Most founders don't choose how they build — they just build, and figure out the cost later. Dominic Monn did something different. By the time he turned MentorCruise into his full-time job, he had already decided what kind of life he wanted, and designed the business to fit around it. Currently running things remotely from Japan, he's the rare founder who genuinely seems at peace with what he's built — and in this conversation, he explains exactly why that didn't happen by accident.
What unfolds is a surprisingly honest account of sustainable ambition, the invisible weight of responsibility that comes with owning a business, and the personal history that shaped how Dominic thinks about success and its limits.
Tune in to hear about:
- Why so many founders end up feeling trapped by the company they built — and the early decision Dominic made to avoid that
- The particular kind of loneliness that doesn't go away even with a great team, a supportive partner, and a thriving business
- A crisis that put everything on the line and left Dominic with no one to turn to — and what that 48-hour period revealed about running a company alone
- The person closest to him growing up who became both a cautionary tale and a blueprint — in opposite directions
- Why he consistently chose to stop short of his maximum, and the quiet logic behind that pattern
- What living in Japan is teaching him about effort, quality, and doing things well for reasons that have nothing to do with money
Full transcript
Aggelos: We are recording. I don't really know you, but I sort of know you, because I'm on your platform — for quite a few years. Who are you? You told me you're in Japan with your girlfriend. You gave me a few glimpses of who you are, but I'd love to hear more from you.
Dominic: Sure. I think if we really bring it down, I'm someone that enjoys solving problems. I'm someone that loves puzzles. I'm a tinkerer and someone that loves to experiment and invent new things. And all of that together started a lot of companies, or at least a lot of projects — I'm not sure you can actually call them all companies. And out of that has grown this thing that I'm running now, MentorCruise — a culmination of all my backgrounds and all my interests coming together in this project.
I've been running it for seven or eight years by now, but full time it's been four years or so. It was a side project for a long time, and side projects have been something I've been doing all my life, basically. I used to be known at work as the side project guy that always had something going on on the side. That side project has become the main thing now, and that's what I'm doing day to day.
Aggelos: Aside from MentorCruise, how's your life? Do you have siblings, family? Tell me a little more about you as a person.
Dominic: I'm an only child. I grew up in Switzerland in the Alpine mountains — not from the city. I grew up in largely small towns, small villages. And for the most part I had a good childhood, definitely not without issues as anyone does, not without any hardships, but for the most part I would call it a nice childhood.
My interest was always in inventing and tinkering and experimenting. I've been doing that since childhood — small businesses, trying to get a bit of pocket money here and there. One of my side hustles early on was setting up my neighbours' iPhones. They would give me ten bucks to set them up. I've always been technically inclined, so that's how I used to get pocket money. But beyond that, electronics, designing things, robotics — that kind of stuff always fascinated me because it goes into the same skill set of solving a puzzle, maybe solving a puzzle with more at stake than an actual puzzle.
I've always been a good student, but I've never enjoyed school. When I was 15 I graduated from high school and decided I didn't want to go to college. I reached out to companies nearby and got a job as a software engineer at 15 and just started writing software. The good thing is in Switzerland that's a somewhat supported path — there's a four-year apprenticeship programme you can do. So it wasn't totally rebellious. It was just a different path. A lot of people were expecting me to go to university, and that was just a path that wasn't attractive to me.
So at 15 I started writing software, started working with clients. It's sometimes funny when I tell people I've been writing software for 13 years — which sounds like an incredibly long time — but by now it's basically half my life.
Aggelos: I come from a Mediterranean culture, and if I told my parents I wasn't planning to go to college, they would go hulk mode — they would go crazy. How did your parents take it?
Dominic: My parents were very supportive. My dad actually went to university and holds it in somewhat low esteem, so he kind of knew that you can do your own thing — whatever you want to do, you can probably do it whether you go to university or not. So actually very supportive.
The surprise was more with other people in my life, especially teachers — seeing a person who's good in school, gets good grades, is diligent, and then doesn't want to go anymore. That feels like a clash. But in the end, those are opinions that maybe matter to a young child, but teachers aren't going to be with you for a long time. I had full support in that decision.
Aggelos: Maybe I'm projecting, but I also see myself as someone that constantly needs to build something, and typically when the building stops and I have to run it or it starts growing, I don't enjoy it as much anymore. You started building MentorCruise quite a few years ago, and now it's a solid company. You have a team. At the moment you're in Japan, running it remotely. Are there things that you can do but are not really your cup of tea anymore? Or the opposite — things you didn't expect to enjoy that you now do?
