There is a concept from Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy that I love called the doorman fallacy.

The idea is simple. A hotel has a doorman. Someone looks at the role and says, “This person opens the door.” Then they look at the cost of the salary, compare it to the cost of an automatic door, and conclude that the doorman should be replaced.

On paper, this looks perfectly rational.

Same door. Lower cost. Improved efficiency. Another small victory for the spreadsheet.

Except, of course, the doorman was never just opening the door.

He was greeting guests. Calling taxis. Recognizing regulars. Keeping an eye on the entrance. Creating a sense of arrival. Making the hotel feel a little more fancy.

The automatic door may open perfectly. But something has been lost.

That is the doorman fallacy: mistaking the visible task for the full value of the role.

I have seen this mistake many times, but these days I see it most clearly in my work as an investor, advisor, and reviewer of private equity deals.

A model gets built. Costs get categorized. Roles get examined. Headcount gets benchmarked. Synergies get identified, which is often a polite way of saying that someone, somewhere, is about to have a very bad Thursday.

And sometimes the cuts make sense. I am not sentimental about bloated organizations, lazy management, or jobs that exist only because nobody has had the courage to ask what the person actually does all day.

But there is a difference between cutting fat and cutting muscle.

There is also a difference between operational discipline and spreadsheet blindness.

The Private Equity Version

In private equity, this usually shows up under respectable language.

Nobody says, “Let’s make the company worse.”

They say, “We have identified operational efficiencies.”

They say, “There are opportunities to streamline the organization.”

They say, “The business has excess overhead relative to benchmark.”

All of which may be true.

But sometimes what they really mean is:

“We found a few people whose value is obvious to the company but not obvious to the spreadsheet.”

That is where I get nervous.

Because in a smaller company, especially a founder-led one, people often wear many hats. The official job title may say “operations manager,” “customer support,” “finance admin,” or “sales coordinator,” but the actual role is usually much messier and more valuable.

That person may be the one who knows which customer needs a phone call before they churn. They know who needs a payment reminder before the invoice goes to 60 days overdue. They may know which vendor always overpromises. They may know which salesperson is great on paper but quietly toxic to everyone around them. They may know which reports are technically useless but politically necessary because one key client insists on receiving them every Friday.

None of that shows up cleanly in the model.

To be fair, I understand the temptation. I like clean models too. There is something deeply satisfying about finding waste, removing complexity, and watching the EBITDA margin improve. But the problem is that some of the most important value in a business is inconveniently human. It lives in judgment, trust, memory, relationships, and context.

That makes it hard to quantify.

And when something is hard to quantify, mediocre operators often pretend it does not exist.

I Almost Fell for It Too

I would love to pretend I was always immune to this kind of thinking.

Sadly, no.

When my own company started growing, I had my own brief flirtation with the doorman fallacy. As the team got larger, the business became more complex. More people meant more salaries, more meetings, more internal coordination, more opinions, and more chances for someone to create a spreadsheet that made me question my life choices.

At some point, every founder starts asking the same questions.

Do we really need this role?

Can this process be automated?

Is this meeting useful?

Why are three people involved in something that looks like it should take one person and half a sandwich?

Those are good questions. A founder should ask them.

But there is a dangerous version of this thinking where you start seeing people primarily as costs instead of contributors. You start reducing roles to visible tasks. You start believing that if something cannot be measured precisely, it probably does not matter.

That is where founders get themselves into trouble.

Fortunately, I caught myself before going too far down that road.

The company I wanted to build was not a soft, sleepy, everyone-gets-a-trophy operation. We were ambitious. We were numbers-driven. We tracked performance closely. We wanted to win.

But I also wanted people to enjoy working there. Not in some fake corporate culture way, where everyone gets a branded hoodie and a mission statement nobody believes. I wanted people to wake up and think, “I get to work there,” not, “I have to work there.”

That distinction mattered to me.

Because the best people do not stay just because the paycheck clears. They stay because the work has energy, the team has standards, and the environment does not slowly drain the life out of them.

In other words, we still cared about performance. We just did not replace the doorman with an automatic door.

High Standards Are Not the Enemy of Humanity

One of the great false choices in business is the idea that you must pick between performance and humanity.

That is nonsense.

In my experience, the best companies are both demanding and human. They have high standards, but they are not stupid about it. They push hard, but they do not confuse exhaustion with excellence.

I have never understood leaders who brag about creating miserable workplaces, as if making everyone anxious is proof of strategic brilliance.

Congratulations. You turned your company into an emotional airport security line.

That is not leadership. That is just poor management.

A strong culture does not mean low expectations. It does not mean everyone gets to do whatever they want. It does not mean avoiding hard conversations because “we are like a family,” which is usually the sentence people say right before behaving like the worst family imaginable.

A strong culture means people know what matters.

They know what good looks like.

They know where the company is going.

They know they will be held accountable.

And they also know they are not disposable machine parts in someone else’s margin expansion fantasy.

That last part matters more than many investors want to admit.

When people feel respected, they give more than the minimum. They solve problems before they become visible. They protect customers. They help each other. They tell the truth earlier.

You cannot always model that neatly. But you can absolutely feel it when it disappears.

The Question Before the Cut

Before cutting a role, automating a function, or streamlining a team, the question should not simply be, “What will this save?”

The better question is:

Are we removing waste, or are we removing value we do not know how to measure?

That distinction matters because the financial model will always favor what it can count. It can count salary, software cost, utilization, response time, and margin improvement. It cannot easily count judgment, institutional memory, customer trust, team stability, or the quiet competence of someone who prevents problems before they become visible.

This is where a lot of optimization work becomes dangerous. The role looks expensive because only part of the role is visible. The employee looks replaceable because the model only captures the formal job description. The process looks inefficient because nobody has bothered to understand why it exists.

In smaller and founder-led companies, this is especially common. A few key people often hold together far more than their titles suggest. They know the customers, the exceptions, the history, the personalities, the weak spots, and the little landmines that never appear in a board deck.

Remove those people too casually and the company may look cleaner for a while. Costs go down. EBITDA improves. Everyone congratulates themselves on discipline.

Then, slowly, the hidden costs show up.

Customers become less loyal. Employees become less candid. Managers spend more time fixing problems that used to be prevented. The best people notice the change before the board does.

That is the doorman fallacy in its most expensive form.

You saved money on the door.

You damaged the entrance.

Efficiency Is Not the (only) Goal

The lesson is not that companies should avoid optimization. That would be sentimental nonsense.

Bad processes should be eliminated. Pointless meetings should die. Manual work that can be automated should be automated. Roles that no longer make sense should be redesigned or removed. I have no affection for corporate clutter, and I have even less affection for jobs that exist only because nobody wants to have an uncomfortable conversation.

But efficiency is not the goal.

A better company is the goal.

Sometimes a better company is leaner. Sometimes it is simpler. Sometimes it is more automated. Sometimes it is more disciplined. But sometimes a better company has a little more human slack in the system because that slack is where judgment, service, trust, and creativity live.

That is the part many operators miss.

They are not wrong to look for savings. They are wrong when they assume that every saving is an improvement. There is a difference between reducing waste and hollowing out the business.

Good operators know the difference. Mediocre operators call both “efficiency.”

Final Thought

I have become more skeptical of optimization as I have gotten older.

Not because I dislike discipline. I built my company around discipline. We tracked numbers closely, held people accountable, and cared deeply about performance. We were not running a corporate daycare center with better snacks.

But I have learned that a business is a human system before it is a financial system.

The spreadsheet matters. Of course it does. Cash flow, margins, growth, and accountability all matter. Anyone who says otherwise has probably never had to make payroll.

But the people create the value before the spreadsheet reports it.

That is why the doorman fallacy is such a useful warning. It reminds us that the visible task is rarely the whole job. It reminds us that some value is relational, contextual, and cumulative. It reminds us that the most expensive mistakes often begin as perfectly reasonable cost savings.

So yes, optimize.

Cut waste. Improve margins. Simplify operations. Automate the boring work.

