Ben Borodach On Raising $80 Million To Build An AI-Driven Tax Platform To Enable Users To Plan And Manage Their Taxes Throughout The Year

Some founders are shaped by success. But Ben Borodach’s journey is forged by the lessons of failure, reflection, and the relentless pursuit of doing it better the second time around. The co-founder and CEO of april, he learned extensively from an early stumble.

april has secured funding from top-tier investors like QED Investors, Treasury, and Team8.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Ben Borodach’s early startup failure became the foundation for a more disciplined, world-class approach to building april.
• A decade inside Deloitte gave Ben rare mastery of enterprise systems, regulation, and financial-services complexity.
• Team8 taught him to think in decades, not months, and to de-risk massive infrastructure challenges step-by-step.
• april was built to reinvent the entire U.S. tax experience by embedding real-time tax intelligence into financial platforms.
• Ben and co-founder Daniel formed a values-aligned partnership grounded in shared “manifestos” and complementary strengths.
• april’s traction proved the power of long-term conviction, growing from zero to millions in revenue despite market swings.
• Ben now prioritizes balance, efficiency, and well-being, urging founders not to be so hard on themselves as they build.

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About Ben Borodach:

Ben Borodach has spent his career working at the intersection of finance and technology. He helped scale Team8 Group into a multi-hundred million AUM fund, and initiated and helped sell several FinTech companies to PayPal and Bitsight, among others.

During his tenure at Team8, Ben also spearheaded the firm’s strategy arm and its US office as well as launched an award-winning cyber ETF and PhD program. He has also been an advisor and contributor to the World Economic Forum on issues relating to central bank digital currencies.

Prior to joining Team8, Ben was a FinTech strategist at Deloitte Consulting, where he advised the largest US banks and insurers on their business, technology, M&A and venture strategies.

Most recently, Ben co-founded april to bring more equity to the tax experience for all Americans. The company’s vision is to democratize access to the tax code, enabling any company to develop and incorporate tax features and filing into their application.

Ben graduated from NYU with a degree in Economics and Business with Dean’s List and Presidential Honors Scholar distinctions.

Connect with Ben Borodach::

• LinkedIn
• Crunchbase
• RocketReach
• Zoominfo

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty, hello everyone, and welcome to the DealMaker Show. So today we have ah another guest, you know, another guest that, team again, you know, quite an inspiring conversation that we have in front of us. We’re going to be talking about the good stuff of the building, the scaling, the financing.

Alejandro Cremades: You know, when things go well, when things go not so well, you know, so we’re going to be talking. I always say that you either succeed or you learn. So there’s going to be quite a few lessons from, ah you know, the previous venture that he did. But right now, his current venture is a rocket ship. So again, you know, we’re going to learn about the founding story,

Alejandro Cremades: you know, becoming co-founders with his co-founder, raising $80 million, bucks I mean, you name it. but So brace yourself for quite the conversation. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Ben Borodak. Welcome to the show.

Ben Borodach: Thank you so much for having me, I don’t remember too much of that.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born in the Bronx, but raised in New Jersey. Give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you?

Ben Borodach: it was It was more known as Riverdale, I guess, which is technically in the in the Bronx. And my parents moved to North Jersey when I was fairly young. I’m the oldest of four siblings, so it was a pretty crazy time.

Ben Borodach: um Had two siblings, two years, ah both sequentially after me, so it was already always a pretty rambunctious time growing up.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing. And how did you get into like the whole thing of computers, problem solving? I mean, was that something that you developed while growing up or or where did that spark from?

Ben Borodach: I was raised by two lawyers, so I always thought that I was probably going to be a lawyer because that’s what I think other lawyers sort of instill upon you. And yeah at some point in my time at and NYU, I met this professor named Larry Linehan, who was a venture capitalist at First Mark Capital, which was, I think at the time, sort of one of the still probably one of the preeminent firms specifically headquartered out of New York. and he taught a class in the business school called Ready, Fire, Aim, and it was all about bill build first and ask questions later.

