Carl Thompson flew to Singapore with $3,000, shared a pullout bed with his co-founder in a room so small he could touch the wall sitting up, and cold-called New York at 2am because that's when the market was awake. That was the start of TradeGecko.

He left the company two and a half years in, halfway through his vesting schedule, because he needed to come home for his relationships and his health. He split his role into five people on the way out. A few years later, Cam checked his spam folder and found an email from Intuit saying they wanted to buy the business. The acquisition closed at $100 million US.

Carl has ADHD, has been cycling in and out of burnout for 20 years, and now runs SortMe, a money management platform built around the uncomfortable fact that 60% of NZ households can't cover a $1,500 bill without borrowing. His clients aren't struggling. They earn $150K to $500K a year and spend every dollar of it.

We get into:

• Why he walked away from millions in unvested equity and whether he regrets it
• The dopamine science behind ADHD and why he thinks it's a competitive advantage for founders
• How a spam folder email became a $100M acquisition
• What lifestyle creep actually looks like at high income levels
• What he did with the exit money the day it landed

If you're building something and wondering what it looks like to choose the life over the money and keep building anyway, this one's worth your time.