Just make sure you understand what you are removing before you remove it.

Because sometimes the doorman is not really there to open the door.

He is there to make the place worth entering.

The post Don’t Replace the Doorman appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

For a long time, I thought scale was the goal. More revenue, more customers, more people – all of it pointing in one direction:

Bigger is better.

When I was a member in EO, there was always this quiet expectation in the background: grow or sell.

Nobody said it outright, but it was there. If you weren’t pushing for more, you were somehow playing a smaller game.

I bought into that for years. And I got good at it.

But somewhere along the way, I started noticing something that didn’t quite add up.

The Reality Check

What really started to change my thinking was observing other companies. A friend of mine runs a company doing around $10 million in revenue.

On paper, it looks great. From the outside, most people think he’s crushing it.
Solid top line, large team, growing business, plenty of activity.

But when you look a little closer, it tells a different story.

He barely breaks even.

There’s constant pressure. Payroll, overhead, coordination, all the moving parts that come with a business of that size. A lot of effort goes into keeping the machine running, but very little of it actually turns into meaningful profit. And he’s one mistake, one lost customer, or one unexpected expense away from running at a loss.

And you start to ask yourself a simple question:

What exactly are we scaling here?

Revenue? Yes.
Complexity? Definitely.
Stress? Without a doubt.

But profit? Not really.

That’s when I realized: scale without profitability is meaningless.

The Default Answer

What struck me over time is how quickly “scale” becomes the answer to almost every problem.

If growth slows, the instinct is to push harder. If margins are thin, the assumption is that more volume will fix it. If the business feels stuck, the solution is usually framed as “we need to get bigger.”

It’s rarely questioned.

I remember sitting in EO forums where the conversation would inevitably drift in that direction. Not explicitly, not as a rule, but as a shared understanding: you either grow, or you position yourself to sell. Standing still – or worse, choosing not to scale – felt like a lack of ambition.

That never quite sat right with me.

Because it assumes that scale is the only logical destination. That bigger is always better. That the goal is to maximize the size of the business, regardless of what that does to everything else.

But once you’ve seen what scale actually brings with it – the complexity, the pressure, the fragility – you start to wonder whether that assumption is true.

Or whether we’ve just repeated it long enough that nobody challenges it anymore.

The Missing Middle

What took me a while to realize is that there’s a middle ground most people don’t even consider. It’s not about refusing to grow. And it’s not about building something just to sell it.

It’s about building something that is right-sized.

I came across the idea in a book called The Big Enough Company, and it immediately resonated. It articulated something I had been feeling for a long time without putting words to it.

The goal doesn’t have to be maximum scale.

The goal can be a business that actually works for you.

A business that is large enough to be meaningful, but small enough to remain understandable. A business that generates real profit instead of just revenue. A business where you’re still building something, not just managing an increasingly complex system.

Once you see that option, it’s hard to unsee it because it reframes the entire question.

It’s no longer “How big can this get?”

It becomes “How big should this be?”

What I Care About Now

These days, I’m thinking differently about how I want to live and work.

I’m still interested in building. That part hasn’t changed. I still enjoy solving problems, designing systems, and putting something useful into the world.

But I pay a lot more attention to what the business actually gives back in return.

I care about whether it produces real profit, not just revenue that looks good on paper. I care about how complex it becomes as it grows, and whether that complexity adds value or just creates more moving parts to manage. I care about how much control I have over my time, my decisions, and the direction of the business.

And I care about whether the whole thing makes sense.

There’s something very appealing about a business that is simple, profitable, and understandable. One where you know exactly how it works, where the margins are clear, and where growth doesn’t automatically introduce chaos.

That doesn’t mean I’m against scale.

It just means I don’t chase it blindly anymore.

Final Thought

I’m not against scale.

I’ve spent decades building and scaling businesses, and I understand exactly why it’s attractive. Growth feels like progress. Bigger numbers feel like validation. It’s an easy story to tell yourself – and to others.

But I’ve also seen what sits underneath it.

Scale brings complexity. It introduces pressure. And if you’re not careful, it creates a business that looks impressive from the outside but doesn’t actually deliver what you thought it would.

That’s why I don’t chase it by default anymore.

These days, I’m far more interested in building something that works. Something that produces real profit, stays understandable as it grows, and doesn’t turn into a machine that needs constant feeding just to keep running.

If that business scales along the way, great.

But it’s no longer the goal.

It’s just one possible outcome.

The post Why I Don’t Chase Scale Anymore appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

I accepted a LinkedIn connection request today. And if you know anything about me, that alone should tell you I was feeling unusually generous.

The profile looked decent. Business coach with plenty of experience. Not obviously spammy, actually sort of interesting. Against my better judgement, I figured, why not – let’s give this one a shot.

Connection accepted.

About five seconds later, the message comes in:

“Thanks for connecting. I work with entrepreneurs who want to scale, bla, bla… Out of curiosity, what challenges are you facing in your business?”

I read it. Smiled. Shook my head.

And disconnected.

Total interaction time: maybe 20 seconds. Quite possibly a new personal record for shortest LinkedIn connection ever.

The Pattern

What’s funny is – this isn’t unusual. It’s the default.

Accept a connection request and within seconds you get some version of the same script. Slight variations in wording, same underlying intent: skip context, skip curiosity, go straight to the pitch.

It’s almost impressive how consistent it is. People seem to believe that once you accept a connection, you’ve implicitly agreed to be pitched. As if clicking “accept” is some kind of green light for a templated outreach sequence.

It isn’t.

A connection is not a transaction. It’s not even a conversation yet. It’s just…proximity.

What happens next is what determines whether it becomes anything meaningful or ends 20 seconds later.

Why This Fails

It’s not the pitch itself that’s the problem. It’s what sits behind it.

If your first instinct after connecting is to sell, you’re telling me everything I need to know. You’re not paying attention. You’re not curious. You’re running a script. There’s no intent to connect, no effort to understand, no signal that a real human interaction is even desired. It’s a volume game dressed up as outreach.

There’s no curiosity about who I am, what I’ve done, or whether I even have a business that fits the narrative. No attempt to understand context. No pause to consider whether a conversation might make sense before forcing one.

Just a presumption: I must have a problem. You have the solution.

All delivered within seconds of connecting.

What makes it worse is the positioning. When this comes from someone who claims to be a business coach – someone whose job, by definition, is to understand people, ask better questions, and apply judgment – it becomes self-disqualifying.

Because if this is how you initiate a relationship, what does that say about how you actually work?

There’s nothing strategic about it. Nothing thoughtful. It’s just a sad, desperate attempt to manufacture opportunity out of thin air, without doing the one thing that might actually make it work: paying attention.

And that’s the part that’s hardest to ignore.

What Actually Works

The people worth connecting with tend to operate very differently. They don’t rush. They don’t script. And they certainly don’t assume.

They pay attention.

They take a moment to understand who they’re talking to, what that person has done, what might actually be relevant. Sometimes they don’t say anything at all at first. They observe. They engage where it makes sense. They let context build before forcing a conversation.

And when they do reach out, it feels different.

There’s signal. There’s intent. There’s usually some form of value – however small – attached to the interaction.

One of my favorite rules applies here: the best way to start a partnership is to bring gifts.

Not literal gifts. But something of value.

An insight. A thoughtful observation. A relevant introduction. A perspective that shows you’ve actually paid attention.

Something that says: I’m not here to take. I’m here to contribute.

That’s how real conversations start. Not with a pitch – but with relevance.

Closing

This is exactly why I rarely accept LinkedIn connection requests.

Not because I’m antisocial. Not because I’m uninterested. But because most of what comes next is just so predictable – and low quality.

When I do accept, I’m not looking for perfection. I’m looking for signal. A hint of awareness. A sign that there’s an actual person on the other side, not just a script running.

That’s a really low bar. And yet, it’s rarely cleared.

The irony is that the people who are actually worth connecting with don’t behave this way. They don’t rush the interaction. They don’t try to convert immediately. They understand that relationships – especially valuable ones – don’t start with extraction.