Dominic: I think what's nice about the business is that from the start I designed it in a way that I would like to run it. It's not an orthodox business where people are frustrated that they've become a manager and now they need to do paperwork all day or sit in meetings all day. That was a mindful decision — I want to run a business that's a little bit different.
I've had the opportunity to work in a lot of non-traditional companies — fully remote companies, companies with strong culture — and I took those pieces from my experience and built my own business around them. It's a business that's fully remote, runs mostly async, and has very talented people who don't need micromanagement. So I wouldn't say I don't enjoy any aspect of running it.
That said — I was writing software for half my life, and obviously at the start of a project like this, it's just about building. You get to flex your code muscles, your design and product muscles. As you grow, that doesn't necessarily become the most efficient use of your time. Spending a full day in code would be a day I could have spent in a lot of different areas. And I think it goes hand in hand — it's not the most efficient use of my time, and so I also don't necessarily enjoy doing it as much anymore. I'm a tinkerer, an experimenter. I like to build something new, maybe just experiment with a concept.
I've become more of a supporter to my team. My job in the end is just to get them unblocked and let them do their best work. And that in itself is fulfilling, because it's a company I've built, a company I continue building, something that a lot of people find useful. Whatever needs to be done, I'm happy to do.
Aggelos: For someone who was writing code for 13 years and is now a people manager — trying to make others do their best work — how was that transition? Did it have any hiccups? Or did it come naturally?
Dominic: I wouldn't say naturally, but not necessarily hiccups either. It was a slow transition, because we're a bootstrap business and bootstrapping takes decades, not years. So it was a gradient over the last eight years where my first hire was maybe two or three years in — a customer support person, out of pure necessity, because I was still holding a day job and couldn't spend an hour or two every morning in customer support.
That's still being a manager, but it's also somewhat easy because you're in constant exchange with one person. It feels more like working with a friend on a group project. Then a year or two later, a second person came in. You've worked with the first for a year or two, now the second joins. It's an iteration, a levelling up over the years, rather than a sudden change where you go from maker and coder to full-time manager overnight. You're just adding people to the team, and a bit more and a bit more of your day becomes dedicated to supporting them. A long-term transition, and something that's very easy to get used to.
Aggelos: You said something before that I would hear from other people but never really internalised myself. I heard it first from a guy called Louis Grenier who said "I build a community that is not overwhelming to me." And now you said you built a company in a way you would enjoy running it. A lot of people are constantly dealing with the guilt of the things they're not doing — "I must do that but I hate it, I must do that but I don't want to." You're the second person recently I've heard saying, "I did it, but in my own way, in a way that's not overwhelming to me." Do you identify at all with that feeling of "I have to do something but I hate it"?
Dominic: I think that's exactly the feeling I always wanted to avoid. There are a couple of decisions when you think about startups that I just couldn't identify myself with. I naturally broke it down to: why am I doing this, and what do I want to get out of it? The main things I wanted were financial independence, location independence, and time independence. Basically, do whatever I want, at any time, with anyone I enjoy, on my own terms.
Then the question becomes: is building a company compatible with that? Traditionally, no. Because traditionally you find investors to fund your idea, and suddenly you no longer have financial independence because you're dependent on those investors. You most likely also don't have location independence, because your investors won't like it if you just move to Japan.
So I wanted to avoid that. And then the question of running a business where people are frustrated with sitting in meetings all day, working with people they don't enjoy working with — I wanted to avoid that too. Make it a remote company, but also an async company, where we spend more time in chat rooms and writing to each other instead of sitting in meetings. That gave me the freedom to work on creative avenues, on deep work, or maybe not work at all, and just move to Japan without the business being disrupted.
A business like that comes with downsides too. We've had to give up opportunities, growth opportunities, revenue. But for me, that's the only way I'd want to run this business. And it also ensures that I can run this business for the next 10 years and still be happy, still motivated, still wanting to grow further. If I'd gone the traditional route — funding, an office in Switzerland — I would have probably said after a couple of years, this needs to work out or I need to sell it. That's not the case for me right now at all.
Aggelos: It sounds to me like you must have also given up the feeling of controlling everything that a typical founder would have. How did you elevate yourself so that this could actually be achieved? Because the last time I tried something like this, my brain would be there all the time. I wouldn't be able to relax, especially with a time difference. What's the secret?
Dominic: Ultimately it's confidence in your team and the people you hire. Because we're a remote, async company, we can hire from the global talent pool. I can post a job and hire from the entire world. And our team is extremely talented — insanely talented. That gives me the confidence to say, whatever they're doing, they're doing it much better than I ever could. And I think that's the goal.
