Episode #36 - Lior Pozin

#15MinuteFounder

Lior Pozin is the founder of AutoDS, the bootstrapped e-commerce company Fiverr acquired for over $50 million. He grew the team to 250 employees without outside funding, traveled to more than 30 countries along the way, and went five years before taking any money home.

Lior grew up without financial security, and for most of his life, money was the goal. Then the deal closed, and he woke up the next morning asking, “What’s next?”

In this episode, Lior gets candid about whether money buys happiness, why he started seeing a therapist, and the problem-first framework he’d use to reach $1M in revenue today.

He also shares his 70% rule for delegation, what he would never automate, and how he built a partner program that competitors couldn’t match.

Lior made every early hire based on one question: will this pay for itself? doola Analytics puts your e-commerce numbers in one place, so you can see what’s actually profitable before you make your next big bet.

Highlights From the Chat

Q: Does money buy happiness after an exit?

My entire life I was chasing money and financial independence. I grew up without that, and it was my goal, my dream.

Then I got the acquisition, and the day after, I woke up and started thinking, okay, what’s next? What will be my next big company? How can I make more money?

My entire life I said I want to be a millionaire. The day after the acquisition, I was like, I want to be a billionaire.

And when I’m a billionaire, then what? That’s where I understood it was never about the money. It was about the challenge of getting the money. Playing the game.

Money doesn’t buy happiness. It helps you be happy. But if you focus only on money, you will not be happy.

Wealth is health, friendships, relationships. So I shifted to think about the other areas in my life and use the money to achieve that. New hobbies, more time with my wife.

Q: Should founders see a therapist?

I think it’s really good to see one.

I came to him and said, “Please fix me. I keep waking up at night with ideas. I keep thinking about how to build more, even though I already achieved everything I ever dreamt about.”

He said, “I don’t need to fix you. You’re completely fine. That’s what you enjoy. Everyone has his own game. Some play tennis, some play football, and some just play business.”

Some friends used to call me a robot, because I was a developer, focused, and didn’t show feelings.

Therapy helped me be more open, achieve more, and see what really makes me happy.

Q: If you could go back to day zero, what would you do differently?

It’s more about what I would do more of, and that’s jump on the dreams I’m thinking about.

Everyone says you’re crazy, it won’t work, why would you do that? Sometimes those distractions affected me. I would just jump, and not think about what some random people tell me.

Take the first step. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, switch over to the next thing.

Q: How did you get to your first $1M in revenue?

It was about finding a problem for myself. I’d recommend everyone look around and ask: what problem are me and the people around me facing? I don’t believe people don’t have anything in life they want to change.

Once you find the problem, not the solution, share it with as many people as possible. You’ll hear, “Yes, I have this problem too,” or “No, I do it this way.” Then expand your market research.

If there are competitors, that’s actually good. Check their traffic on SimilarWeb, read their reviews, see what they do well and what they don’t. The things they’re not succeeding at, you solve. The things they do well, copy.

So it’s problem, then market, and only then the solution. Today the solution is much easier. Go to Lovable and build a small MVP. You don’t even need investors.

Sell it to the first audience that told you it’s a real pain point, get feedback, improve the product, and then you have budget for marketing.

Q: How did you make the shift from founder to CEO?

What helped me get to 250 employees is the rule of 70%. In the beginning, I’m the best at everything in the business, so how can I let someone else do it? Then it became: if someone can do it at least 70% as well as I would, it’s time to delegate.

I looked at what took most of my time or what I didn’t like doing, and delegated one by one. And I always looked at it from an ROI perspective, because we were bootstrapped.

If a feature will bring us $10,000 a month and I can hire a developer for $5,000 a month, why wouldn’t I hire that developer? That’s the first hire, because it’s an immediate return.

Q: Is AI killing e-commerce or making it bigger?

AI decreased the barrier to start significantly, but that doesn’t mean the opportunity isn’t there.

If you use AI in the right way, the opportunity is much bigger. You can run multiple stores in small niches with less. I can have a team of copywriters for different niches without spending money on that. Before, I needed whole teams for that.

Q: Would your company be 250 people if you started it today?

It would be less, because we would build it differently from day one. If I built from scratch, I’d optimize for efficiency and fewer people.

Now I’m optimizing for how to multiply the power of our existing employees.

In marketing, we test many more campaigns, we look at what works for us and for similar companies, push it all to the AI, and it saves us so much money.

Q: What should never be automated?

You need to be careful with what you automate. We work with OKRs, and initially I automated everything. I’d open the screen and see all the numbers ready. It’s nice.

But I realized that if I don’t go through the process and manually check how my managers are progressing on their OKRs, I don’t really know what’s going on in the business. So I removed that automation.

Sometimes the human touch is so important, because that’s what really runs the business and the strategy. I wouldn’t give up on that.

Q: How did you compete with a bigger market leader?

One of the biggest no’s I ever got was an internal no. There was a big competitor that was the market leader. They had connections, money, experience, went to business school, two brothers older than me.

I thought, how can I even go into this market?

So we went over their negative reviews and did it better. We did what they do, but better, and everything everyone did in one place.

I told one of my advisors we didn’t even have a strategy. She said, “That sounds to me like a strategy. You basically created an all-in-one platform.”

Q: How do you build a partner program when nobody knows you?

First, partners need to know the product is good. We couldn’t close influencers until we showed them why we were better.

That was my first pitch to everyone: look at this competitor you work with. We are much better. Look at their reviews, look at ours. Let’s talk.

The second thing is personal relationships. I look at these partners as friends. We go to clubs and bars, we travel together, I know their kids. It’s not a mask to do business. I’m curious about them and I want to enjoy life with them.

But product comes first. Some of them are better friends with my competitors, but they know we’re the better product.

If you try to sell a bad product, maybe you run two or three campaigns with influencers, and then they tell everyone their audience wasn’t happy with you.

Q: Do you believe in work-life balance?

I like the game, so I never felt like I was working. I was playing every day from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., sometimes 3 a.m.

But balance is so important, because you will get burned. You need to keep yourself and your home healthy, or the business won’t keep running.

One mistake: I should have taken some cash off the table earlier. It took me five years to start taking money home.

For five years I got nothing, and the business could have crashed and I’d be left with nothing. Why not take 5% or 10% and enjoy it? Enjoying the journey is what helped me keep the bootstrapped business running.

Q: What’s next for you?

Right now I’m with Fiverr and AutoDS, so it’s hard to say.

It could be inside Fiverr, managing thousands of employees. It could be outside Fiverr, building a huge company. But I will keep building and keep growing for sure.

I’m just playing the game with a different perspective now: really enjoying it and taking care of myself first. And it actually looks better for the business this way.

Q: If you had a billboard in Times Square, what would it say?

Just jump into the water.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Meet the Founder Who Sold for $50M (And Bought McDonald’s After)

00:40 – Does Money Actually Buy Happiness After an Exit?

03:03 – Should Founders See a Therapist?

05:29 – Biggest Mistake You’d Fix If Starting Again

06:51 – How He Reached His First $1M in Revenue

10:06 – From Founder to CEO: Delegation & the 70% Rule

12:01 – Is AI Killing E-commerce or Making It Bigger?

15:00 – What Should NEVER Be Automated?

16:34 – Why Human Relationships Still Win in Business

18:55 – How to Build a Powerful Partner Program

22:04 – Work-Life Balance: Myth or Survival Strategy?

23:55 – What’s Next After a $50M Exit?

26:00 – The One Message Every Founder Needs to Hear