They start with attention.

And sometimes, with something as simple as a small, thoughtful gift.

The post The 20-Second LinkedIn Connection appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

From the outside, life after an exit looks deceptively simple.

You sell the company. You gain freedom. You slow down. You enjoy the fruits of your labor. The story writes itself neatly, and people project onto it whatever version of “made it” they happen to believe in.

My experience was not like this at all. It was quieter, stranger, and far less linear.

The exit didn’t end momentum. It removed the structure that had contained it. What followed wasn’t relief so much as a prolonged recalibration – a period where the questions changed faster than the answers. The exit didn’t solve my life. It simply removed the constraints that had been organizing it for decades.

What came next unfolded slowly, unevenly, and not at all the way I would have predicted.

Year 1: Relief, Noise, and a Machine That Wouldn’t Shut Off

The first year after the exit was defined by excitement and relief – but only briefly.

There was real gratitude in finally exhaling. The pressure lifted. The stakes softened. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t wake up with a backlog of urgent decisions waiting for me. That alone felt like a gift.

But almost immediately, something else became apparent: I didn’t know how to stop.

Just a couple of months after the sale, I started another business. Not because I needed the money – that part was no longer relevant. And not because I had a particularly clear idea of what I wanted to build next. I did it because it was what I knew. For nearly thirty years, I had hustled hard. Building, fixing, pushing forward had been my default operating system. Turning it off didn’t feel like an option. At the time, it barely even felt like a choice.

Intellectually, I understood that I didn’t have to work anymore. Emotionally and behaviorally, the machine kept running. The rhythm of building, problem-solving, and momentum had been ingrained too deeply to disappear overnight. The idea of simply stopping felt foreign, almost impossible to imagine.

So I kept going.

In hindsight, that first year wasn’t really about direction. It was about inertia. About discovering that freedom without structure didn’t immediately translate into rest – it often translated into motion without clarity.

And at the time, I didn’t question it. I didn’t even recognize it as something to be questioned yet.

Year 2: Unfocused Drift and Intellectual Sprawl

If the first year was defined by inertia, the second was defined by curiosity = unchecked, fun, undisciplined curiosity.

Suddenly, everything looked interesting.

With no single operating mandate and no externally imposed constraints, my attention scattered. New ideas surfaced constantly. New industries looked compelling. New technologies promised leverage and reinvention. I was like the proverbial kid in a Lego store, surrounded by infinite pieces and convinced that I could – and maybe should – build everything.

I explored broadly. I experimented freely. I started things, paused them, revisited them, and layered new ideas on top of unfinished ones. Nothing felt obviously wrong, but very little felt anchored. Without realizing it at the time, I was substituting motion for direction.

The absence of urgency was liberating, but it also removed a natural filter. When everything is optional, discernment becomes the real work – and I hadn’t learned how to apply it yet. So I kept playing. Building. Testing. Tinkering. Always moving, rarely committing.

In retrospect, that year wasn’t wasteful. It was exploratory. But it was also unfocused. Intellectual sprawl crept in quietly, disguised as curiosity and experimentation. I was learning a lot, but not necessarily moving toward anything coherent.

At the time, it felt like freedom. Only later did I recognize it for what it was: a necessary but messy phase of recalibration, where breadth preceded clarity.

Year 3: Fading Relevance and Finding a Voice

By the third year, something subtler began to happen.

It wasn’t dramatic. There was no single moment I could point to. But gradually, unmistakably, my professional relevance started to fade. The calls slowed. The steady flow of emails thinned out. Zoom invites, once routine, became occasional. Then rare.

No one pushed me out. No bridges were burned. I simply wasn’t needed anymore.

That realization landed more quietly than I expected, but it lingered longer. For decades, my identity had been tightly coupled to being in the middle of things – making decisions, solving problems, being relied upon. Without that gravitational pull, something felt oddly weightless.

It was around this time that I started writing.

Not because I’m particularly good at it – I’m not – and not because I had ambitions of becoming a writer. I started writing because I still had things I wanted to say. Ideas, observations, and experiences that didn’t seem to have a natural outlet anymore. Writing became a way to stay in the conversation when the conversation no longer came to me automatically.

It was also a way to test whether my voice still mattered.

That question sat just beneath the surface for much of that year. Was I still relevant if I wasn’t running something full-time? Did my experience still have weight if I wasn’t attached to a title or a growing org chart? These weren’t existential crises, but they were real, and they were new.

In hindsight, Year 3 wasn’t about output or experimentation. It was about identity. About separating who I was from what I had built, and learning – slowly – that relevance doesn’t always announce itself the way it used to.

Sometimes, you have to claim it quietly.

Year 4: Clarity, Selectivity, and Finally Feeling at Home in It

By the fourth year, something finally shifts.

There’s no dramatic breakthrough, no announcement, no sense of having “figured it all out.” Instead, the noise recedes. The signal becomes clearer. The things that actually matter begin to stand out on their own, without effort.

I know now what’s important to me – and just as importantly, what isn’t.

That clarity takes time to earn. It doesn’t arrive through hustle or experimentation alone. It comes from letting enough things fall away that the remaining ones can be seen properly. The unfocused drift of earlier years gives way to something quieter and far more satisfying.

I still feel like the kid in the Lego store. The curiosity hasn’t gone anywhere. The desire to build, experiment, and create is very much alive. The difference is that now I have a plan. I don’t reach for every box. I don’t feel compelled to try everything. I choose deliberately.

I say no far more often than I say yes.

I still do meaningful work. I still surround myself with exceptional entrepreneurs and builders. I still serve on Boards. I still experiment and stay intellectually engaged. But I do it without pressure. Without the grind. Without the sense that every idea needs to be pursued immediately or every opportunity must be captured before it disappears.

If something doesn’t get done today, that’s fine. It will still be there tomorrow.

For the first time in my professional life, everything happens on my time, my schedule, and my priorities. Not because I’ve lost ambition, but because I’ve refined it.

And sitting in that place – after years of recalibration – feels better than I would have expected.

It feels earned.

What Actually Changed – And What Didn’t

Looking back across those four years, the most meaningful changes weren’t external. They were internal, structural, and largely invisible from the outside.

What changed was how I relate to work. I no longer confuse activity with progress, or breadth with ambition. I don’t feel compelled to manufacture urgency or chase momentum for its own sake. Time, once scarce and constantly under pressure, is now something I allocate deliberately. Focus has replaced volume. Precision has replaced accumulation.

What also changed is my tolerance. I’m far less willing to accept unnecessary complexity, misaligned incentives, or work that expands simply because it can. Scale is no longer a default aspiration. It’s a tool – useful in the right context, destructive in the wrong one.

What didn’t change is just as important.

I’m still a builder. Still curious. Still intellectually restless. I still enjoy hard problems, thoughtful people, and the quiet satisfaction of designing systems that work. I still care deeply about creating things that are well-constructed and durable – businesses, tools, relationships, and ways of working.

The difference now is selectivity.

I don’t need to prove anything through motion anymore. I don’t need to fill my calendar to justify my time. I don’t need to say yes to remain relevant. The work I choose to do is enough on its own.

Four years after the exit, life hasn’t become simpler in the way people imagine. But it has become clearer. And that clarity – earned slowly, unevenly, and without shortcuts – has turned out to be far more valuable than the freedom I thought I was chasing in the beginning.

That, more than anything else, is what life after the exit actually looks like.

The post Life After the Exit (4 Years In) appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

Rather than pursuing growth for its own sake, we focused on strengthening the foundations of the firm: clarifying where we deploy energy, which assets deserve renewed investment, and how Tomco Capital should evolve as a long-term operator and builder of technology businesses.

At its core, Tomco Capital exists to launch, invest in, and operate successful SaaS and technology ventures. That mandate remains unchanged. What did change in 2025 was our level of precision – in deciding what to scale, what to pause, and what to redesign.

The year delivered several important signals.