The idea of needing control comes from the idea that you as the founder know it best, so if you're not in control, things won't get done to the highest standard. But if you hire the best people in the world, you end up with a feeling of: if I put my fingers in this, it's going to get worse than if I just let this incredibly talented person do their thing. That feeling comes with time — it's not something you have from day one. But at that point you have a team executing at a level much higher than you ever could. Why would you want to micromanage it?
Trust and talent are the two keywords. Trust in your people, and the talent to pay that trust back with execution at an incredibly high level.
Aggelos: Since we're talking about your company and how you run it — are there times, within that setup, that you feel alone?
Dominic: Not necessarily alone on a personal level, but alone on a professional level — yes, all the time. Because when you own a company, the biggest difference from working a regular job is that the responsibility ends with you. There's no boss you can message and say, "Hey, can you take care of this?" If you're on vacation, you don't have a replacement. You don't have an out-of-office notice saying, "I'm back in two weeks, message me then."
There's no one you can truly rely on in that sense. The results, the challenges, any problems in the business — you're going to be responsible. It doesn't matter whether you're in Japan, on vacation, stressed, close to burnout — you're going to have to take care of it. That's a feeling that's very hard to share with someone else. I can tell my girlfriend what I'm feeling, but in the end there's nothing she can do. There's nothing my team can do. There's no boss to hand it to.
It's not necessarily lonely in terms of companionship — there are a lot of other founders out there, communities, people who can relate. It's just that there's no one who can actually help you at the end of the day.
Aggelos: That leads me to the next question — who are you talking to when you have these issues, doubts, stress, dilemmas? But before I go there, can you share a story where you had to deal with a problem yourself and fix it, and how you felt about it?
Dominic: There's one story I can share because it was many years ago. I credit it with being one of the more traumatic episodes of running a business, but also one of those stories I now look back on and say: if I can deal with this, I can deal with anything. Looking back it doesn't sound as dramatic, but at the time it was.
We run a marketplace — we take in people's money, process it, send it out to others. It had been growing over the years to around $50,000–$60,000 processed per month, paying out to mentors. It was still a side project at this point, but the money flowing through was starting to get quite substantial.
We had around $75,000 in a bank account. I was getting ready to go to work. And suddenly we were getting emails saying our bank account was being blocked. $75,000 frozen. A need for more verification — all these financial processes — but the bottom line was $75,000 blocked, unable to be paid out to our mentors and partners.
So I'm waking up, needing to get to work in half an hour, with $75,000 owed to other people that I cannot access. That's what I was talking about in terms of having no replacement — this was me trying to get to work in an hour, but $75,000 in debt to other people and needing to find a solution now.
I actually had to call into work. They were aware of my side project, I was never secret about it, but I basically told them I cannot come in — we have a very bad situation and I need to work this out. And I spent two full days on the phone with our bank, with other banks, dealing with payment providers. I went to actual bank branches in person. Dealing with banks is probably one of the most annoying aspects of running a business — a lot of things are digital now, but banks still want you to call, or come in and sign a paper.
I had this looming threat over my head of a lot of money that's gone or in debt or frozen. For two full days I didn't know whether I would have a company in a couple of hours. It would have taken just one mentor to ask "Why is my money a couple of days late?" and it could have ended badly. If that money was gone forever, the company would have been done at this point.
In the end we got it solved. They unblocked the money — they were no longer willing to work with us because they didn't support our marketplace model, but they unblocked the funds, and we found a different payment provider that we actually still work with today. Everything got solved. But that was a 48-hour period where it wasn't clear whether the business would still exist afterwards.
Nowadays I look back and say: if I can survive this, I can probably solve anything. But at the time it wasn't that funny.
Aggelos: If you physically survived this. Do you remember the night — sleeping with the knowledge you might have a $75,000 debt?
Dominic: If I remember correctly, I don't think there was a night. I probably used that time to leverage US time zones, inquiring with US suppliers, trying to find a bank over there. I honestly don't remember actually sleeping at that point. Maybe I took a nap out of sheer tiredness, but it definitely wasn't a nice, peaceful night of sleep.
Aggelos: I want to change the topic a little. I posted an article today about archetypes of parents of high performers, high achievers. Of course nothing is set in stone, but there are always patterns between what makes a person seek high performance. While you were growing up, do you remember your parents — or one of them — expecting something from you, or raising you in a way that made you who you are today?
Dominic: The most prominent example, both in my childhood and then actually while working on MentorCruise, was my dad. Because my dad was both a cautionary tale and an advisor for how I didn't want to run a business.
