Beyond the Case
A podcast where global leaders from the Harvard Business School Owner/President Management (OPM) community join in a personal capacity and share the real decisions, failures, and mental models behind building enduring companies.
This podcast is independent and not affiliated with Harvard Business School.
Beyond the Case
Life After the Exit: Choosing What Comes Next - Paweł Sieczkiewicz
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Paweł’s journey leaves us reflecting on what we are building alongside our ambitions. As he prepares to step away from the company he built, his life already contains learning, friendships, curiosity, and opportunities to contribute. There is also an honest tension in his story: experience can deepen our judgment while making us slower to act. The challenge is to preserve the willingness to move forward while becoming more thoughtful about what deserves our time.
Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation:
- You can take the first responsible step without knowing how the entire journey will unfold.
- Give your energy a clear direction and allow consistent effort time to compound.
- Prepare for life after a major achievement by building interests and relationships along the way.
- Make room for experiences whose value lies simply in the curiosity and enjoyment they bring.
- Commit to a new pursuit long enough to discover what it can teach you.
- Let other perspectives challenge your certainty while preserving your ability to make a decision.
- Consider the emotional cost of your ambitions alongside the rewards they might bring.
- Put your greatest effort into creating value where your contribution matters most.
- Use the abilities that helped you succeed to contribute to the community around you.
- Set your own pace by acting, seeking feedback, and applying what you learn.
Books:
Hey guys, welcome to one more episode of Beyond the Case, a podcast where global leaders from Howard Business School's OPM community join in a personal capacity to talk about the life lessons, mental models, which go behind building enduring companies. Today's guest is someone who's very fascinating. He was in my living group for Unit 1, which I did last year, OPM 69. The guest is Pavel. I will not attempt to say your last name, but uh Pavel, hopefully you can introduce yourself, tell us your full name and also your background, please.
SPEAKER_00I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm just I cut that out.
SPEAKER_01Don't worry.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm Pavel Sheczkiewicz. I'm from Poland, Warsaw, where I'm based and where I'm living, and I'm here right now. Um so uh when I was 12, I started coding. When I was 12, I did the first comp I company that was a software development agency. And when I was 21, I set up the current company, uh, which is telemedic.
SPEAKER_01Pavel, sorry, sorry, your your your video had cut out. Can you start again your introduction? I start everything before this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, once again. Okay, okay, okay. So I'm Paul Syczkiewicz. I'm I'm based in Poland, uh, in Warsaw, where I am right now, currently. Uh I started coding when I was 12. When I was 18, I set up the first uh company, which was a software development agency. When I was 21, I set up the current company, and it's a medical assistance company. So we are working with um with hospitals, with clinics, and with insurance companies. So we are adding layer of the technology, so we are handling cases between patients, clinics, and insurance companies in Central Eastern Europe. After 13 years of running this company, I sold it when I was 31, and I had to stay for three years for Earnout. And this Earnout is finishing right now, in next month. And I'm coming back for the second year of HBS.
SPEAKER_01Congratulations. Uh uh great background there. Could you explain what an earnout is and how it works, please?
SPEAKER_00Um, you mean about the company or about the uh like you know doing business in a technology or from a business perspective, you've sold your business and you said there's uh an earnout clause.
SPEAKER_01So, what does that mean exactly?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so earnout clause is uh so when you are selling business, and uh actually when someone is buying business, they want to manage the um the risk factor that you pumped up everything in a company, make it shining and great, and when you are leaving, everything will collapse. So, usually because of that, the buyers are uh putting an earnote clausel that uh is taking from one year, three years, uh up to three years, sometimes even five years. Uh so they want you to stay in a company, help them take over the management, put new people in place, and be sure that nothing bad will happen uh during this time. Usually Airnotice uh is connected with some additional cash, so part of your shares could be locked up, or there's simply additional bonus based on some KPIs to be delivered.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Um so, Pavel, uh I also know that uh you started off as an MMA fighter.
SPEAKER_00So I was kickboxing fighter. Actually, I fight last time over 10 years ago, so I'm I'm not mentioning this anymore anywhere. But I yes, I I did. I was training since I was 12 and I stopped fighting when I was 24 or something like this.
SPEAKER_01But you're still very fit, you still work out?
SPEAKER_00Yes, so I still work out. Last year I was uh not as fit as I am right now, but uh having right now more time and looking for uh uh for things to place in my calendar, it's definitely one of the habits that I have again to work out.
SPEAKER_01How did you end up starting your first company, you know, while being a kickboxer? How did that come along? I already know the story.