ERPlingo crossed a critical validation threshold, demonstrating sustained daily usage and global relevance within the SAP ecosystem. Medicus, after a period of strategic pause, revealed renewed opportunity through inbound corporate interest — prompting a decision to reposition and relaunch the business in 2026 as an enterprise-grade BLS compliance platform for companies. Other assets, including Viral Followers and Daily Gratitude, remain in the portfolio as dormant options – intact, operational, and awaiting the right operating system and leadership to unlock their next phase.

Alongside the portfolio, Tomco Capital continued to support a small number of founders through advisory and coaching engagements. While advisory is not the core business of the firm, it remains an important cornerstone – both intellectually and strategically – and a meaningful way to compound experience across ventures.

2025 was not about acceleration.
It was about alignment.

Tomco Capital exits the year with a clearer mandate, a more coherent portfolio, and renewed conviction around where to invest time, capital, and attention in 2026.

Portfolio Overview & Business Unit Performance

2025 was a year where the portfolio didn’t expand outward, but it revealed its true shape. Each asset under Tomco Capital clarified its role – some through traction, others through renewed strategic relevance, and a few through patience.

ERPlingo – From Validation to Platform Thinking

ERPlingo delivered the clearest signal of the year.

What began as a focused solution for SAP professionals matured into a widely used platform with real operational gravity. Over the course of 2025, ERPlingo consistently exceeded 5,000 daily active users, and on November 24th reached a peak of 531,000 unique users in a single day following the Black Friday announcement.

These numbers matter not because they are impressive in isolation, but because they reflect real, repeat usage inside professional workflows. SAP practitioners around the world are using ERPlingo to solve problems quickly and efficiently – which is ultimately the only metric that counts.

With validation firmly established, the focus now shifts. In 2026, ERPlingo moves decisively from usage growth to monetization, feature expansion, and deeper user value. The opportunity is no longer theoretical. It is operational.

Medicus – Strategic Pause, Then Purposeful Rebuild

Medicus spent much of 2025 in what we intentionally described as strategic purgatory.

The business remained operational, stable, and self-sufficient – exactly as it was designed to be – but broader shifts in the EdTech landscape, particularly the impact of AI, challenged its original model. At the same time, founder conviction waned, prompting restraint rather than forced expansion.

Late in the year, however, renewed inbound interest from corporate and institutional buyers reframed the opportunity.

As a result, Tomco Capital made a deliberate decision: Medicus will be repositioned and revitalized in 2026 as a BLS compliance platform for companies, shifting away from selling individual courses toward an enterprise-grade, audit-ready compliance solution for SMBs.

This pivot aligns Medicus with where real demand now exists – recurring, defensible, and operationally embedded compliance – and reflects a broader Tomco principle: adapt structure to reality, not nostalgia.

Viral Followers – Dormant, Not Abandoned

Although dormant, Viral Followers remains part of the Tomco Capital portfolio.

While not actively scaled in 2025, the asset continues to exist as a latent option. It is operational, intact, and available to be reactivated should the right operating system, distribution strategy, or operator emerge.

Experience has shown that timing and structure often matter more than ideas. Viral Followers will wait for both.

Daily Gratitude – Optionality with Intent

Daily Gratitude occupies a similar position.

It remains dormant by design – preserved as a clean, lightweight asset that can be redeployed when conditions align. The product speaks to a category with long-term relevance, but like other assets in this tier, it will only be reactivated under a structure that supports sustainable growth rather than distraction.

Dormancy, when intentional, is not failure.
It is discipline.

Advisory & Coaching – Depth, Leverage, and Precision

In parallel with operating our own portfolio companies, Tomco Capital continues to engage in advisory work with founders and leadership teams – not as a scaled service business, but as a high-leverage extension of our operating expertise.

This work takes two distinct forms.

The first is long-term founder coaching, deliberately capped at four clients at any given time. These engagements are personal, intensive, and outcome-driven. In 2025, one such engagement concluded with a successful exit, ahead of schedule and on strong terms. As a result, two coaching slots open heading into 2026.

The second – and increasingly important – form is focused advisory sprints.

Rather than open-ended consulting, Tomco Capital has been refining a set of time-bound, outcome-oriented advisory formats designed to address specific leverage points inside SaaS and technology businesses. These typically run for approximately three months and concentrate on a single transformation area, such as go-to-market strategy, revenue and monetization, operating model design, or exit readiness.

These sprints reflect a core Tomco belief:
most companies don’t need more advice – they need short, intense periods of clarity and execution.

Advisory work at Tomco Capital is not designed to maximize billable hours or headcount. It exists to compound insight across the portfolio, sharpen operating judgment, and create asymmetric impact where experience matters most.

Entering 2026, advisory remains selective by design – fewer engagements, clearer mandates, and defined outcomes – aligned with Tomco Capital’s broader focus on building durable, scalable, and ultimately exitable technology businesses.

For founders interested in coaching or advisory engagement, details and the application process can be found here:
https://tomcocapital.com/coaching/

Strategic Lessons & Operating Principles

If 2025 reinforced anything, it was that operating a holding company post-exit requires a different kind of discipline than building a single business.

The instinct to move fast, add initiatives, or manufacture momentum never fully disappears. What changed this year was the willingness to resist that instinct and let structure, data, and conviction lead instead.

One clear lesson was the value of intentional focus. ERPlingo succeeded not because of constant expansion, but because we committed to solving a narrowly defined problem extremely well. Medicus, by contrast, taught us the opposite lesson: when conviction fades or market conditions shift, restraint is often the most strategic move – until clarity returns.

Another principle that sharpened in 2025 was optionality over obligation. Keeping assets like Viral Followers and Daily Gratitude dormant is not indecision; it is a deliberate choice to preserve upside without consuming attention. Not every asset needs to be active to be valuable.

A third lesson, and perhaps the most powerful, was the power of time-boxed intervention. Both in advisory work and internal portfolio decisions, short, focused periods of intense attention consistently produced better outcomes than open-ended effort. This reinforced Tomco Capital’s bias toward defined operating cycles, clear objectives, and measurable outcomes.

Finally, 2025 clarified the importance of founder alignment. Businesses move fastest – and cleanest – when structure, energy, and intent point in the same direction. When they don’t, even well-designed companies stall. Recognizing that mismatch early is a skill that improves with experience and one we now prioritize across the portfolio.

These principles are not theoretical. They emerged through real decisions, real pauses, and real recalibration. They now form the backbone of how Tomco Capital allocates attention, capital, and advisory effort going forward.

Looking Ahead – 2026 Priorities & Closing Reflections

As Tomco Capital moves into 2026, the direction is clear.

The firm will continue to focus on building, investing in, and operating technology businesses where structure, clarity, and leverage matter more than raw scale. ERPlingo enters the year with proven usage and a renewed focus on monetization and feature depth. Medicus begins a purposeful rebuild, repositioned as an enterprise-grade compliance platform aligned with real corporate demand. Other portfolio assets remain intact, preserved with discipline and optionality.

Alongside the portfolio, advisory and coaching work will continue in a selective and constrained manner, through long-term founder engagements and clearly defined advisory sprints, always in service of the broader mandate to help founders exit successfully.

Underlying all of this is a refined operating philosophy that emerged clearly in 2025:
short, focused periods of intense attention consistently outperform open-ended effort.

This principle now shapes how Tomco Capital allocates time and energy. Deep, concentrated work followed by deliberate space to observe, measure, and let systems operate undisturbed. That rhythm – intense engagement paired with intentional restraint – was difficult to sustain during the hustle years of company building. Post-exit, it has become both possible and powerful luxury.

2025 proved that this mode of operating is not only personally sustainable, but strategically effective. It produces better decisions, cleaner execution, and businesses that are built with intent rather than urgency.

Tomco Capital enters 2026 smaller in surface area, but stronger in structure. Fewer priorities. Clearer standards. More conviction behind each decision.

This annual letter reflects a firm that is no longer experimenting with what it wants to be – but steadily becoming it.

Here’s to an amazing 2026!
Thomas Michael

The post Tomco Capital – 2025 Annual Letter appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

That line stuck with me.

