does what he does I’d like to talk with you about the

journey you went through as an engineer and a human being because in the end I think there’s not a real difference between those two yeah if you would look at your life as in live at different chapters in it what would be those chapters for you and what would be the main chapter headings maybe if three chapters could be eight whatever you feel is alright oh I’ll think out loud and try to answer your question so I think the first chapter was like my childhood where I felt like everybody else was in charge I was like

frequently like the I felt like the one left out of the conversation like I didn’t really understand what people were like doing and then when I was I think 14 or 15 I decided to leave school drop out of school that has happened well I was dyslexic and I I had bad eyesight but both like they discovered both of these things like really late in life like when I was 12 or something so before that they just thought I was stupid and and not ambitious or like like I didn’t care but I was just sitting in the back of the classroom

just staring out the window and thinking like I don’t understand where what everybody is talking about so so I went to a lot of different schools and at one point the teacher said to my parents like he might be [ __ ] or something because he’s just not picking up all like the basic stuff but I was just sort of dreaming and in my own world and so by the time I got fed up with all of this I discovered circle school and I said to my parents I’m gonna drop out of school or go to the Cirque school and

then do that a few years and then I’ll go to art Academy what is the circus school where you learn how to juggle and drive the unicycle and maybe go into the circus I never really plan to go in the circus but I thought this is an interesting skill to pick up I could already junko a little bit I had a unicycle and I thought you know maybe if I go to art school it’s something I can use like performance art or something so I think the second segments parts is sort of educating myself and picking up all these skills and being

sort of an independent person yeah so I remember when I left school the teacher says if you drop out of school now you’re placing yourself out of society nobody’s ever gonna help you you will never be able to get a job everything you want to accomplish you have to fight for and he said it to scare me back into school but to me it felt completely liberating you know because I just realized oh my god so from now on like the only way is up and everything I do I’ll have to do myself but then I can also take credit for it myself so so to

me it felt like I feel like I became an entrepreneur like in like that Hellmouth right yeah that was just sort of my awakening or suddenly I realize like I can now shape my own life instead of doing what other people tell me yes and something that happens at a really young age yeah really felt that you were in control totally yeah yeah and I have children myself and I tried to tell them like like when this happened that was life-changing for me so go find that for yourself right find like ways to shape

your own life realize that you are in charge even though you still have to listen to teachers and everything that is your life I think it was a similar moment when I first started in art school like the very first aid is the second chapter then and no this was more part yeah so the second chapter is sort of learning and growing as a human being as sort of preparing for the next chapter and and the thing that made the difference for me was like the director of art school on the first day he said

the reputation of an art academy is not set by the teachers but by so so you decides by being involved whether this is gonna be a good Academy or a bad so basically this is your school I work for you the teachers work for you and I I just felt like oh my god the teachers at work for me and I can do anything I want so I think they all hate it well they hate me but I I was not in easy students because I just thought I’m gonna take full advantage of everything they have to offer so you were demanding

I was very demanding yeah but not like in a positive way but but I did find my own way so and I was already sort of there because I just thought like this is my life I want to shape it the way I I think worked I buy art art school whatever chi-wai art and I think I was interested in it from azov from a child’s like a fool man was a child I was always making things I think I have a very creative mind so so it always seemed logical to me but when I wanted to drop out of school I I knew that you had to be 18 to apply for art academy I

was 14 or 15 so circus school was something where I thought like oh that’s an easy sort of yeah alternative route to getting Aaronson so then I graduated art school and I think then the third part started where I started my first company and I think so then I became a practicing entrepreneur you could say no what were you back then I think 26 or 27 something like that yeah and then when I was 29 I sold my first company and as I said why did you start your first company so I had just graduated from art

school and I had discovered the internet that was just so this was 1995 and so I was working with the World Wide Web and I thought this is just incredibly interesting and I also felt like this is now a world-changing event and I’m there at the start actually I thought it was already late but still felt like a right there’s still enough opportunity and I thought I can play a role in it like I think I have added benefits I have something to contribute but I wasn’t sure what and at first I thought well

