Recovering introvert. Serial entrepreneur.

Hi, I'm David. I'm a systems thinker, a serial entrepreneur, and I'm obsessed with applying business principles to personal life.

Growing up, I attended 14 different schools. Always the new kid. I was pretty lost and incredibly shy. I dropped out at 15, never got a degree, never had a real job. But I found entrepreneurship, and that gave me direction.

In 2009, I moved from Germany to Los Angeles and co-founded MaxCDN. The business grew, but I was still deeply introverted. Making a phone call felt painful. So I forced myself through exposure therapy: Toastmasters twice a week, two networking events a week, talking to everyone even though it was incredibly uncomfortable. Over time, it worked.

Then a yoga teacher said something that rewired everything: "Every decision in life, you make out of love or out of fear." I started seeing it everywhere. In sales, in leadership, in how I showed up at home. Most of what I thought were rational decisions were actually fear in disguise.

Around the same time, my mother passed away from cancer and my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. She's fine today. But it shook me. I did the funeral exercise, imagined myself on my deathbed, and asked: did I live a good life? The answer was clear. I wanted more impact. I wanted to find my real purpose.

We had a successful exit with MaxCDN. I started applying the same frameworks I used in business — vision, mission, values, goals, habits — to my personal life, and it worked ridiculously well. I built a portfolio of companies, moved to Bodrum with my wife Yurda and our daughter Emma, and built Dünyam Village, a leadership retreat center. We live there with 10 dogs, horses, donkeys, chickens, and ducks.

Most personal development is backwards. People set goals, build habits, and grind, then wonder why they feel empty when they hit the number. That's because they skipped the foundation. You can't build a system for your life if you don't know what your life is for.

Purpose comes first. Not passion. Purpose. Passion is what you enjoy. Purpose is what you'd do even when it's hard. Once you know that, values become your filter. Vision becomes your direction. Habits become your engine. In that order.

Most fear-based decisions look rational on the surface. Staying in a job you've outgrown because "the market is tough." Not raising prices because "customers might leave." Not having the hard conversation because "the timing isn't right." These feel like logic. They're fear wearing a reasonable mask.

I believe the same thing about technology. AI transformation is real work, not a magic trick, and most of what gets sold is theater: prompting workshops, pilots that never touch a real workflow, advice from people who've never run a company. Done right, AI frees people to do their best work instead of replacing them. The company and the person are inseparable, so I build for both.

I believe you should build companies that make the world slightly less broken, not slightly more optimized. The best leaders are the ones who've done the inner work. You can be ambitious and kind at the same time, and anyone who tells you otherwise is protecting their own cynicism.

Simplicity is a discipline, not a style. The hardest thing in business, and in life, is saying no to good things so you can say yes to the right things.