For most of my career, I was obsessed with summits: hitting revenue milestones, landing big clients, shipping products, selling a company. The numbers changed, but the feeling didn’t – each time I reached a goal, I just moved the bar higher.

Eventually, I realized I was playing the same game as Sisyphus – the guy from Greek mythology, doomed to push a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down, again and again.

No finish line, no rest, no peace.

That’s when it hit me: the point isn’t the summit. It’s learning to enjoy the climb.

My Climb

For years, my entire operating system was goal-driven. I thought in milestones, numbers, and targets.

• Launching the first 100 courses
• Signing up the first 1,000 customers
• Making the first $1,000,000

Every time I hit one of those goals, it felt incredible – for about five minutes. Then I’d reset the target higher. The climb never ended, the summit kept moving, and I didn’t realize I was quietly signing up for a lifetime of pushing the same damn boulder uphill.

In the founder world, especially in groups like Vistage and EO, where I spent years, the unspoken rule was simple:

Grow or sell.

If you weren’t chasing exponential growth or prepping for an exit, you were considered stagnant. Still standing? That meant you were weak. Or worse – complacent.

But I started questioning that dogma. Was constant growth really the only definition of success? What about building something right-sized? A business that ran smoothly, grew organically, kept customers happy, paid its bills, and didn’t give me a heart attack before 40?

That shift was a turning point for me. I realized the endless chase for “more” was an illusion and that true success might just live in the space between hustle and peace.

The Shift – Enjoying the Ride

Once I saw the pattern, I couldn’t unsee it. I realized I didn’t actually need another summit. I needed a new relationship with the climb itself.

These days, I run my businesses differently. There’s no frantic push for growth-at-all-costs, no obsession with valuations or vanity metrics. I run lean, calm, and deliberate. I focus on building things that matter: solving problems people actually want solved.

When something we build lands with a customer – when they send that one-line email that says “This saved me hours” or “Finally, something that actually works” – that hits deeper than any quarterly target ever did.

I get joy out of seeing systems work smoothly, teams happy and motivated, customers served well. That’s the payoff.

Because when you finally stop sprinting toward the next summit, you start noticing how much you were missing along the way: the view, the air, the people who climb beside you.

The business doesn’t own me anymore. I own it. And I enjoy it because it’s built to serve my life, not the other way around.

And to be clear: this isn’t permission to coast. I still have goals, targets, and big ambitions. But I no longer chase them for their own sake. I hustle with intent, not insecurity, driven by purpose, not pressure.

The journey matters more than the summit.

The Message – What Founders Get Wrong

I recently had a founder reach out asking for advice. His company, he said, was “in trouble.”

When I asked what was going on, he told me: “We missed our revenue goal, We only grew 9% instead of 15%.”

I just stared at the message for a second, then laughed. He was in full-blown crisis mode, losing sleep, questioning everything… while I would’ve popped champagne and sent the team home early for a long weekend.

Same situation. Different perspective.

This is where most founders lose the plot – they turn success into suffering. They confuse progress with failure simply because it didn’t match an arbitrary target they made up six months ago in a spreadsheet.

I’ve been that guy – obsessing over growth curves, KPIs, and projections that ultimately meant nothing. It’s a trap disguised as ambition.

Here’s the truth: no one writes books about the view from the top of Mount Everest. They write about the climb, the frostbite, the fear, the perseverance. That’s where the meaning is.

So, if you’re building, chasing, grinding… don’t forget:

The goal isn’t to get to the top.
The goal is to still love the climb once you’re there.

The View That Really Matters

These days, I don’t measure success by how high I’ve climbed, but by how it feels to keep climbing. Am I challenged? Engaged? Curious? Peaceful? If the answer’s yes, that’s success.

I’ve reached plenty of summits in my life – big exits, major milestones, personal goals that once felt impossible. And every single time, after the initial rush, I looked around and realized: there’s no music up here. No parade. No confetti. Just the same mountain wind and the next peak in the distance.

That’s when it hit me: the magic was never at the top. It was in the building, the learning, the experimenting, the failing, and the trying again. That’s where life actually happens.

So now, I choose to climb differently. No panic. No pressure. Just purpose, presence, and perspective.

There may be no books written about the view from the top of Mount Everest, but there are thousands written about the courage it takes to keep climbing.

And that’s the story worth living.

The post Why Are There No Books About The View From The Top Of Mount Everest? appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

From Consultant to Creator

For years, I was perfectly happy as an SAP consultant. I was good at what I did, billed top rates, traveled the world, and worked with some of the biggest companies on the planet helping them implement and configure SAP software.

But once I got married, the constant travel started to wear thin. That’s when my good friend – and fellow SAP expert – Kent Bettisworth told me about a company in Europe that had just started offering online SAP training. This was around 2006, and back then, even SAP itself didn’t offer online training. The idea was unheard of.

Naturally, I had to check it out. What I found wasn’t impressive – the execution was clunky, the content uninspiring. But the spark was undeniable. The idea was right. They just weren’t doing it well. And that’s when it hit me: I could do this better.

So I dove into a world I knew nothing about: online education and authoring tools. I experimented with formats, failed repeatedly, and eventually landed on a model I liked. To my surprise – and relief – people responded well. I built one course. Then another. Then another.

At first, it was just me, in between consulting gigs. But I wanted to test the idea that I could create a revenue stream not tied to my time. By the time I’d created 20 courses, the writing was on the wall: it worked. The business had legs.

From there, I hired SAP experts to draft scripts, instructional designers to build lessons, and voice-over talent to record audio. What started as a side project grew into the world’s largest independent SAP training platform – until SAP itself finally entered the market, knocking us down to #2.

What began as a personal experiment had turned into a scalable company.

Step 1: Start Small and Validate

Looking back, the smartest thing I did was start small. One course. That’s it.

I didn’t spend months writing a business plan. I didn’t raise money. I didn’t build a giant website with dozens of features. I just created a single course and put it out into the world to see if anyone cared.

They did. And that’s when I made another. Then another. Each course was a test. Each one taught me something about what worked, what didn’t, and what people were actually willing to pay for.

The beauty of starting small is that the risk is minimal. If nobody had bought my courses, I’d have wasted some nights and weekends – nothing more. But because I tested early, I discovered a viable business model while keeping my downside limited.

It’s easy for entrepreneurs to get paralyzed, waiting for the “perfect” idea or obsessing over a 40-page business plan. My advice: don’t. Launch early, fail fast, iterate often. That’s how you validate.

Step 2: Build Systems, Not Dependencies

After the first 20 courses, I hit a wall. There was no way I could keep creating everything myself while also running consulting projects. If the business depended on me, it wasn’t scalable – and certainly not sellable.

So I started building systems. I brought in SAP experts to write lesson scripts. Instructional designers to build the actual courses. Voice actors to record audio. Later, a customer service team to handle support tickets. Every piece of the puzzle that once lived in my head was broken down into a repeatable process that someone else could execute.

That shift – from dependency to systems – is what turned my side hustle into a company. Without it, I’d have been stuck in the freelancer trap, just with a fancier product. With it, I had a machine that could scale far beyond me.

This is the difference between running a business and owning a job. If your business stops when you do, you don’t really have a company. You have a dependency.

Step 3: Evolve the Model

At first, the business was simple: I sold individual courses to SAP professionals. It worked – but it was still small scale.

Then I started thinking bigger. What if I could sell bundles of courses to entire companies? That’s when I built a B2B sales team and hired account managers. The shift paid off. We sold a lot of corporate training packages, and revenues climbed fast.

But the real breakthrough – the move that put the company into overdrive – was switching to a SaaS subscription model. Instead of one-off course sales, everything became a recurring contract. Customers signed up once, and their access renewed automatically until they canceled.

That single decision doubled the value of the business. It gave us predictable revenue, steadier cash flow, and a multiple that investors couldn’t ignore. SaaS wasn’t just a new model – it was the turning point that made the business scalable and highly attractive for acquisition.