I’m an artist so probably it will be art but I’m pretty soon I realized like it’s not that it’s boring but like art is also often commenting on things and I thought commenting also almost feels passive right commenting is something you do from the sidelines and I thought my informants could be more intensive right I think if we just leave it to the geeks and the Nerds to build a worldwide web it’s gonna be boring and Archy so maybe I should get more involved so that was a very yeah sort of a feeling and

instinct I had for him like there’s more in this than just making art and then I found out that there there’s an island somewhere called Tonga and they have the domain extension tio just like Anna the Netherlands has an owl and farm stands afar and the two is of course also a word so I thought if I register welcome to and serve two and travels who will listen to you can turn that into a set sentence so listen to slash Boris or welcome to the malady and so I set up a redirect service that people could get a

free evidence like that listen to Boris and then I would redirect it to their long homepage which at the time was the thing to do you would build a homepage and that became a very successful company that I sold later and and I realized like my as a company or as an entrepreneur you’re always looking for your competitive edge right so what’s the thing that set you apart from worst that gives you sort of a head start and I realized it’s it’s like the ambition and persistence that you that you learn

at circle and my creative look at things combines that’s my competitive edge and that’s how I get a head start on the Internet you sold it after a few years the first company I think after two and a half years yeah so they posted threats chapter if I think they’re part of the enterpreneurship I so I sort of combined him I feel like the first and the second company I also sold to a second company like that to me feels like one chapter where I just tried a lot of different things and some were successful some

words and I think then the chapter after that this sort of starts with DNA beyond what my current company so because that was a much more like a like a slow growth slow cooking and slow growth company where we really focused on on how can we build a company that will outlast us instead of building something where we’re like ooh this might be something we could sell really quick so what was at the beginning what happened there why did you want to create this I think we I mean my partner but like I

realized that the position I had the people I knew our fuel technology our sense of humor was something that we could use to build a sort of digital media company and and it started with a conference and a pretty soon we added the block the media part and things sort of grew from there so it was sort of like standing in the kitchen and seeing a bunch of ingredients and I thinking like wait a minute if we combine all of this like our talents and our experience and network then we could build something that it will be interesting

for the long term we had a conversation in the beginning where we said to each other like how can we build a company that would be interesting for us to still work at in 20 years right so what would that company need yeah and I think that was an interesting discussion and gave us a more like long-term view versus just like how can we ramp up her view as fast as possible because then we can get a lot of on herself so what was discussed in that meeting what were their ingredients of that kind of company yeah from you know remember is

that we said it has to be like diverse in every way so like a diverse group of people to work with but also like a diverse business model like a diverse fight this is one where you do a lot of different things because if it’s just one thing you get bored with that we wanted it to be scalable so if you build a business that just sort of stays the same over the years and you also kind of get bored at one point and we wanted it to be international right so we we thought if we just focus on the Netherlands then at one point you better

grow bored with the Netherlands and you don’t want to make yeah expansionary scope and so these three things of course by making it international we go also just traveling yeah exactly and I call it business yeah so what do you think is the essence of what the next map is bringing it to the world and what does it say about you what is the mean for you in there yeah so our tagline is the heart of tech and I think that difference is that you know you can read about digital technology in a lot of places but I don’t think it’s

about ones and zeros and the bits and the bytes and the software and hardware it’s really about the impacts on society and on humanity and on you personally right that’s the so to give you an example there are 3,000 new apps in the App Store every day that’s all news right because they’re all new so you can tell so you have to write about that but I don’t really care you don’t really care what you care about is that I have an app and it’s like a three year old app but I discovered it a year ago and it’s

