Entrepreneur to Billion-Dollar CEO: The Habits I Had to Drop

"I Grew Up in a Family of Entrepreneurs… But I Had to Unlearn Almost Everything to Build a $1 Billion Company"

I come from a family full of entrepreneurs. My grandfather built things in construction, my father worked in surveying, and my uncles ran businesses in packaging and construction. Growing up in Switzerland, I absorbed a very Swiss way of thinking: stay humble, work hard, solve problems with your own hands, and never spend money you don’t already have.

Those values served me well when we started Scandit. They taught me resilience, discipline, and how to bootstrap. But as the company grew from a small Swiss startup into a global business with seven offices and more than 2,100 customers (including seven of the top 10 retailers in the world), I realised something uncomfortable.

Some of the very instincts that helped my family succeed were actually holding Scandit back.

Here’s what I had to unlearn — and why it was so hard.

1. Resilience and Improvisation: My Superpower Became a Bottleneck

In my family, if something broke, you didn’t wait for help — you fixed it yourself. Dinner table conversations were often about problems and how to solve them. Weekends were for troubleshooting whatever needed fixing. I learned to stay calm under pressure and improvise with whatever I had.

That mindset was incredibly useful in Scandit’s early days. When things went wrong, I would roll up my sleeves and sort it out. It kept us alive.

But as we started scaling, I slowly realised I couldn’t be the firefighter anymore. If I kept solving every problem myself, the company would never grow beyond me. I had to learn to hire good people, trust them, and give them real ownership so they could solve problems without me being involved.

Letting go wasn’t easy. It felt unnatural at first. But it also brought an unexpected gift. Once my wife and I had kids, I could finally protect my evenings — have dinner with the family and put the children to bed most nights. Sometimes, after the house went quiet, I’d go back to work for an hour or two, just like I used to see my father do. The difference now is that I choose where my attention goes, and I have a strong team I can actually rely on.

The lesson? Resilience helps you survive. But if your company’s success still depends on you personally jumping in to fix everything, you’re not scaling — you’re just working harder. Real growth happens when you build an organisation that can run well even when you step back.

2. The Cash-Flow Prison: When Discipline Turns Into an Anchor

My family businesses were built on cash flow. You delivered value, got paid, and only then reinvested what you earned. Spending money you didn’t yet have felt dangerous and irresponsible. That discipline was drilled into me from a young age.

It served us well in the beginning. We bootstrapped Scandit, lived off early customer revenue and grants, and were extremely careful with every franc we spent. Sharing hotel rooms on business trips felt completely normal.

But when we started raising serious venture capital — eventually raising $273 million across multiple rounds — that old mindset became a limitation. Scaling suddenly required spending money proactively to unlock future growth, not waiting until the cash was already in the bank.

I had to train myself to think differently. Spending tens of thousands on marketing or hiring ahead of revenue used to feel almost reckless. There were moments when it still felt wrong. But I learned that some costs are actually investments — they buy you speed, talent, or market position that compounds over time.

The shift wasn’t about becoming careless with money. It was about understanding that what counts as “frugal” at $10 million can become “shortsighted” at $100 million. The rules change as the company grows, and you have to change with them.

3. From Local Community Thinking to Global Stakeholder Strategy

In traditional family businesses, your community is everything. Your customers might live nearby. Your suppliers know your family. Success feels personal and reciprocal.

When Scandit started expanding globally, that close-knit feeling started to break. You can’t personally know thousands of customers across different continents. You can’t build the same intimate relationships with everyone.

I had to move from relying on personal connections to building proper systems that help the whole company stay close to what really matters — our most important customers, key partners, and internal teams.

It wasn’t about becoming cold. It was about creating consistent ways to listen, learn, and deliver value even when you can’t shake hands with every single person. The challenge wasn’t losing connection — it was institutionalising it so the organisation could maintain that care at scale.

The leaders who struggle most are the ones who keep trying to recreate that small-family intimacy at global scale. That’s not loyalty — it’s exhaustion wearing the mask of purpose.

4. The Skill of Strategic Unlearning

Perhaps the hardest part was regularly asking myself: “What helped us before but is now holding us back?”

Traditional family businesses are often built for stability and cash flow. That approach works beautifully for local, steady companies. But when you’re trying to build a fast-moving global tech company, some of those instincts can quietly put a ceiling on your growth.

Unlearning isn’t about rejecting my roots. It’s about honestly evaluating what still serves the company today and what needs to change. The same logic applies to how AI is reshaping business right now — many old habits and processes simply won’t be enough for what’s coming.

The companies that keep growing are the ones willing to regularly pause and ask: What do we need to stop doing? What do we need to reimagine completely?

That question has become one of the most powerful tools in my leadership.

The Real Challenge of Growth

Looking back, the most expensive mistake isn’t usually doing the wrong thing. Sometimes it’s continuing to do the right thing for too long — even after the situation has completely changed.

The journey of building Scandit taught me that leadership at scale requires constant evolution. The values I grew up with — resilience, discipline, humility, and hard work — are still part of who I am. But I’ve learned to apply them differently as the company grew.

If you’re building something and feeling stuck, maybe the answer isn’t to work harder with the same old approach. Sometimes the smartest (and bravest) move is to pause and honestly ask yourself: What do I need to unlearn to move forward?

That single question changed everything for me.