Step 4: Prepare for Exit

Growth is exciting. But if you ever want to sell, growth alone isn’t enough. Buyers don’t just look at your revenue; they look at how your business runs without you.

That’s where preparation made all the difference. I spent over a year making the company “exit-ready.” Every agreement, every contract, every financial statement was organized and accessible. Processes were documented, teams were trained, and I deliberately made myself less important.

By the time we went to market, the company didn’t need me anymore. And that’s exactly what buyers want to see. They’re not buying your personality or your hustle; they’re buying a machine that will keep running long after you’re gone.

Because we had recurring revenue, clean financials, and a business that ran on systems – not me – we attracted serious buyers quickly. And when the right deal came along, we were ready.

Preparation wasn’t glamorous. It was tedious, detail-heavy, and sometimes felt like a second job. But it paid off in multiples when it came time to exit.

The Playbook for Productizing Expertise

Looking back, the path from consultant to SaaS founder to exit wasn’t magic. It was a series of very deliberate steps:

1. Start small and validate. Don’t wait for perfect. Ship something, see if people care, and learn by doing.
2. Build systems, not dependencies. If the business relies on you, it’s not a business. Process everything.
3. Evolve the model. One-off sales might pay the bills, but recurring revenue builds enterprise value.
4. Prepare for exit. Get your house in order early. Clean financials, documented processes, and a business that runs without you make all the difference.

That’s the framework. It works whether you’re selling training courses, SaaS, or any other form of productized expertise.

The biggest trap experts fall into is clinging to the billable hour. The biggest opportunity is turning what you know into something that scales without you.

I did it in SAP training. You can do it in your industry.

The post How to Productize Your Expertise Into a Scalable Business appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

Why TomcoCapital Went AI-First

At TomcoCapital, we made a decision early on: whenever we face a business challenge or need, we ask a simple question – can an AI-first company solve this faster, smarter, and with less friction than a traditional team? The answer, more often than not, is yes.

After selling my last business and getting a clean slate, I had zero interest in rebuilding the same human-heavy, slow-moving org chart. The world has changed. AI isn’t a gimmick anymore – it’s the competitive edge. That’s why every new portfolio company we launch, acquire, or scale starts with this mindset: automate first, hire later (if at all).

The difference isn’t just about efficiency or cost. It’s about building companies that are leaner, more adaptable, and fundamentally prepared for the business landscape that’s already here – not the one we left behind.

We don’t default to human resources for operational problems. We default to AI. Only after AI has hit its limit do we assign a person—whose time is then focused on strategy, relationship-building, and high-leverage creative work.

The net result: our companies move faster, spend less, and scale smarter. In a market defined by volatility and relentless competition, this isn’t just a cool tech experiment. It’s how you win.

Inside the AI Team – What Our Agents Actually Do

The real power of an AI-first company isn’t just that AI can handle simple, repetitive work. It’s how broad and deep the capabilities now go across our entire business stack.

At TomcoCapital and our portfolio companies, our AI agents aren’t just running social or cranking out blogs – they’re actively replacing or augmenting roles you’d normally need to hire for. Here’s a snapshot of what our AI team manages every week:

• Copywriting & Content Marketing:
  AI writes, edits, and optimizes web pages, ebooks, case studies, and even technical documentation. Our “AI copywriter” can handle everything from product pitches to long-form guides – faster and often with fewer errors than a human.
• Website & Product Updates:
  Want to add a new feature, fix a bug, or update pricing tables? AI writes the copy, generates the code, and often pushes changes live to production. What once took days now takes minutes.
• Customer Support & Service:
  Incoming emails and support tickets are automatically triaged, answered, or escalated – 24/7. The AI doesn’t sleep or get frustrated. Simple inquiries are resolved instantly; complex cases are flagged for a human, who now handles far fewer tickets.
• SEO & Analytics:
  AI reviews all outbound content for SEO performance, suggests improvements, and analyzes traffic/usage logs. We know what’s working and what isn’t, in real time, with actionable recommendations – not just reports gathering dust.
• Sales Operations:
  AI agents help update pricing, research prospects, draft outreach emails, and follow up on leads. Our sales pipeline is more active, more organized, and less dependent on human error.
• Marketing Automation:
  Newsletters, nurture campaigns, and social posts are scheduled, written, and A/B tested by AI. Marketing email copy is customized to audience segments, then launched and tracked – all hands-off.
• Business Development & Research:
  AI finds and analyzes potential business opportunities, identifies new partners or acquisition targets, and even does preliminary due diligence.
• Ecommerce & Product Management:
  Inventory, pricing, and product descriptions are managed by AI. Site changes, promos, and updates go live without waiting for a human bottleneck.
• Personal Productivity:
  My own “virtual assistant” AI manages my calendar, flags key emails, and even prompts me to hit my health goals or follow up on critical projects.
• Recruiting & HR:
  Our recruiting agent can source candidates, screen for basic qualifications, and schedule interviews, though, ironically, we haven’t needed to use it yet.

Bottom line:
Nearly every role below senior leadership can now be at least partially replaced, accelerated, or supported by AI. Our “team” is a real, dynamic roster of digital employees – always on, always learning, and immune to office drama.

What’s Left for Humans (and Why That Matters More Than Ever)

Does this mean people are obsolete? Not even close. The reality is, in an AI-first company, the bar for human contribution gets higher – not lower. AI crushes the grunt work, the repetition, the tasks that used to chew up your best people’s time and patience. But it can’t replace vision, strategy, leadership, creativity, or the human touch required for high-stakes deals and nuanced judgment.

Here’s how we deploy our human capital now:

• Strategy & Vision: Humans set direction, make bets, and decide which mountains to climb. AI can analyze data and suggest tactics, but it can’t replace gut instinct or experience.
• Relationship-Building: From investor relations to key partnerships, trust and persuasion are still deeply human skills.
• Complex Problem-Solving: When a situation is ambiguous, political, or requires cross-domain thinking, you need people—not just pattern-matching algorithms.
• Innovation & Big Ideas: True breakthroughs – whether in product, business model, or go-to-market – rarely emerge from code alone.
• Final Accountability: At the end of the day, a company needs real leadership. Someone has to take responsibility for the big calls AI isn’t built to make.

By freeing humans from busywork, we let them work on what actually drives value and competitive advantage. In fact, our team is smaller, but every person is working closer to the top of their skill stack.

This isn’t anti-people. It’s pro-talent. When you let AI handle everything it’s good at, you can finally let your best people focus on what only they can do.

Lessons Learned & Advice for Founders and Investors

Here’s the truth from the trenches: building an AI-first company is not a theoretical play – it’s a competitive necessity. And it’s moving faster than even the tech press is reporting. Most leaders are either sleepwalking into irrelevance or tinkering at the edges while their competitors are quietly eating their lunch.

What I’ve learned:

• Don’t wait for perfection: If you hold out for flawless AI, you’ll be left behind. Deploy, test, refine – iterate weekly, not yearly.
• Audit ruthlessly: Every process, every workflow, every department. If an AI tool can do 80% of the job, that’s 80% of time and cost back in your pocket.
• Upskill your humans: The people who thrive here are the ones who can direct, supervise, and quality-check AI. You want operators who treat AI as leverage, not as a threat.
• Expect resistance: You’ll get pushback from people invested in the old way. That’s fine – progress doesn’t wait for permission.
• Measure the right things: Speed, adaptability, and margin matter more than headcount or legacy org charts.

My advice:
Stop thinking of AI as “tech support” and start thinking of it as your operations backbone. Build around it, not on top of it. The companies that win in the next decade will be those who made AI their core operating system, not a bolt-on afterthought.

If you’re still hiring armies for jobs that AI can do better, faster, and cheaper – you’re not building for the future. You’re just adding risk and friction.

The New Playbook – Are You Ready to Compete This Way?

The landscape has shifted. The old metrics – headcount, square footage, layers of management – don’t mean what they used to. The winning formula now is simple: fewer people, more leverage, relentless automation, and the courage to let go of how things “have always been done.”