like a health app and it saved my life like I can tell you destroyer you’re like oh my god did I actually save your life and then and then you’re intrigued right because then it’s a personal story and then you realize how house they’ve kind of affect me it’s even might even be emotional so I think that’s the like the biggest difference between us and our competitors that we’ll always focus on the human angle and we understand that it’s never business businesses doing businesses with other businesses

it’s people working at companies do business with other people working at other companies right so so I think this this focus on the only humans that’s what sets us apart when you look back at your path as an entrepreneur what what change within you you can look in those years yeah human being in there yeah so I think there are small things and big things right so I think I think I’ve been lucky to have been able to build companies that that grew and changed over the time that I was able to grow

and change over time and I think like the exciting part about having a company and having it grow is that every now and then you realize that the company now needs a different skill set from you than the one that got you to this point and so I feel like every two years or something my job completely changes and and I’m always nervous about the next sort of right the next phase yeah and whether I’ll have what it takes to be able to perform and if there’s going to be a moment where I realize like this is not something I can do

right this is just I took it this far but what is now needed for me what the company now needs is not something I can so that’s gonna be very interesting moments in my life of course if I mmm the day I look into the mirror and think I’m not no the quips for this yeah last week so what is the major thing that you have to leave behind to do your current role well I think so when you just start a company I think up until maybe 15 or 20 people in your company you’re all doing everything right so so I was

really yeah so I was really good at doing a lot of things pretty well right so I and I’m not a good developer but I did you know write the PHP code that run on the side for years probably the first eight or ten years or something like the code I had access to the service I was managing the code I was doing the design as well we did of course like in the morning you would do a sales meeting but then you would do something on the server and then after that you would be in the kitchen because otherwise nobody

else does it and so you sort of doing everything and I I remember very well like the moments where I realized like oh I haven’t opened Photoshop or illustrator like in a year actually since I’ve had this laptop I haven’t even installed it and it’s sort of a moment very realized like all right so that is a skill that is no longer needed for me right and I don’t like it’s not that it’s not frustrating or painful but there’s a moment there where you realize like oh my god I invested so much in those skills and I

used it so a lot and I enjoyed it and now I don’t do it anymore which is kind of like sad but then right before you get set you realize yeah but now there were people here were so much better at doing that then I could ever be then I’ve ever been that it’s actually great that I don’t do and that they’re doing it so and you evolved to something else yeah yeah so so Photoshop is no longer my tool but so I also remember a moment where I came home I felt kind of frustrated and and then it’s talking to my girlfriend about

that and then she said so what did you do and I said yeah I just had meetings this whole it was just meetings just frustrating and then later I started realizing oh wait a minute my new tool is the meeting that the meeting is my my product right so I have to think about how do I make this product best product there is so and and slowly I started growing into so I’m designing the meeting right so I gotta come prepared I gotta make sure everybody knows a role I gotta make sure that at the ending like

everybody knows what to do and then it no longer feels frustrating if the meeting is over and everybody walks away knowing what to do and I have nothing to do except the next meeting alright that’s but that takes some time and at one point you realize like right I are now in this face yeah that’s a previous face and now in a new face what will be the next phase oh I wish I knew because I would get prepared for it but but I think I’m sort of transitioning to the new face and and the new face is I

mean less meetings now right so I hired a CEO oh I have more managers and and there are less meetings so even yesterday I had a meeting and then two people were planning a different meeting and I said can you fight me to the meeting as well and then one of them looked at me and I said why do you want to be in the meeting and then I said well I because it’s important and I want to know like how it progresses and then he said would it be more efficient if after the meeting I walk up to you and just explain what five minutes lots of

resistance and they’re like yeah I guess it’s like right and then I realized like right so it’s no longer the meeting right it’s I’m now going to the next phase so so what is it now if it’s not now along with a meeting it’s lying down in your headlock and just getting the creativity yeah not really either but so I have a new big shareholder so that’s something I have to manage and that’s not as much about the meeting but about the stuff around the meeting I have more long term goals that I have to focus on