SPEAKER_00In parallel, I was doing uh I was learning coding and I was earning first money as a freelancer on uh on websites uh on websites that were you were able to post advertisements that you are looking for someone that will make a coding for you. And I was this guy that was placing beats to make a coding uh for someone, and at the same time I was training, so these were like actually two things that I was doing when I was young: training and uh learning coding and coding. And I always known that I want to be an entrepreneur or sportsman, and so finally it happened that I became an entrepreneur, and uh so once I had a skill to develop, it was obvious for me that I would be doing this for someone. I started to hire my colleagues and um act as a project manager and business development. Uh so I was doing sales for us, I was you know having some team in a um uh in a when I was 19 or 20, we had 20 something people on board in our company, and then I decided that uh if someone is giving us uh websites to be developed, applications, that's definitely some more margin on top of that. So if someone is okay to pay us for doing this development, why not to look for the product idea that uh that we can take this margin on ourselves? Plus, whenever you are doing a software development agency, like service, professional service company, if you are not having retainers every month once you will finish your previous task, you need to look for the new for new deals. And I was looking for the business model that will be able to be subscription-based, that once we will have a client once, this client will come back, come back for new things. This is how we happen uh in the medical sector, where we started the telemedicine company here in Poland. And from the telemedicine, we started to implement other layers like physical visits, uh integrations with clinics, with integrations with lab laboratories that are doing health tests, and this is how finally we built full assistance company.
SPEAKER_01How did you work around the red tape of regulations and healthcare? Because being someone with a technology background, that must have been something you had to educate yourself on and figure out real time, correct?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I didn't have anyone around me that were uh like doctors, that I didn't, I'm not, I'm not from doctor's family, etc. So I started from the easiest possible um business from the concept perspective and from regulatory perspective. So we started to run first primary clinic. But this first primary clinic was online, and after that, we started to learn from doctors, from lawyers, all the regulations that we need to spend. We started to enter into the next sectors of the healthcare. And uh so we started to run more and more complex services that demanded more and more legal structure, but every everything was step by step. Our main and the most important factor was that we were always in sourcing IT. Everything we done in technology was insights. Our competitors were were outsourcing this, and for them, IT was always a battleneck. And for us, IT was always our asset because we were doing this internally. We understood the process, we we were able to change priorities very fast. That's why we won the market.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. And how did the exit happen? Were you actively seeking a suitor, someone to buy you, or was there an inbound request? Could you walk us through that, Jeremy?
SPEAKER_00I was already running a company on the VC-baked uh model. So I had already a few VCs on board, and we were looking for the next uh uh round, financial round, for um uh for acquisitions. So we are we were looking to be a platform to consolidate the market, and we were not able to find the uh amount of money uh for the valuation that we were uh fine to go go with. Uh there we had a term sheet on on the table, but then the Russian has invaded Ukraine, and in our region all the valuations were cut down. We weren't able, like we weren't uh feel fair with this. But uh when we we rejected the uh the conditions that were on the market, we started to get offers for the secondary, meaning we get offers not for the primary, meaning like injection capital to the company, but secondary just to buy out our shares. Some of the uh investors, some of the VC funds were already for a few years in the company, some of them were fresh, meaning like they were two years in a company. Those who were new one, they wanted to wait and not sell right now. The other, the other that were already for a few years, they were fine with selling. So there were some internal calibration uh needed uh for this. But finally we decided after speaking to a few companies, we decided to to go with the uh sales process. And part of the deal was that founder, meaning me, has to stay for three other years. VCs sold the 100% of their shares immediately, and I had to stay for three more years and implement the new new management.
SPEAKER_01How do you feel after the exit? Do you feel liberated? Do you feel free, or do you feel a burning desire to keep building?
SPEAKER_00I feel like um I've delivered the next milestone of the plan. Because it's not a moment that you are thinking, oh, I will sell or not once you are getting offers. You are thinking about this much earlier. Actually, when I was doing a first deal with a first VC company, a first VC investor, I know that this investor is like entering into our cap table and this investor is investing to sell at once at one moment. That this investor wants to make a I so where did I stop?
SPEAKER_01Um I think that's okay. I have enough on that question to tweak out some of the last part. So I'm just gonna build it for ahead. Um so since your exit, you've also attempted a few different initiatives. It may not be on the business front, it may be more on your personal discovery and journey side. Education being one of that, and then uh some of the other initiatives you were mentioning to me before this call. Do you want to just walk us through that and what the inspiration was for each of those?
