Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,

Startup success often comes with a clean narrative: raise funding, scale fast, exit big. But what happens after the exit — when you’re no longer the scrappy founder, but part of a corporate machine?

Our guest this week, Tuomas Toivonen, co-founded Holvi, one of Europe’s early neobanks. After being acquired by BBVA, he found himself navigating a new kind of challenge — and eventually led a bold management buyout to reclaim the company’s independence. In this episode, Tuomas shares what it really takes to rebuild from the ground up, why going back to startup roots was both liberating and brutal, and how staying transparent through chaos helped hold the team — and the mission — together. Exclusively for our newsletter subscribers, Tuomas has shared additional insights below.

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How to rebuild a startup after an acquisition

What you will get out of this episode

In our conversation, Tuomas shares:

• How to survive a buyout and rebuild from scratch

• Why charging for your product might be the healthiest move you make

• What it really takes to lead through layoffs and uncertainty

• Why the startup journey is never about solving one problem

• and much more!

Our main take away’s

1. Growth can hide a broken model. Holvi was growing fast, but beneath the surface, unit economics were unsustainable. It wasn’t until Tuomas faced zero external funding that he realized: free services don’t scale when the cost of delivery is real.

2. Sometimes, survival means starting over. After the BBVA buyout, Holvi went from 150 people to 60. It was painful, but necessary. Tuomas didn’t sugarcoat it — rebuilding hurt, but it made the business viable again.

3. Leadership is clearest when things fall apart. During layoffs, Tuomas focused on transparency, over-communication, and helping people land on their feet. Real leadership isn’t about steering during calm — it’s about holding the wheel in chaos.

4. You can’t outrun burnout with purpose. Passion helped Tuomas and his team push through 2021, but adrenaline only lasts so long. He learned that sustainability isn’t a luxury — it’s a requirement for any meaningful mission.

5. There’s always another problem. And that’s okay. Tuomas stopped expecting things to “get easier.” Startups are a series of problems, not a single one to solve. Accepting that made him a better founder — and more resilient through it all.

How to reach out to Tuomas

• LinkedIn

• Holvi

Exclusive from Tuomas

What was the first thing you cut or changed right after the MBO to move toward profitability? And / Or: What’s one thing you kept post-buyout that helped retain product or team continuity?

Well, we went from around €20m of annual equity funding from the parent to zero euros per annum. We had to rely entirely on the revenues we could generate ourselves. So, there were really only two priorities: 1) reduce expenses, and 2) increase revenues. We implemented strict zero based budgeting and cancelled all corporate credit cards. Only if something stopped working – and someone complained – we would see, for example, how many seats we would need for a given SaaS service. We also removed our “free banking” offerings. The unit economics of these services were not sustainable. We made every customer a paying customer. Yes, we did experience notable churn, but both unit economics and revenues showed strong improvement. We also had significant layoffs and the team was reduced to about half from its peak. Of course, this was very hard on both the team members that had to leave, as well as those that stayed. Suddenly, we had to continue serving our customers with only half the resources at hand. Naturally, this made us prioritise – and frankly, it made us much more efficient.

How did you keep customer trust during the ownership change – was there a communication strategy that worked well?

What was – and is – most important to our customers is that we kept – and keep – our services running reliably, every day. Running a neobank with its own licenses is not like a SaaS business. It is much more like a restaurant: you have to serve your customers every day – and do that very well every day. Payments is like that. If I had to name the most difficult challenge, it would be the switch from “free banking” to every customer being a paying customer. There were many customers who felt that we were breaking a promise – and I can totally understand that sentiment. We always place great value on transparency, especially around pricing. So we followed that same playbook, even though the news wasn’t to our customers’ liking.

If another founder came to you tomorrow saying, “I want to buy back my startup” – what would you ask them first?

Why? What’s your motivation? Is the company even for sale – and if so, why is it for sale? Are there things you will need to change? Are you up to making those changes? How will those changes make the company better? Like with any investment, you need to have a thesis. What is your strategy for making the company a success?

What is success for you?

For us at “Indie Holvi,” as we like to call ourselves, the true metric of success is our ability to serve our customers – and to do so in a way that is profitable for us. As an employee-owned company, we want Holvi to succeed as a business, and we want to achieve that success in a way that allows us to stand behind how we do business. While any kind of “greatness” always requires hard work, we also want to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Holvi has been in business since 2011, so we know this truly is a marathon, not a sprint.

What books, podcasts, articles inspired you?

Well, we have a library of several hundred books at the office, so there’s a lot to choose from. But let me pick three classics that I first read back in the dotcom days:

1. Geoffrey Moore: Crossing the Chasm – A classic on “crossing the chasm” from early adopters to serving mainstream markets.

2. Jerry Kaplan: Startup – Who remembers Go Corporation, the “pen computing” pioneer? A great story about trying to do something that really hadn’t been done before. (I also recommend this documentary on General Magic)

3. Randy Komisar: The Monk and the Riddle – If you ever wonder whether the startup you’re spending 80h/week working on actually makes any sense… this book will help you think through that conundrum.

What’s one advice, founders should actually ignore?

I honestly don’t know. No advice lives in a vacuum. Advice is always contextual. What sounds dumb in one context may be exactly the right thing in another. Which is another way of saying: ignore all advice that claims to be right for every situation.

What is one “growth hack” (be it business, health or personal-wise) that has a positive impact on you or the company?

What helped me a lot was learning that whenever things seem to be going well, it’s only temporary. Whenever you fix something and breathe a sigh of relief: “now things are going to be calm for a while”. Wrong! It’s just that one burning problem was masking the next problem that now becomes burning. And it never ends. It never gets better. And that’s not a bad thing – it’s actually good. It’s liberating. That’s just how things are – and then you go and solve that next burning problem…