and make sure that we reach our targets that were on schedule with everything so [Music] so that’s one part and I have to see oh oh and sort of traditionally that what happens is that the CEO is more internally focused and the CEO is more externally focused so the big clients speaking at events thinking about marketing that sort of so more in a way you could say more thinking about the company then working on the company yeah that’s that’s I think it’s hard for me to explain because I’m sort of in the

process of finding out so sorry it’s a transition period just now yeah I think so yeah what gives you the biggest joy what you’re doing mm-hmm so I think there’s a like a human set there there’s a state of flow right where you’re sort of very focused and efficient and things go well and it seems to be without like you’re not distracted because you’re just very focused I think like a company can also achieve a state of flow where you feel like there’s a certain rhythm in the things that are happening people are

focused like everybody knows what they need to do problems might arise they always arise but you’re prepared for that and I think I get a lot of joy from that’s like if you look at the company you feel like I’m right there are problems there are issues but I have the right people in the right place and they know what to do and then you sort of lean back a little and go like yes this is let’s go well so I think that’s uh that gives me joy yeah so what is your experience how do you get your organization in that state of

flow what is needed for this so I think it’s difficult for me to say what would work for other companies right because like every company it’s looked like an organism with so many factors deciding what what happens but but I think in my company what worked for us is that I think early on we realized if we hire great people and give them guidance but freedom so they take their own responsibility then unexpected good things will happen and sometimes unexpected bad things but overall like we we put a lot of trust in the people

that work for us and that worked for us so yeah I think that that’s our formula and like looking back I even wish we would have started on that earlier like especially in the beginning when you run a company you feel like right I run the company so I have to decide what we’re gonna do and tell people what to do and then at one point you you understand like wait a minute we we hire people smarter than us to do this thing that they know more about them we would ever know so why would I tell this person we had an issue a few

months ago where a partner that we work with they were quite demanding and then they set to like the manager overseeing the project can we have a call and have pours there and then the manager said well when it comes to this particular topic Boris answers to me so we could have him there but like a difference now doesn’t make a difference and I heard about that and and that made me really proud right because I’m like that’s cool that’s that’s great because everybody always talks about empowering your people but

then I like wow when you’re when you actually believe that and and know it’s true and and you can tell somebody else without asking me like for answers to me you know like well then then we have achieved something I think nice of course you have a really close eye on what’s happening in the tech world kind of developments are coming to the market and when you what changed throughout the years when you go back ten years and when you look at now in the future what kind of developments did you see do you

see well I think there’s a there’s a constant sort of ebb and flow of positive and positive a positive wave and a sort of more negative wave and the tech world is always like oh we’re all for promising everything is gonna be amazing it and it sort of either crashes or it just goes down a little bit and people get more realistic and they’re like wait a minute this isn’t all good and I think that’s a very healthy rhythm yeah I I think when something is new like you’re blinded by the promises and the opportunities and then you sort of

get thrown back in your seat a little bit you’re like oh wait a minute so everything is fine and then but then you overcome that and you’re like oh actually there’s more opportunities and then so you sort of turn back and forth between positive and negative and I think right now we’re sort of we’re coming from over positive and we’re going to realistic slightly more negative which is I think a healthy thing to go through so I think that’s where we’re at at this moment you can sort of feel in the markets where people

are causing and kind of like wait a minute yeah so it’s the beginning of another yeah so what do you expect then you look at the future because I understand the the highs and lows of technology but all in all of course there’s a trend that’s yeah yeah and things can go pretty fast next decades yeah are you positive or negative about our outlook as a species and what we do well known as a species so that’s the tougher brawler question I know but all right so if you’re positive about like survival

for a species I think the reason why you’re positive is because you think that technology is gonna help us get there like I don’t believe technology would ruin us what like another or like I’m not afraid that moguls will take over I’m not afraid that AI will turn bad that’s that’s for them I’m worried about the environment and about politics a lot of things but but although I think technology is a force for good and not like ultimately always good like there’s always abuse there are always mistakes