SPEAKER_00So uh I'm fan of not being uh surprised by the by the life and not being surprised by things that are waiting ahead of me. So I spoke to many people who didn't exit, uh, many people who didn't exit being quite young, and I was learning from their experience and their pros and cons how would they plan their calendar while they are already free. So uh one of the things is that uh uh I joined HBS being uh already on AirNout, and I also did uh SCP, Stanford uh Senior Executive Program on Stanford this summer. These are you know the networks that give me a lot of energy and gives me a lot of ideas. Uh how can I spend the resources that I got uh currently, meaning time, also the experience, etc. Other than that, I am supporting a few NGOs that are around vibe coding because I'm a tech guy and I'm following the trends, and I I feel the AI is doing a lot of uh a lot of movement around development, but not only IT, but development of the company, like go to market, etc. So I'm helping people uh to get together into the uh in meetings, in meetups that we are doing as a as a community here in Warsaw since uh almost two years. And yeah, uh this is it. I'm part of uh YPO, so YPO is also giving a lot of opportunities to use uh the lifelore lifelong learning uh you know opportunities, and uh currently it's uh it it works great for me.
SPEAKER_01What else are you doing on uh on spending a day with a professional side? You were telling me about it before this on a professional side. Spending a day with a professional from a different field.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I started a YouTube channel that uh will be soon online. I've recorded already uh a number of episodes uh that I'm spending day with people who inspire me. And uh so for example, I was working as a miner in a salt mine underground. I was spending day with uh um with firemen, uh etc. So whatever the the industry it is, whatever the type of people is it, if someone inspires me and I think that is something that is just making a fun, I want to understand it. And while understanding it, I'm um asking uh cameramans to record it. This is the one of the plans for one year. Because I'm like with the sports attitude, I'm not doing things to to start and stop in two weeks if I I don't like it. If I'm starting doing something, I'm giving myself time to understand if I I want to do it or not. For example, Sokin, I really admire that after one year you are developing this podcast because I really believe in being in, you know, like you are you are doing uh you you walk the talk, and exactly I want to do the same year, the same way. After one year, after 50 episodes, uh every week one episode, I will decide if I want to continue or not. Not earlier.
SPEAKER_01But are you doing that from uh maybe probably a business model perspective also? Or is it your discovery of the world for inspiration?
SPEAKER_00Or maybe there's there's a phrase for this which uh is uh which is said uh which is named, which is said. Uh um how was it? Uh side quests. So that's exactly I'm playing my side quests uh in my life. So uh you know the things that I never had the time for, the the the experience that I didn't have a plan how to get into this situation, occasionally I'm I am already using this.
SPEAKER_01And how do you identify the next person you want to spend a day with? Is it just random? Um, are you researching? Are you putting a lot of thought into who it should be?
SPEAKER_00The short list was obvious that I had many people that I had on in my mind. Wow, this person, I would like to have an opportunity to meet this person in the future. So I'm trying to reach out through the network, sometimes directly. Uh after that, there's a second cohort that comes up to my idea every day. I don't know the word uh in when someone is making sculptures. Uh, what's the name of the profession in English?
SPEAKER_01Um artist?
SPEAKER_00Artist that is making sculptures. So exactly today I set up the date when I will be doing a day with an artist that is making sculptures. And I will be doing my first sculptures in my uh sculpture in my life, thanks to him. Uh so I I met the guy on the birthdays of my friend. We started talking and uh I proposed him that we can do such episode. He said, yeah, come to my uh office, showroom, whatever you you you name it. And uh we yeah, we agreed that we'll we will do such episode.
SPEAKER_01Great. Um how's wipe coding cobing uh no sorry, how's vibe coding coming along for you?
SPEAKER_00Very good, very good. So uh right now we are having a trend in Poland that we believe that the transparency drives meritocracy. So there's uh plenty of wipecoders uh in Poland that are taking public data, they are crossing this public data thanks to AI, they are visualizing it and showing to the journalists, to the politicians, what's not working well. And uh we are doing such a community of people who are trying to look behind the shoulder to politicians if they are spending money well, um etc. And vibe coding is helping a lot to such uh pro bono stuff.
SPEAKER_01Pavel, uh now after having an exit, having explored so many different business ideas, meeting so many professionals in your educational realm, and also from this personal passion, the side uh uh passion that you have for documenting it. Uh is there anything different you've learned about yourself?
SPEAKER_00On HBS or during year between HBS 1 and HBS 2? Since your exit. Since my exit. So one of the things is that probably I did something well that my life didn't change a lot. Of course, it's still one month to go, to have a calendar free out of every uh things related to the company. But most of the time I'm not proactively spending time in the office. So I can say that probably I did something well, that my calendar is anyway full of things that I like to do, inspire me. So I don't think that my life will change a lot, other than probably there was always some layer of stress related with the company. If you have a lot, like huge part of your assets in one bucket, it's deliver uh some some stress. If this uh if this volatility can be very high, uh very high, like potential upside is very high, potential downside is very high. Probably is always coming with some level of stress. This probably will uh will not be anymore there, which of course I I'm glad of. Um this is my main reflection. Like that uh when you can look on the same things from the perspective that you are not having this self-engagement, this emotional engagement in making decisions, you can make these decisions much wiser, probably. They cost you less your your health.