He had businesses in the past, but for most of his life he was in a high-performance sales job — a lot of time on the road, getting to customers, very much a traditional business where you drive to the customer, shake hands, get a contract signed in person. Long hours, high performance, high expectations from bosses and stakeholders.
Just observing that — but also him giving me advice — was something that led to what we discussed before: me not wanting external stakeholders or investors that would tie me down to a place or a way of working. With my dad, it ended up in severe burnout, multiple times. Stays in clinics, trying to get everything fixed that was created by stress and high expectations. I just never wanted to get into a situation like that.
For him it was a job where you spent most of your day in a suit and a nice company car — a lot of reputation and achievement comes with that. But the downside is pretty steep in terms of mental and physical health. My priorities have always been with quality of life, and actually physical as well as mental health — just being able to take care of that, and having the space to do so.
Aggelos: Were you actively encouraged by your dad to build something with different values, or did you see this and empathise — and think, no, I don't want that?
Dominic: Probably a little bit of both. More so because I interacted with my dad and knew he wasn't satisfied with the situation. But I'm also not sure whether he was fully aware of the alternatives, or whether there were many opportunities for him to do things differently at the time. Growing up in a different era — more digital, more new-age companies around — I maybe had better insight into what's possible and a bit more exposure to companies that were doing things differently.
So probably I was made aware of the problem by my dad. But seeking the solution, doing things differently — that was something I figured out myself, based on the values I was given.
Aggelos: If I may ask — how does your dad feel about the way you've structured your own business today?
Dominic: He loves it. He's actually retired now. He and I share a lot of the same character traits — the tinkerer, a bit of a rebel in the sense of not wanting to do the same thing as the status quo. He's in his own tinkering phase now, doing a lot of things with AI and trying to build a bit of a remote side income. Going down the same path in his own medium. Fully on board.
I think it's also a product of its time — if he tried to do the same thing 20, 25 years ago, it might not have been possible. The internet wasn't quite as fast and capable back then, people weren't used to working remotely and online. But I think he agrees that this is the way to go if you want to have this kind of life. Obviously everyone has different values — I wouldn't recommend someone trying to conquer space to run a remote company — but in terms of building a good and flexible life, it's probably the way to go.
Aggelos: What was it that your dad didn't do as well on that specific part — the way you perceive work and goals — that you evolved as a byproduct of not liking what he was going through? If you would meet your dad at the same age you are now, what would you try to tell him?
Dominic: The hard part is — you're going to have to make a sacrifice at some point. I think for a business like mine to exist, you need to give up on some amount of growth and financial success. There are contracts we couldn't do because it would have meant staying online in time zones that wouldn't have worked for us. Being a smaller company, we're probably losing out on enterprise contracts that like to see a hundred-person team and some funding behind them.
Going back 30 years talking to my dad, the same would kind of hold true. You can't do the high-reputation, very well-paid sales job that brings recognition from your peers, the nice shiny company car, without a lot of stress. That's just the reality of that job in the 90s and early 2000s.
I'm actually not sure what choice he would have made if those options had been laid out to him. As a young person, you think you can handle a bit of stress. But from my side, seeing what happened with my dad and how tough those phases of burnout were — that was a cautionary tale. The last thing I wanted was to end up in burnout clinics. So I needed to find a way around those traps.
If I'd never witnessed that, and someone had asked me whether I'd rather build a billion-dollar company and be in Forbes and TechCrunch, or build a smaller business that lets me live and travel anywhere — I'm not sure what I would have chosen. I think that's a product of growing up and seeing how things play out.
Aggelos: I'm also an only child, and I remember that whatever was happening in my house I was really absorbing it — experiencing it in Dolby Surround, you could say. While those things were happening, while you were experiencing your dad's burnout, how would your younger self feel within the house? Did you want to solve something? Were you getting angry with him for not getting it? What were you feeling?
Dominic: What you say definitely rings true. Not only was I an only child, but I'm also a child of divorce. So a lot of the time it was just me and my mum, one on one, or just me and my dad, one on one — my parents weren't talking to each other. It was me talking to each of them separately.
Being quite young, I was probably not fully aware of it. I knew my dad was stressed — it was just kind of odd that he was taking calls at 9pm, always on the phone. I was probably a bit annoyed that he wasn't as present when we were playing or watching TV.
But growing up, and also entering the workforce at a pretty young age, those things got cleared up. Topics like burnout come up in the workplace fairly often, and by the time I was 15 and working, I understood what was going on. From there it was more about support. We definitely had conversations about: is this worth it, what changes can you make, what are the options? We're both quite solution-based. But in the end, people in this situation need to make these hard choices themselves. My dad never made a drastic change, and that probably led to those stays in clinics.