excellence but overall I think it’s pushing us in the right direction and value things down well so so if you take like the worst examples right so so Facebook at this moment you could say so Russia I use Facebook or social media to influence politics and there’s now a madman a president in the US so you guys all right so so Facebook is bad and there’s more there’s more criticism about Facebook that you would be right about but then if I look at Facebook as a whole like the the amount of contact

people have with each other like the how many people have met each other through social media and I still think sort of the net result is positive right I’d rather have a world with Facebook in it and some incidents than a world without Facebook in it yeah I think overall it’s better for the world and it’s not perfect right and and it’s III see it as my responsibility and my role to keep showing people what’s good and bad about technology as it sort of progresses so but overall I think it’s absolute so if

imagine you’re still running neck wrap in 10 to 15 years from now yeah what kind of impact do you hope has made by then on the developments yeah so I think the proudest moments are when I meet like entrepreneurs or startups that say like you made a positive impact on me personally or else’s business and there are many stories like the people who work at a company and then reads a story or or see an interview and then say that is partly to become an entrepreneur or their companies that say we can show

your conference and that’s why we met our Investor or a company we salty or that’s why we hired a CEO so all these stories I just hope to see more of them I think we are inspiring people but I think my frustration is that like you never know how many people know your company but we’re guessing it’s like maybe 20 million so based on the number of visitors and everything but we also estimate that there are like 500 million people who should know us right so so basically nobody knows us right that’s so I think

that’s my challenge is like how can we reach more people and then if they decide like alright this is not for me well fine but then at least you have a choice to ignore us but yeah if I see the positive impact we have our industry and the people that we interact with know like I’d love to do that for more people know so I happy with how things played out so far yeah I’m very happy so the FT acquired a majority of our company and and of course that’s nice as an entrepreneur but like the moment I

announced it to everybody who work for us I said like normally a due diligence process of where’d I check your company takes two months or something if it’s very complicated three months hours took a year and that’s just because the FT is so thorough they wanted to know everything so so and I said so everybody who worked for us and I said they looked at only over like the past 14 years everything and then at the end of it they said this is up to our standards this is a high quality work so I said

there’s not a bigger compliment you’ll get in your life then then this deal being acquired yes yeah and it’s more important than any of the other area like the money yeah sure you had money but but this like like but yeah this is bigger than your high school diploma right this is yeah a stamp of approval that’s that’s just there’s no equivalent hell so for me as an entrepreneur like the there’s a quote from Ricky chef s the the comedian and asked him what would you tell your younger self or eight-year-old self and

he said I would tell myself nobody else knows what they’re doing either and I always thought that was a very powerful thing to say because like the first like if you’re young you’re always thinking like how do these people know what they have to do I don’t know anything and the later in life you realize right nobody knows yeah everybody’s just pretending and guessing and hoping for the best and even companies right if you have a company you look at your own company you’re like oh my god it’s all a mess and chaos and

then you get to a bigger company you’re like wait a minute it’s a mess I chaos here’s why this is all everybody’s just fooling around yeah yeah and that’s a very comforting to have that knowledge so but like this deal suddenly told us like our level of chaos and it’s actually fine right and it’s it’s it’s of a high standard yeah I stand it so suddenly all the things that I doubted in the past I feel better about because I’m like well it led to this and this is actually good enough for the FT yeah so I think like me and

my co-founder and even the shareholders that left in the deal they’re all very yea satisfied with how things turn out right about the question what we tell you what would you tell your younger self I wanna change the question for a bit and you look at your 60 year old self what would it tell you you of today oh I think maybe to worry less that’s a weird thing but I think people who interact with me think that I’m a very carefully person I look relaxed and happy but I can I can only be relaxed and happy

