Why Founders Should Take Big Bets

Almost a decade in the VC hamster wheel, I took multi-million dollar bets that turned out to be wrong. They had a big impact on my mental health – and almost broke the company.

Paradoxically, even with what I know now about the suffering throughout these years, I wouldn’t take fewer big bets.

Lucid Living is an appeal for audacious ambition – but for the right reasons.

A decade in the VC hamster wheel

In 2019, I raised the first major round for my company Vara – back when computer vision was the first big AI wave, before today’s LLM hype.

Other founders around me were raising big rounds, capital was available. Some of the best tech VCs still wanted to get an AI deal in radiology. Our round had to be not just a capital injection – but a statement.

To build a great VC company, you need a $100M ARR business within a decade. The market must be big enough, the moats high enough. Back then, radiology AI was already crowded, so we followed a contrarian vision. Multiple trips to San Francisco, meetings with Silicon Valley giants like Keith Rabois – this was the peak of my entrepreneurial grandiosity.

In health tech AI, you need heavy upfront investment: years of foundational research, regulatory hurdles, prospective clinical evidence. What takes decades in healthcare must fit into 10 year VC fund cycles. But radiologists wouldn’t buy so quickly. To unlock willingness to pay, you must go very deep on a specific problem – and you end up with smaller markets in return.

By this time, you’re already locked into high valuations. The next round must be even bigger. We pivoted toward a different model in very different markets: building screening programs in emerging countries where women aren’t screened yet, going B2C and B2B, building data products for pharma. It was a big bet, and the burn rate exploded.

And when traction didn’t come fast enough, the spiral began: multiple rounds of layoffs, the loss of key talent who still wanted to play “Champions League.” From the outside: a company in decline.

Breakdown as breakthrough – on many levels

The point is not to warn against VC money or big bets. That would be too easy – and the opposite of my philosophy, Lucid Living.

Without the wrong bets, we also wouldn’t have had the right ones – and those did create lasting value.

Today Vara covers 40% of Germany’s national screening program. We published the world’s largest prospective AI study – with half a million women. And every single day, cancers are caught which would otherwise be missed. We’re on the way to profitability, while pushing for the first reimbursement of autonomous AI in radiology.

None of this would exist without bold bets, because we wouldn’t have gotten the capital to build all of this.

In hindsight, it’s tempting to call some choices “mistakes.” But often the decision wasn’t wrong – only the outcome. There’s a razor’s edge between persistence and delusion. In the middle of a crisis, you never know if you’re facing a dip (temporary pain before the upswing) or a drop (time to quit). Many founders quit too soon. Some of the biggest companies were almost “dead” before they became household names.

That’s the irony of the curse of being driven. Our drive keeps us going through dips – and sometimes that endurance is what changes industries. But if it’s a drop, the same drive can destroy both founder and company.

Meanwhile, on a very personal level, even though I did suffer a lot in the “hamster wheel,” I wouldn’t trade the suffering. Without it, I wouldn’t have discovered an entirely different dimension of human experience, the Lucid State – where emotions are no longer enemies but doorways into deep meaning.

The last-minute investment committees when everything is at stake, the all-hands when desperate questions require clear and compassionate answers, the emergency meetings with co-founders where emotions run as deep as in marriage – those moments weren’t just painful. They were the very texture of intensity where real depth emerges.

Lucid Living means taking bets, but for different reasons

No, I don’t regret the bets. But today, I take big decisions differently.

Too often I acted from fear: fear of letting down investors, fear of being ordinary, fear of being left behind. At the time I didn’t see that fear was running the show, imprinted since childhood.

Today, I still want Vara to be the first AI company with nationwide reimbursement for autonomous AI. I want to build a business that lasts generations, profitable and steady. I want to lead with a family-entrepreneur spirit, shaping lives and caring for people along the way.

This still requires big decisions and audacious vision. But not to quiet fear. Not to earn love or avoid guilt. I take big bets because I want to live them fully. They are no longer a reaction to fear. They are a conscious choice.

That’s Lucid Living as an entrepreneur: exposing myself to emotional intensity, but grounded in values instead of fear.

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I wrote an essay (download possible here) on why drive often turns into suffering and how to build with more meaning.