If you’re a founder, operator, or investor and still building companies the traditional way, here’s your wake-up call. Start treating AI as your first hire, not your last resort.

Audit your processes, challenge your assumptions, and get uncomfortable.
It’s not about being trendy; it’s about survival and having a real edge.

This is exactly what I work on with our portfolio founders and with a select group of coaching clients who are serious about building lean, AI-first businesses that scale with less risk and more upside.

If you’re ready to leave excuses behind and actually transform how you build, book a call with me.

The post Building an AI-First Company: Why We Start With Automation, Not Headcount appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

I went to London Tech Week.

It was loud. It was global. Kicked off with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on stage and Nvidia’s CEO, promising billions in AI infrastructure and a digitally upskilled Britain.

Big energy. Bold headlines.

And yet, as I walked the expo floor, I kept asking myself:

“Does anyone here actually build anything that works?”

I saw beautifully branded booths. Well-rehearsed founders. Slick decks.
One startup was promising advanced blood testing subscriptions with deep biomarker insights. Another claimed to let you spin up AI agents to perform “any task” in minutes.

Naturally, I wanted to see more.

So I went to their websites… and was greeted with the same thing in both cases:
“Join our waitlist.” No product. No pricing. No signal they’ve shipped anything at all.

Let me translate that: “We’ve built a vision, but not a business.”

This wasn’t a one-off. It was the norm.

And it tells you everything you need to know about the current founder mindset: presence is prioritized over progress.

Scene 1: Polished Panels, But Pitch-Drunk Founders

The panels were flawless. The production value was premium.
But beneath the surface, I heard a lot of founder-speak that made my old operator instincts twitch:

“We’re pre-revenue but post-traction.”
“We’re validating monetization.”
“Our next round will unlock growth.”

No it won’t.

I spoke to too many founders who were chasing runway instead of revenue. Decks instead of distribution. Their “traction” was engagement on LinkedIn posts – not paying customers.

If you don’t have your first 100 customers, why are you roaming around London Tech Week?

To raise money? There are better avenues – and smarter ones.
To get publicity? That can backfire hard and fast when a journalist or investor asks, “Can I try it?” and you don’t have a product.

It’s not just premature scaling. It’s delusional signaling, like dressing for a wedding when you haven’t even proposed yet.

Takeaway for Founders:

Start with the problem.

Not the pitch, not the brand, not the slide deck. The real problem – not the one you think sounds hot. If the problem isn’t painful enough to make someone pay you to solve it, there’s no business.

No problem = no customer = no traction = no funding = no exit.

If you can’t clearly explain:

1. Who your customer is
2. What you solve for them
3. How you make money doing it
   
   …you don’t have a startup. You have a hobby with a pitch deck.

Scene 2: Government Grant Chasers

There’s this dangerous narrative spreading in the UK founder ecosystem:

“If we just get that InnovateUK grant / NHS pilot / AI booster voucher, we’ll be good.”

No. You won’t.

The government handing out grants is like an Instagram influencer pitching for likes – a little sad, and it never really turns out to be as good as we all thought.

I met several founders who were months into paperwork and pitch prep for public sector funding – but hadn’t spoken to a customer in weeks.

You’re not building a business. You’re playing bureaucratic lottery.

Takeaway for Founders:

Use grants only to accelerate something that’s already working, not as a lifeline for something that isn’t.

And more importantly:
Don’t let the vague promise of a possible grant distract you from your core mission:
Sign up customers. Solve their problems. Make money.

The market doesn’t care how much you raised. It cares what you built.

Scene 3: AI Wrappers and Investor FOMO

Everyone is building an “AI company” now. But most are just wrappers – a light UX layer slapped over ChatGPT or Claude, packaged with buzzwords and a slick landing page.

I’m not judging from the sidelines on this one. At Tomco Capital, we made the same mistake.

We launched our portfolio company ERPlingo as a ChatGPT-powered SAP support platform. We thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread. And to be fair, our prompt engineering is solid. Better than most.

But here’s the truth:

ChatGPT is already “good enough” at everything.

Getting someone to stop using ChatGPT and switch to your platform – no matter how niche – is tremendously difficult. You’re not just selling features. You’re trying to overcome default behavior.

We’re actively fixing that right now at ERPlingo.

If you’re building the next hot AI tool, you need to be doing the same – or you’ll be just another wrapper that demoed well but never stuck.

Takeaway for Founders:

AI isn’t your differentiator anymore. Your results are.

Ask yourself:

• Are you solving a problem 10x better than ChatGPT does out of the box?
• Is your tool sticky, indispensable, and revenue-generating?
• Would you switch if you were the customer?

If the answer is no, you’re not building a product – you’re just giving OpenAI free distribution.

Final Thoughts From the Balcony

Being a retired founder gives you a different lens.

You see the games being played. The narratives being sold. The self-delusion being scaled.

London Tech Week had all the ingredients: ambition, innovation, capital. But the most successful founders I know aren’t chasing buzz. They’re ruthlessly focused on fundamentals:

• Solve a painful problem.
• Get someone to pay you for it.
• Build systems that scale you out of the equation.

That’s it. That’s the game. And it’s still undefeated.

For Founders Still in the Arena

You don’t need another round. You need a win.

Pick one number that matters – ARR, retention, CAC payback – and kill anything that doesn’t move it.

If you want someone to call your bluff, rip apart your strategy, and help you scale like someone who’s already exited: I coach a small handful of serious founders each year.

Book a call.

If not, just build something great. And email me when you exit.

The post Confessions of a Retired Tech Founder at London Tech Week appeared first on Tomco Capital - Coaching, Advisory & Investments.

This letter marks the continuation of a tradition I started with the very first Annual Letter two years ago. It’s a time to look back at what we’ve achieved, acknowledge where we fell short, and share the path forward for the businesses under the Tomco Capital umbrella. It’s also a chance to thank the incredible people – our team members, customers, and partners – who make this journey worthwhile.

2024 has been defined by innovation and resilience. Across the portfolio, we’ve launched new products, refined our offerings, and pushed the boundaries of what our businesses can achieve. Of course, it hasn’t been without its challenges, some setbacks forced us to rethink strategies and adjust to an ever-evolving landscape. But through it all, we’ve stayed true to our mission: building sustainable, meaningful businesses that create value for everyone involved.

As you read this year’s letter, you’ll find stories of success, lessons from failure, and an ambitious vision for what’s next. Thank you for your continued trust and support as we look ahead to another year of growth and opportunity.

Reflections on 2024

2024 was a year of both progress and recalibration. It’s easy to focus on the wins – and there were many, but equally important are the challenges we faced and the lessons we learned along the way.

One of our proudest achievements this year was the continued success of ERPlingo, which remains the cornerstone of our portfolio. We added the Chat with PDF tool, enabling users to analyze and interact with large PDF documents in seconds, further enhancing its utility. ERPlingo’s progress is a testament to what’s possible when we combine innovative technology with a relentless focus on user needs. And as we gear up to launch ERPlingo v2 in early 2025, I’m more optimistic than ever about its future.

This year also saw the successful launch of Medicus Training, our venture into the medical compliance training space. We went live with a fully accredited Basic Life Support (BLS) course, and the initial response has been incredibly encouraging. Seeing users sign up within weeks of launch was a gratifying validation of the team’s hard work.

Another exciting milestone was the birth of GiggleBook.media, which started as a lighthearted idea and quickly turned into a legitimate business. We launched our first 50 humorous notebooks, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the best ideas come from simply having fun with what we do.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Tomco.io, our AI-powered lead generation tool, faced a major setback when LinkedIn discontinued API access early in the year. Without that critical functionality, the business ground to a halt, forcing us to pause and rethink its direction. It’s a tough pill to swallow, especially since we had high hopes for its growth, but it’s also a reminder that adaptability is non-negotiable in this line of work.

