Author: Oliver Eidel

  • How I Built a Bootstrapped Consulting Company: From Zero To 60k€ Revenue

    I’m part of a few incubators where I mingle with future startup founders and pretend to have knowledge on how to build a startup. Generally speaking, I perceive myself as being relatively clueless, but then again, when the founders ask me some questions, I briefly think that I actually have something useful to share. One…

  • Don’t Take VC Funding – It Will Destroy Your Company

    I’ve talked to quite a few people who were considering founding their own startups. Many of them were quite inexperienced regarding, well, everything, as they were either fresh out of University or currently in a day job which was completely unrelated to startups, the economy and broader reality (mostly doctors). All of them tell me…

  • Six Years of Back Pain, Episode 1: Mouse Shoulder

    This is episode 1 of my medical mystery. As all medical mysteries, it led me to physiotherapists and doctors – but, in contrast to most medical mysteries, it also led me to stuff my scrotum into a leather-lined pouch. And I also ended up shooting gut bacteria into various cavities of my body. But let’s…

  • From Two to Three

    In 2020, I founded a company called OpenRegulatory. At that time – the height of the pandemic, with low interest rates and near-unlimited funding – most startups were rocket ships – VC-funded, growth-oriented and, most notably, not profitable. I wanted OpenRegulatory to be different – bootstrapped by me, small, profitable – more like a tuk-tuk. Now, while you’re chuckling,…

  • From Clojure to Ruby

    Back in 2017, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I got my first coding job, I was super excited about Clojure. And what’s there not to be excited about? It’s super fast, it’s concise, and it’s a lisp. But now I’m coding in Ruby. Why? Superficially, Ruby and Clojure are similar (bear with me): They’re…

  • From One to Two

    In his book Zero to One, Peter Thiel writes: It’s easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act…

  • Why I’m Publishing My Consulting Templates For Free (and Launching My Startup)

    In the beginning of 2020, I left my job at Vara, where I worked as a Software Engineer, Soccer Mom and Regulatory Affairs Person. I didn’t really know what to do next. While I enjoyed the Coding and Soccer Mom Duties, one thing was for sure: No more regulatory work, ever. Fast-forward one year. I spent the year…

  • Regulation Is Killing Medical Software Innovation

    I’m back from cryosleep. After leaving Merantix Healthcare 7 months ago I haven’t been writing much. I took the summer off to finish my pilot’s license and to try out a few things on the side. One of them was doing regulatory consulting for medical software startups. Remember: At Merantix Healthcare (now: Vara), we managed to pass…

  • Pioneers vs. Process People

    Today is my last day at Merantix Healthcare. While I am very sad to leave behind a stellar team which I helped build, it’s the right thing for me to do. Why? At any company, there are multiple projects going on: Developing a product, getting regulatory approval, recruiting for a team.. you get it. Whatever…

  • Become a Full-Stack Person

    Let’s look at how most software is developed. I’m not talking about those shiny SaaS products like Slack. Those were built for developers, by other developers. No, I’m talking about the large underwater iceberg of boring software running enterprises, governments, hospitals and nuclear reactors. Real-world software. Software outside the Silicon Valley tech bubble. How does any such…