Ben Borodach: And so I took that class and won an astounding $12,500 as an investment, which was his salary, I guess, from from the NYU business school and sort of parallel tracked my first company while attending university.

Ben Borodach: So that’s kind of how I got my start.

Alejandro Cremades: I mean, I i i i remember ah Larry from back in the day. I mean, the guy was always like super well-dressed from head to toes. And he was saying that was something that i remember from Larry. That’s for sure.

Ben Borodach: I don’t think I’ve ever met a venture capitalist that dresses as well as Larry, that’s for sure.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing. anything so So obviously, you know, like during this time is when you got started, as you were alluding to the first company. So that was called Publish. So give us give us some, you know, ah highlights on on perhaps what were the, you know, sequences of events there for you to get going with the company? You know how it all happened with FirstMark also backing you guys on what you were doing and then also, you know, what happened, you know, with the with with the with the outcome of the company.

Ben Borodach: Yeah, so we were very young. We were sophomores at NYU and Rutgers, where my co-founder was at the time. And we had this idea idea we had been doing marketing marketing and website consulting for small businesses. So we started to learn about building websites and sort of what businesses need to drive leads.

Ben Borodach: And this was sort of back in 2010, 2011, when CRMs were really blowing up HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo and others. And we realized there was sort of a disconnect between the CRM and the content that was on the website.

Ben Borodach: And so the idea behind the company was to basically dynamically render content mostly within the B2B realm. So think webinars, eBooks, podcasts. other other white papers and and more dynamically serve up the content ah you know, to the to the customer base. I think we would have been super successful had to be stuck with it. So we raised about a quarter million dollars, which back then was actually a seed round.

Ben Borodach: ah The New York Angels wanted to put more money into the company and we were kind of running this out of our college dorm rooms while telling our parents that we were sort of getting our degree, which we all eventually did get. and I think it was just a classic story story of making way too many first time mistakes. We didn’t really understand how to go from an MVP to a production scale product. We didn’t fully understand ah even what the enterprise contracting process would look like. So we finally got a buyer.

Ben Borodach: um i think it may have been someone on the marketing team at Trinet or one of the other POs that was interested in this. And then they were like, okay, send me a contract. And we were sort of just not even exactly sure how to proceed. And so I think what it really inspired me you know with, and ultimately what we decided to do is just not take on more capital. So we ran it kind of on ah out of the dorm room for another year and eventually realized probably we didn’t have what it took at that point. And so I think it gave me ah couple of really important lessons. One is,

Ben Borodach: how hard it was ah to build a successful startup company. And it actually took me about 10 years until I was willing to try it again because I had to go learn everything I found out that I didn’t know. um And the second thing is how much I loved building and scaling technology.

Ben Borodach: And so from there, I went to Deloitte Consulting, which was probably not the classical thing that a tech entrepreneur would do, but it gave me unbelievable access ah to the largest financial executives in the world, the largest insurance companies and payments companies, and and sort of the problems that they were facing on the one hand, and also sort of the the the challenges that they had in operationalizing those. And so it really gave me a masterclass in how business is run at the highest level within within financial services. And I became the go-to person at Deloitte for answering challenging innovation questions um you know across insurance, wealth management, and banking. And so it allowed me to get sort of an unparalleled access and and also develop a real expertise within financial services.

Alejandro Cremades: But, you know, that’s not easy you know for you to come to that conclusion that that you need to learn um certain things because you don’t know what you don’t know. So anyone in your position, as they say, you know, once an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur, you would have just like been like, OK, you know, I fell on this one.

Alejandro Cremades: You know, that that was painful, but, you know, I’ll get back and do it again. But in this case, you know, you were very strategic. You were like, you know what? I may do it again, but before I need to learn things that I don’t know. So what do you think gave you access to really understand that your path, you know, needed to pause as an entrepreneur for a bit until you were ready to do it again?

