Fabio Romagnoli

The through-line

Everything Fabio Romagnoli says circles back to a single test: are you exposed to the same risk you are asking someone else to carry? It shows up in the design of Tunity, a marketing agency that takes equity stakes in the companies it works for rather than only billing fees, on the reasoning that "We will put our money where mouth is. Want dat wordt altijd gezegd op marketeers: kunnen het goed uitleggen, maar zou je dat ook zelf doen? Ja, we doen het ook zelf." [1] It shows up in how he talks about his own team, who share in profits and therefore behave like owners in hiring [1]. And it shows up in his view of acquisitions, where outsourcing the thinking to an advisor makes you a passenger in your own deal [2].

The second thread is a steady demolition of the founder mythology he grew up on. The American garage stories he consumed as a kid left out the investors, the mentors and the circumstances [1], and having bootstrapped his way through roughly 25 side projects to Innocoder and then Tunity, his advice to young people is the opposite of his own biography: don't bootstrap, and don't start unless the thing is genuinely innovative [1]. What has shifted over time is his relationship to discomfort. He now treats external pressure, whether from investors, a shareholder agreement or a training course, as the mechanism that makes learning happen at all [1][2].

On putting your own money where your mouth is

The equity model is a direct answer to a client demand he found unbalanced. When no-cure-no-pay clients wanted him paid only on results, he pushed back on the asymmetry: a supplier who carries the downside should also carry the upside, and Tunity now actually operates on that logic [1]. The differentiator is stated plainly: "De meeste marketingbureaus roeren alleen uit voor een klant, maar wij ons voor ons eigen geld ook." [1] The claim is not that marketers can explain things well, which he takes as given, but that they will do it with their own capital at stake [1].

He holds the resulting portfolio to an external standard rather than an internal one, benchmarking participation returns against ETFs at roughly 8% historically and private equity at 11 to 15%, and claiming to have consistently beaten both [1]. The hard-won correction to the model concerns endings rather than beginnings: the early participation deals had no planned exit, and the lesson is to negotiate exit terms at the start, because at the beginning everything is possible and four years later maybe not anymore [1].

On whether to start at all

He is unsentimental about the arithmetic of his own path. Counted per hour, the early years paid bitterly little, and he says so directly: "Als het per uur tel, was het bitter weinig. Ik leert heel veel door dat te doen. Ik zou het wel niet aanraden als er jonge mensen naar de podcast kijken." [1] Financially he would have been better off taking a job [1]. The filter he offers instead of encouragement is a single question, asked before anything else: "Is het innovatief? Is het nee? Niet starten." [1] He is equally blunt about the odds and the stakes involved: "Startup is a fuck-up, en zeker met zoveel geld dat wij dit gaan doen." [1]

On discomfort as the learning mechanism

Starting Tunity with investors meant professionalising from day one, with an NV structure, a shareholder agreement and a board of directors, and the discomfort of that scaffolding is exactly what accelerated his learning, on the principle that in comfort you learn the slowest [1]. The same instinct drives his argument for acquiring skills before you need them. He reframes the price of training entirely: "Ik had altijd gedacht van kijk, zo'n cursus dat is veel geld, dat is duur, maar eigenlijk moet je vragen wat kost om het niet te doen." [2] Over a career the cost of a missing capability could be anything from €1,000 to €10 million [2].

On being always ready for an acquisition

His core claim about M&A is that readiness is not optional and not schedulable: "Eigenlijk ben je altijd klaar voor een overname." [2] A consolidation wave in your sector or a target crossing your path does not wait for you to start learning, so the strategy exercises belong in the diary now [2]. Leaning only on external advisors makes you slow, and slow loses deals; when he had to wait for an advisor who had other work on, kapers op de kust took the opportunity, something that happened to him personally [2]. He is not arguing that advisors are unnecessary, only that you cannot be ignorant of the map: "Je gaat ook niet vliegen zonder piloot, hè. Het is altijd goed dat je wel weet wat je moet doen, waar de nooduitgangen zijn." [2]

The urgency, he notes, sits with the seller once they have decided to sell, so a buyer whose lack of knowledge makes them the bottleneck can miss the deal of their life [2]. Structure buys speed: he believes a negotiation that ran a year of talks could have been halved with a proper screening template [2]. And the knowledge is not only for buyers. Entrepreneurs who intend to be acquired need it just as much, because understanding the process is inseparable from running the company and landing the right terms [2]. The permanence of the outcome is what raises the stakes: "Daarna ben je met elkaar getrouwd en het zou erg zijn als je dan iets gemist hebt omdat je de kennis niet had." [2]

On sole founding and a sharp vision

Becoming sole founder after Covid is something he frames as a trade rather than a loss: "Ik ben misschien mijn noten verloren, maar ik heb 20 man erbij gekregen die eigenlijk dezelfde vibe geven." [1] It let him redesign the company without compromise and hire purely on cultural fit, and the people brought in during those weeks are still there [1]. His objection to shared vision-setting is specific and cultural: a Belgian consensus-driven vision made for everyone leaves nobody genuinely satisfied or dissatisfied, whereas a sole founder can build something sharper aimed at a specific kind of person [1].

On sharing profits and who does the hiring

Profit sharing changes who guards the gate. Because the team shares in the profits, employees run the second interview, and they are stricter than he is, for the straightforward reason that it is their money being shared [1]. The same collective framing covers the downside as well as the upside, which he sums up as "Gedeelde smart is halve smart." [1] Asked about winding down, he sees no fixed endpoint while the work stays enjoyable: "Er zijn presidentskandidaten die op de 79ste nog een land willen leiden. Dus als het zo fijn blijft als vandaag, mag het ook zo blijven doorgaan." [1]

Takeaways

• If a client asks you to be paid only on results, treat it as asymmetric unless you also get equity upside; a supplier carrying downside should carry upside too [1].
• Negotiate exit terms at the start of a participation deal, because at the beginning everything is possible and four years later it may not be [1].
• Benchmark your own investments against outside alternatives, roughly 8% for ETFs and 11 to 15% for private equity, rather than against internal expectations [1].
• Apply one filter before starting anything: "Is het innovatief? Is het nee? Niet starten." [1]
• Do not bootstrap and do not romanticise garage startups; the biographies leave out the investors and mentors, and a job would have paid better in the early years [1].
• Learn acquisition mechanics before a target appears, and price the training by what it costs not to do it, potentially anywhere from €1,000 to €10 million over a career [2].
• Use a structured screening template; it can halve a negotiation that would otherwise drag on for a year [2].
• Let the team that shares in profits run the second interview; they screen harder than the founder because the money is theirs [1].