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EPISODE DETAILS:
Thibault — known online as Tibo — is a French indie hacker who spent six years failing at startups before building Tweet Hunter during Covid lockdown and selling it for $10 million. Except the real number was more complicated than that: $2 million up front, $8 million in earn-out, and 18 months of some of the most stressful building of his life to get there. He walked away with just under $3 million post taxes — and says he regrets the sale entirely.
Today, Tibo is doing over $1 million a month in revenue across a portfolio of five software products he's built since that exit. His personal spend is negligible. He has no financial advisor, keeps roughly 50% of his net worth in cash, and puts almost everything investable into index funds.
This episode gets into the full deal structure, the psychological cost of the earn-out period, what he calls the "frozen state" that hits founders after a big exit, and why he says he will never sell a company again.
Timestamps:
- 02:12 — Full guest intro: who Thibault is, the Tweet Hunter story, deal structure breakdown, and episode roadmap
- 08:08 — The $10M deal unpacked: earn-out structure, revenue milestones, and what he actually collected
- 10:17 — The co-founder split, the 25% influencer equity deal, and whether he'd do it again
- 14:09 — How the influencer partnership worked and why they replicated it on Tapio
- 26:17 — "Getting a ton of money up front feels unhealthy" — Thibault on why lump-sum exits are psychologically dangerous
- 28:14 — The "frozen state": why founders can't ship after a big exit
- 30:42 — The earn-out burnout period: stress, loss aversion, and the 18 hardest months of his life
- 34:37 — "It was a bad decision financially" — Thibault's verdict on the sale
- 38:15 — Nomadic life, the Vietnam hacker residency, and how wealth changes how he travels
- 42:42 — No financial advisor, no trust in wealth managers — why everything goes into S&P 500
- 45:29 — Personal spend breakdown: ~$8K/month — rent, food, tech gadgets, and that's basically it
- 48:27 — What happens to the ~$90K/month delta: cash, S&P 500, and acquiring more products
- 49:45 — The portfolio strategy: five products, two unannounced, and the 2026 scaling challenge
- 51:12 — Building a distribution bridge between all his products with an AI agent
- 53:06 — Raising kids with money: unconditional safety as the foundation for risk-taking
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