Ronaldo Invested In My Company: The Biggest Lessons I’ve Learned About Scaling

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Open Equity With Thomas Cornwall

Thomas Cornwall

15 episodes

2 days ago

Open Equity with Thomas Cornwall takes you inside the world of scaling companies, private equity, exits and wealth creation. Every week, Thomas - founder of Open Equity, who has helped scale companies to $200M+ revenue and exit for up to $1.75BN - shares unfiltered conversations and actionable insights featuring top founders, investors and dealmakers.

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Ronaldo Invested In My Company: The Biggest Lessons I’ve Learned About Scaling

Open Equity With Thomas Cornwall

47 minutes 5 seconds

1 month ago

Ronaldo Invested In My Company: The Biggest Lessons I’ve Learned About Scaling

Vadim Fedotov, CEO of Bioniq, the leading personalised health supplement brand, learned brutal scaling lessons as Groupon Eastern Europe CEO in the fastest-growing company in history, then applied those insights to build a successful health company that caught Cristiano Ronaldo's attention.

We’re diving into how Bioniq went from founder-led hustle to systematic scaling across 73 countries and why Vadim nearly quit multiple times before breakthrough partnerships transformed the business into the global success it is today.

Do you want to scale? We’re looking for more great companies to invest in and help grow: https://www.openequity.co.uk

Join the Open Equity newsletter for weekly insights: https://www.openequity.co.uk/newsletter

00:00 Introduction
01:20 Joining Groupon at its peak and the Rocket Internet playbook
04:57 Cold calls, sales culture and the IPO rollercoaster
09:01 What intense urgency actually looked like in practice
13:52 The doctor visit that broke his faith in traditional medicine
15:41 Discovering a performance protocol used by Olympic athletes
17:41 Buying the IP and starting Bioniq from scratch
19:23 Going all-in on the Bioniq brand
21:22 Hustling to 1,000 customers without a website
23:34 Why early partnerships mattered more than marketing
25:40 Realising a hustle-only model wouldn’t scale
27:14 Cracking different countries’ go-to-market strategies
28:28 Raising the first funding round with pure conviction
31:46 Almost walking away to take a big corporate job
35:22 How Cristiano Ronaldo became a surprise customer
37:06 Turning Ronaldo from user to investor
38:56 5-10x growth and the risk of over-partnering
40:29 Wasting time chasing logos and too many verticals
43:08 Returning to simplicity with two core products
45:41 Future plans: acquisitions and a Bioniq-powered clinic

→ Follow Thomas & Open Equity
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomascornwall/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/open.equity/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@open.equity
Website: https://www.openequity.co.uk/

→ Follow Vadim
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vfedotov15/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vadim_bioniq/?hl=en
Website: https://www.bioniq.com/