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Heacock chose building Filterbuy over a multi-hundred-million-dollar retirement

David Heacock · David Heacock: Building Filterbuy · Feb 18, 2025 · at 1:47:56

David Heacock, founder and CEO of Filterbuy, reflects on an existential crossroad at age 40 and his decision not to sell his bootstrapped business.

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“You know, about two years ago, and really when I started working with Dr. Gurner, I was, you know, having a little bit of a crisis of self in that, you know, what do I want out of life? I could sell the business and you know, have more money than I could ever spend or my children could ever spend. I'd be, I would have been 40 years old or just about to turn 40. Could have hundreds of millions of dollars and you know, then just retire to the sunset. Like, is that what I should want out of life? You know, like, what should I do? What should I do? And then I ultimately went through that journey and decided that, you know, I wanted to have A mission and a reason to wake up every day and a reason for existing. And I knew that I was not going to be happy if I just became another, you know, rich guy that, you know, spent all of his time on the, at the beach and on the yacht all day long. I knew I would be miserable in that. Or with the foundation even that I just, you know, pretended to give a little bit of money away so I had something to do. You know, I just knew that for me, I would only find misery in that. And so that's what ultimately led to me you know, creating the, my mission of building the world's leading indoor air quality company, because that's something I know I can work on for the rest of my life”

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