because because I worry a lot right it’s also my so you took care of all the [ __ ] that might go wrong yeah yeah and and and it takes some effort to stay positive and keep smiling right so but I have my days where at the end of the day I’m just like exhausted because it takes a lot of energy to stay positive sometimes right if even in the face of overwhelming problems and challenges to keep saying to everybody it’s kind of work out fine it’s fine and then but then in the back of your mind going like

oh my god this how can I tell and I had the same for the past 14 years like and it’s always easy like once you do a deal like this to go look back you’re like alright it all works out fine why is it over it so again that’s a question I can only answer for me right so so and that’s a I think a few years in like we still didn’t pay ourselves I think wait for the first five years we paid ourselves like 500 euros a month like the minimum we could because there was just he was just building the company that was just

it and I did do other jobs to be able to afford to do this and that felt like an investment but you could also say it was just a very expensive hobby right that we that we have and I think like I sometimes is is rare but sometimes you’ll meet someone and you can just feel that they chose this startup because they thought that was gonna be a lot of money in it so they they they they have this concept of like oh I saw an opportunity to make a lot of money so I’m gonna do this and I honestly think

that me and my co-founder we did think that this was a business that could generate money but first and foremost we were really interested in playing a role in this right and we thought this is such a great industry to work with this is like the like a life-changing events for everybody on earth and not only can we are we spectators we also play a role there influential in in this thing we can we can play a part like how exciting is that right I would pay to be able to do this and I did right so so I think like that’s worth it

if you can find something like that where you’re just like oh can I please just stay and watch maybe help out a little bit because this is I just want to be a part of this and of course if then there’s some money at the end then even and I said oh yeah but I I think I honestly believe that we always thought like we’re gonna give it our best right we’re gonna work hard and if in a few years the whole thing goes bankrupt oh that would suck yeah but that we’ve employed like hundreds of people for years who were able to you know buy

houses start families have children learn and interact with other and have an influence in this incredibly interesting phenomena and then we’re left with nothing well at least you know we’ve had a great experience and then I’m sure we’ll be fine like even if the whole thing crashes and burns I think we’ll find a jobs all right so so yeah and I think you need that I think if you start kind of start a company you’re only in it for the money you’re not gonna last that long I spent 40 years working on that that’s the probably like

the the most functional years of my life I spent doing this so if this would have been a shitty job but I would have been in it just for the money then you’re really bored you’re wasting your life in a way yeah totally what would be the the most important advice you’d like to give to entrepreneurs taken to the nearest startup in to the mares yeah so my advice is always to not listen to my advice and what I mean is that like if you find something that’s unique and sort of an opportunity for you then it’s

probably unique and opportunity for you because nobody else is doing it right so you can then ask like an old person who has experience with the previous thing probably that’s not going to be helpful for you right it might be a little bit inspiring but you really have to do it yourself and I want you to realize nobody else knows what they’re doing either you might as well just go to work and fix the thing all right so so I think I had a chat with someone recently and they said so maybe in a few years when you’re

done with this are you gonna write a book I don’t know like oh my god yeah of course I’d love to write a book but then this is also so predictable or something right so old guys who’ve been successful at something or they’re gonna write a book about how they became successful that young people are gonna read hoping to find a secrets and there’s none right all the information is outdated it’s worked for me won’t work for you like even if we would start at the same time in the same industry on the same

opportunity like your personality is so different from mine it’s a lot like what works for me probably won’t work for you so so in other words just get started just do it don’t listen to other people and go for it [Music] yeah that’s true yeah so so even this advice is its advice specifically for me yeah all right my work with some people yeah so maybe that’s the advice of like find advice that works for you don’t listen to any other advice it’s a very influential offer a very successful entrepreneur one

of the guys who started booking and he said like building a successful company is like running through like running through a forest blindfold us and with like a hundred other entrepreneurs there’s always one of them that makes it through the end and then there’s journalists there saying how did you do it and then they said well I would left at one point and then I think that’s good to remember like there’s my pleasure you