Another challenge this year was the relentless pace of AI innovation. While it’s exciting to work on the cutting edge, the constant updates and releases made it difficult to maintain stability in our platforms. It felt like we were always chasing the next breakthrough, only to have to rework what we had just built. That said, we’ve learned to embrace this dynamic environment, retooling our architecture to better handle future innovations.As I reflect on 2024, I’m struck by the resilience of our team and the adaptability of our businesses. We faced challenges head-on, learned from our missteps, and made progress that sets a solid foundation for the year ahead.

Portfolio Updates

2024 was a pivotal year for our portfolio, with progress and milestones across all our businesses. While challenges emerged, they were met with innovation and determination, strengthening the foundation for what’s to come.

ERPlingo

ERPlingo continues to shine as the flagship of our portfolio. This year, we introduced the Chat with PDF tool, allowing users to analyze and interact with large PDF documents—a feature that has been warmly received by our growing user base. As we head into 2025, anticipation is building for the release of ERPlingo v2, which will include:

• SAP Support Apps for faster, more precise problem resolution.
• Advanced analytics to help users better understand their SAP environment.
• Predictive AI to proactively address user needs before they become issues.

Medicus Training

Summer 2024 marked the successful launch of Medicus Training, our medical compliance training business. The rollout of our fully accredited Basic Life Support (BLS) course was met with enthusiasm, with user sign-ups beginning just weeks after launch. As we look to 2025, we plan to expand Medicus Training’s offerings with additional certifications, building on its early momentum and establishing it as a trusted resource in the healthcare compliance space.

GiggleBook.media

What began as a playful idea after a few too many drinks has turned into a delightful addition to our portfolio. GiggleBook.media launched its first 50 humorous notebooks this year, finding a niche audience that appreciates its quirky and creative approach. For 2025, we plan to expand the product line to include funny journals and day planners, further growing its presence in the niche publishing market.

Tomco.AI

While facing stiff competition, Tomco.AI achieved a major milestone in 2024 by upgrading 200+ AI templates with super-prompts, significantly improving their effectiveness and outputs. These enhancements have helped us differentiate Tomco.AI in the crowded AI tools market. In 2025, we plan to build on these improvements, integrating advanced analytics and exploring new ways to add value for our users.

DailyGratitude.io

Though DailyGratitude.io remained dormant in 2024, big plans are in the works for a 2025 relaunch. The revamped platform will feature:

• AI-powered sentiment analysis to provide users with insights into their journaling patterns.
• Predictive journaling prompts to inspire meaningful reflections.
• Tools for visualizing personal growth, making DailyGratitude.io a comprehensive tool for self-improvement.

ViralFollowers.com

ViralFollowers.com made waves this year with the launch of its Hashtag Analyzer tool, which quickly became a favorite among users. This free tool helps individuals and businesses analyze hashtags in their market segments, driving better social media engagement. ViralFollowers.com has firmly established itself as a valuable resource for those looking to optimize their social media strategies.

Strategic Focus for 2025

As we move into 2025, our focus is clear: doubling down on what works, improving where we see potential, and innovating to stay ahead. Each of our businesses has a defined path forward, with ambitious goals and plans to achieve them.

ERPlingo

ERPlingo is poised for a transformative year with the release of ERPlingo v2 in January 2025. This update will introduce:

• SAP Support Apps designed to provide faster and more accurate solutions to SAP issues.
• Advanced analytics that will empower users with actionable insights into their SAP environments.
• Predictive AI workflows that anticipate user needs and proactively offer solutions.

These features will cement ERPlingo’s position as the leading AI-powered SAP support solution, driving increased user engagement and setting a high bar for innovation in the SAP ecosystem. Our goal is ambitious: to double both the user base and revenue by year-end.

Medicus Training

Building on its strong start, Medicus Training will focus on expanding its course offerings in 2025. In addition to the Basic Life Support (BLS) course, we plan to launch new certifications that address broader compliance needs in the healthcare industry. We’re also exploring partnerships with healthcare organizations to further enhance Medicus Training’s reach and credibility.

GiggleBook.media

The success of our first 50 notebooks has set the stage for exciting growth in 2025. GiggleBook.media will expand its product line to include:

• Funny journals designed to bring a smile to everyday note-taking.
• Day planners with a humorous twist, perfect for those who like their organization served with a side of fun.

We’ll also explore creative marketing campaigns to grow our audience and establish GiggleBook.media as a go-to brand for quirky and unique publishing products.

Tomco.AI

After a year of significant improvements, Tomco.AI will focus on enhancing its position in the market by:

• Building on the 200+ upgraded templates with advanced super-prompts.
• Integrating analytics tools to give users deeper insights into their content performance.
• Exploring synergies with other businesses, such as ViralFollowers.com, to offer even more targeted tools for social media and marketing.

DailyGratitude.io

2025 will mark the relaunch of DailyGratitude.io as a comprehensive journaling app with:

• AI-powered sentiment analysis to help users reflect on their emotional trends.
• Predictive prompts to inspire deeper, more meaningful journaling.
• Tools for visualizing growth over time, making the app a valuable companion for self-improvement.

Cross-Portfolio Collaboration

Collaboration will remain a key focus in 2025, ensuring that our businesses work together to amplify each other’s strengths:

• ViralFollowers.com: Provide social media services to promote ERPlingo, Medicus Training, and GiggleBook.media, helping them reach wider audiences.
• GiggleBook.media: Partner with DailyGratitude.io to create gratitude-themed journals, bridging digital and physical tools to enhance user engagement.

Personal Reflections

This year, I’ve found myself reflecting not just on the growth of our businesses, but on personal growth as well. 2024 marked a significant milestone for me in prioritizing my health and work-life balance. After years of focusing on everything except myself, I made the decision to commit to improving my well-being—and it paid off. I’m happy to report that I’ve lost 35 pounds and am back to my high school weight. As an added bonus, I can finally fit into clothes I haven’t worn in decades!

Moving to London in late 2023 was a big change, but it has turned into one of the most exciting chapters of my life. London’s vibrant energy and proximity to Europe opened up endless opportunities for exploration, and we made the most of it—taking 17 trips across the continent this year. From the bustling streets of Paris to the serene landscapes of Switzerland, these adventures served as a reminder of why we chose this path: to live fully, not just work endlessly.

This new perspective has influenced how I approach leadership. I’ve always believed in building businesses that people enjoy working for, but this year reinforced just how important it is to create space for life outside of work. That philosophy is reflected in every decision we make at Tomco Capital, from the flexibility we offer our team to the type of businesses we choose to build. It’s a lesson I’ll carry forward into 2025 and beyond.

As I reflect on the year, I feel immense gratitude—not just for the successes we’ve achieved, but for the people who make it all possible. Our team, partners, and customers continue to inspire me with their trust and collaboration. It’s a privilege to do what we do, and I’m excited to see where the next year takes us.

In Closing

As we close the chapter on 2024 and look ahead to 2025, I’m filled with both gratitude and excitement. Gratitude for the incredible people who have supported us—our dedicated team, our customers, and our partners. Your belief in what we’re building has been the driving force behind everything we do. And excitement for what lies ahead as we continue to push boundaries, embrace innovation, and strengthen our portfolio of businesses.

2024 was not without its challenges, but it was also a year that showed us the power of adaptability, resilience, and creativity. We launched new ventures, refined existing ones, and learned lessons that have prepared us for the road ahead. Each business—whether it’s ERPlingo, Medicus Training, GiggleBook.media, or any of the others—has a clear path forward and a renewed sense of purpose.

As we step into 2025, our focus remains on building sustainable, impactful businesses that create value for everyone involved. From the launch of ERPlingo v2 to the relaunch of DailyGratitude.io, and the continued growth of Medicus Training and GiggleBook.media, the year ahead promises to be one of our most ambitious yet.

To our team, thank you for your dedication, creativity, and resilience. To our customers, thank you for your trust and partnership. And to everyone who has supported us along the way, thank you for being part of this journey. Together, we’re building something extraordinary, and I can’t wait to see what we accomplish in 2025.

Here’s to another year of growth, opportunity, and success.

Warm regards,

Thomas Michael
CEO, Tomco Capital

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