Alex Macdonald. A $300M Exit is No Reason to Retire

What would you do if you sold your company for 300 million dollars? Retire? Explore the world? Do all these other things you had no time to do while building a business? This is not what my friend Alex Macdonald did when he sold his company Velocity Black two years ago. In fact, Alex made it quite impossible for himself to have any kind of post-exit sabbatical. Why? Well, Alex has seen enough of his post-exit founder friends getting stuck in full-blown existential crisis after they sold their company. He didn't want that to happen to him. I think honestly, if I had had that void, it probably would have not led to a productive use of my energy. I'm actually very happy that I had something immediately to jump into. And yeah, that's led to me not having to go through that challenging period that I see a lot of my friends go through, questioning their identity and everything. In this episode, we're going to explore why he made this decision, whether two years later he still feels it was the right one, and how he applies the lessons from his first full entrepreneurial cycle to building his new business, appropriately called SQL. 🚀 00:00:00 - Introduction 💼 00:02:25 - The Story of Velocity Black 🏦 00:07:46 - Selling Velocity Black to Capital One 🔥 00:07:05 - Why Alex Started Another Business Before Selling His First One 🧠 00:10:52 - The Founder’s Existential Crisis After an Exit 👷‍♂️ 00:12:45 - The Shortage of Builders, Not Investors 💪 00:14:19 - Work-Life Balance & Health After an Exit 📊 00:16:21 - Lessons from Running a 24/7 Business ⚖️ 00:19:52 - Changing Approach to Work with Sequel 🕵️‍♂️ 00:21:19 - Different Approaches to Post-Exit Businesses 🏛️ 00:24:19 - Sequel: Building a Next-Gen Goldman Sachs 🏁 00:27:26 - Managing Motivation After Financial Success 🔑 00:31:03 - Fulfillment vs. Happiness: What Really Matters? 🩺 00:33:15 - The Biohacking & Longevity Obsession 🤝 00:35:51 - Community & Meaning in Life After an Exit 🙏 00:39:13 - The Idea of Creating a New Religion 📜 00:45:46 - The Role of Structure & Responsibility in Life. 🔓 00:54:08 - The Challenge of Freedom After an Exit 📈 00:57:46 - Angel Investing & How It Led to Sequel 🎯 01:03:42 - Helping Athletes Transition Beyond Their Careers 💰 01:07:37 - Building a Legacy vs. Just Making Money ⚠️ 01:10:52 - Avoiding Mistakes in Early-Stage Investing 📢 01:15:30 - The Power of Influence in Investing 🚀 01:20:05 - Sequel’s Future Plans & Scaling the Model 🏆 01:25:00 - What Drives Long-Term Success? 🛑 01:30:10 - Final Thoughts & Advice for Founders