SPEAKER_01Did you plan around the taxation issue before your exit? Was that something you were proactively thinking about? And did you have a structure in place? Or do you feel like hey, it was my first exit? You know, I did the best I could in the time I had.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so when I was uh signing a deal, there was uh new legislation in Poland, which was family foundation, some kind of a trust law. So I uh I used this uh this opportunity. I'm not sure if it was a right move because uh in Poland we got a huge problem with uh how often the taxation is changing, and we are not having the stable tax law that uh you can say that for 10 years minimal nothing will be changed and They are currently trying to make some changes in this specific entity. Other than that, I'm not focusing a lot on such things like the optimization. I think that it's a kind of the patriotism that you are paying taxes in place where you live that helped you to grow. Of course, to the degree that you are not feeling that you are squeezed by the government, but I I was rather focusing on maximizing the value by the enterprise value of the company than to maximize the effort and the time into the tax optimizations.
SPEAKER_01Great.
SPEAKER_00Yes. My main takeaway is related to the things that and I'm happy that I didn't do OPM earlier. Because my main takeaway is that, or first I will start. I think one of the reasons uh why we did a great company with a great results and successfully sold it because we were very focused and having one direction, and we were not reflecting about many other potential uh scenarios. And OPM teached me that there's plenty possible scenarios and answers on case. And if probably I wouldn't have these reflections uh while doing this company as a young guy that was simply going forward, maybe many times I was I would be starting to reflect instead of doing just okay, if it's a uh two-way door, just make a decision and let's go forward. And uh after OPM, I think I will be able to make much more wiser decisions, but I'm not sure that I would be doing them faster. And I think that speed was one of the uh things that was super crucial for my business. It would be just a different style of doing business. I learned that whenever you are coming from a different country or you are from different culture or you are first-time entrepreneur, or you are coming from the family that was running a business, and you are second, third, fourth generation, you can have a different perspective on the same dilemma. And it opened my eyes a lot, but at the same time, it stopped me from doing a lot of decisions very fast. And I don't know if it's good or not. Hopefully, like thankfully, I got a company behind me because maybe it would provoke me many many times to get deeper into dilemmas instead of just making decisions, making bets and moving forward. But definitely it's my biggest takeaway that many times when I'm some uh right now taking some dilemma, but I'm I'm sure what I would decide in the past. Right now I'm having sometimes our colleague from Japan and thinking, what who would would uh would he do? Having some colleagues from India or Africa and thinking, okay, like I remember their deep thought process that they were telling loudly, they were vocally about it. And wow, I'm not sure uh if their approach would wouldn't be better right now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Um any book that you enjoyed reading, which has influenced your mindset? I see a few books behind you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, plenty of books, plenty of books to be still uh read. Um probably one of the books that uh most of people didn't hear about, and it's a business book. It's called Network Effect, wrote by Andrew Chen.
SPEAKER_01I have that. The Cold Start Problem is another book that he's written.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Cold Start problem is definitely something that is worth to read. So this is it. And the other that uh of course reflects uh the the airnote uh topic, but probably is well known by uh by other people is dying with dying with zero. But I think many people already recommended it.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Last question in closing, Pavel. Um, any advice to your younger version if you could go back in time?
SPEAKER_00Um speed. I think speed is the most important, like how fast you are iterating. And uh right now AI is helping you to get such fast feedback loop, getting data, make the decisions. So observe, orient, decide, act can be faster than whenever it was before. And when you are younger, you don't have habit and you don't have an observation that the cycle should work like this. When you are older, you can say that probably okay, it should be in this space, because always it was in this space. But when you are younger, you don't have this examples, so you can put whatever pace is your pace.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. That's the first time I've heard ODA observe or decide enact. Uh, it's a it's a well-known decade because uh the last person, the first time I heard it was when someone who was part of the military was having a meal with me and told me about how he goes about his decision making. Um, and I believe you have some military background as well.
SPEAKER_00No, no. I was one one of the my ideas that we would be doing in in life will be that we I will go to military, but uh it's uh very fast is it it lost with sport or uh or being entrepreneur.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Pavel, thanks so much. Um really, really insightful conversation. Thank you, Sokin.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Sokin. We just got into the golden hour event.
SPEAKER_01Bye.
SPEAKER_00Bye, thank you.