Aggelos: You are a little bit of an unusual type of high performer, because you are a little bit the opposite. You can perform more, but you are controlling it — you're saying, no, I'm okay here. Typically people push themselves to perform better, especially when they have momentum. But what you're reflecting to me is that you know your priorities.
Dominic: That's so true. It's actually a common thread from childhood — my parents would go to teacher conferences and my teachers would always say: he's a really smart student, but he prefers to study 10–15 minutes and get a B instead of studying for two hours and getting an A. My parents would come home and say: every teacher tells us this — you keep doing it, you don't need to change it, it's just funny that everyone brings it up.
That's been a common thread throughout my life. I do love doing well and improving myself, and I'm continuously learning. But I don't think I need to get the last 10% and pay 90% of the cost for it. I'm quite happy getting 90% for 10% of the effort. Those other 10% are the ones that come at a cost — to your health, your mental health, your physical health, and probably just plain old longevity. Pushing for the last 10% is what breaks you and makes you not want to continue. Following this principle is what leads me to being able to do this for a long time — not a sprint, but a marathon.
I think at some point, with whatever comes next, maybe I'll be inclined to do a sprint, and I think that's exciting in itself. But especially with a business like mine — where it's about people's futures, where people are relying on it — it's much more important to build something that can sustain and be around for a long time, rather than something that grows fast and potentially implodes.
Aggelos: The way you're talking, you make me feel like you're treating your time and energy like a stockbroker — literally creating a portfolio. It's very logical, not so emotional. Like: I have certain energy, I must use it in the most efficient way so I can do this for a long time and win more than someone who sprints and burns out quickly. Is that how it processes in your mind?
Dominic: I think that's a good way to describe it, and also just a great way to run not only your business but probably your life. The beautiful thing about being an investor or a venture capitalist is that you experience a lot of things in a very sustainable manner — it's all about balancing risk and being able to get a gain from it. People go into VC because you can get a lot of the upside while managing the downside.
Compared to that, building a company feels quite reckless. It's almost less like investing and more like a poker game where you're going all in. I don't think that's wrong, but if I had to choose between being a professional stockbroker and a professional poker player, I'd rather be on Wall Street managing my risk than going all in in Las Vegas.
Aggelos: Do you have any particular admiration for the Japanese philosophy or mindset, or did you just happen to end up there?
Dominic: A little bit of both. I've liked Japan for a long time, I've visited a couple of times, and I hold a lot of what they do in very high regard. The thing I admire most is the eye for detail and the level of quality that's expected — without being prompted for it and without there being a monetary incentive to do so.
A simple example: I went shopping to a stationery store last week. The person took all of our things one by one, wrapped them in separate little paper bags to make sure they wouldn't get any nicks in them, put them in another bag, put a bow around it, and passed it to us in a way so the hand slips just right into the handle. You get a little bow, you give a little bow back. It's just going to a store and buying something. But in one culture I have no emotion at all — maybe even some negative emotion. In the other, I'm feeling happy right away, feeling valued, just happy about the experience.
Every place I live gives you a new piece and a new admiration — new things you want to take with you. Customer service and attention to detail are something I'd take from Japanese culture. Why not go the extra mile without expectation of money or a tip — just because it makes everyone involved feel good? That's something I take into my life and my business. Maybe we should pass the basket in a way that the hand slips just right into the handle, instead of making people DIY it.
Aggelos: What you're describing — I was reading a book a few years ago called Ikigai. Some learnings from stoicism and Ikigai kind of match, because it's like: instead of trying to find what you'll do next, just focus on doing well what you're doing now, and they define that as purpose. The whole conversation about purpose — they call it a little silly. Purpose is what you're doing now. Focus on that and be stellar at it.
Meanwhile, Western society treats work like martyrdom — work hard, burn ourselves out, so we can retire early and not work. Instead of making what you do not overwhelming, so you can do it for a long time. Two totally different philosophies.
Dominic: Yeah, definitely. And that's what I was saying before — coming from a Western culture, spending time in the US, if I say I'd rather give 90% and do it for the next 20 years, it almost feels lazy. Like: I'm not giving it my all. I should probably give it my all.
But there's beauty in — I still give it my all, but in a way that I enjoy it and that gives me purpose. I want to execute at the highest level and make people happy, rather than execute at the highest level and get as much profit as possible. That's where the disconnect comes from. It's not that I'm not giving it my all. It's just that I don't want to push it to a place where it's no longer enjoyable and sustainable.
Aggelos: I loved that conversation. Thank you very much.
Dominic: Thank you. Yeah, likewise.