Ben Borodach: Yeah, it’s it’s it’s a great question. That was kind of on the back of everybody thought they were going to be Mark Zuckerberg or Evan Spiegel from Snapchat. I think, first of all, a recognition that I loved complex problems and probably my calling was more enterprise problems. I think if I was more interested in consumer or or sort of direct-to-consumer apps, it would have probably changed what I had done. I probably would have gone to maybe another startup and been a product manager or something like that. um But I think you know being being an entrepreneur is the is the ultimate exercise in in humility. I think, yes, it’s true, we sometimes put these people on ah pedestals, especially when they’re extremely successful or in moments where they have extreme success. But I think on the way to that success, you have to remember that there was tons and tons of failure and

Ben Borodach: The only way that they were able to get to that point was by digesting that, reflecting, pivoting, and moving forward. Yes, we all have to move forward, but if you don’t recognize that you failed, there’s no way that you’ll learn to succeed the second time. and so i think you know I just diagnosed it. I’m a systems thinker, and I said, look, I don’t understand how enterprise sales processes work. I don’t understand enterprise requirements.

Ben Borodach: um I don’t necessarily even understand how to build relationships with enterprise buyers. And so I needed to go to a place ah that would teach me those things. And it turned out management consulting actually is a great place to go. And I’m very thankful for my time at Deloitte. They really gave me a lot and I benefited a lot for the way that they invest and in their young professionals.

Alejandro Cremades: So then after the Lloyd Team 8, which i gave you a little bit more of that the startup-y vibe. So what happened with Team 8? Because that was the most immediate, I would say, chapter before being like, hey, I’m ready for for the next day you know entrepreneurial initiative.

Ben Borodach: Yeah, and you know you say sometimes you create your own luck. I think teammate was somewhat a bit of circumstance, somewhat somewhat a bit of luck. Those were group of individuals that had worked at the intelligence agencies at the highest levels.

Ben Borodach: um I worked with an individual named Nadav, and his whole thesis was that fixing cybersecurity was broken and that the the way to change it was not just more venture capital, but it was actually bringing together the largest platforms in the world like bank ah like Microsoft and Cisco and Citibank ah that all became investors, a platform ah that allowed entrepreneurs to think beyond just building for the next six to 18 months, talent that could solve these very difficult technical challenges.

Ben Borodach: um and obviously a robust go-to-market platform. And so I joined him as chief of staff um and I eventually ended up leading corporate strategy for the group. We we went from about 40 million AUM m and one fund when I joined them to a fund family of four to five funds and about a billion dollars under management. And so I was involved in many different things over my ah four years there.

Ben Borodach: um and And so, you know, for me, I was never that passionate about cybersecurity. I always kind of believed that If someone wanted to hack something, they they could. And so it was more about slowing people down.

Ben Borodach: um And of course, many of the largest organizations are really dealing with tons and tons of patchwork. It is complex, which I did find inspiring, but I really wanted to unlock the business productivity, not play offense and defense with the bad guys. um but But what was attractive to me about it was really two things.

Ben Borodach: One was thinking about a huge scale. Nadav was a general. we were you know Admiral Rogers, who ran the and NSA, became an operating partner there. We worked with you know the Fortune 500.

Ben Borodach: Doug McMillan from Walmart would regularly spend time in our office.

Ben Borodach: And so you just got to see things from the from the widest, biggest scale possible. And so it really was a landscape um and ah and a breing and ah and a breeding ground to just think big. And so when you think about what we’re doing today in April, we’re thinking about the totality of the tax experience for 170 million American households and 32 million small businesses that are paying $3 trillion dollars a year ah you know in taxes. And so we want to optimize that. That’s a very big problem.

Ben Borodach: And we needed to build the first national tax engine in 20 years. And so for us, I think it was, or for me at least, it was kind of a superpower to think big. And the second one is is is how do you do it? Because at that time,

Ben Borodach: everything coming out of Silicon Valley and a lot of the startups was sort of, you know, that classical build an MVP, iterate, and kind of some of what we were talking about at Team 8 is that doesn’t always work. You can’t iterate on a Fortune 500 IT t infrastructure. Like, that’s not a thing. They’re not going to let you crash and break things. And so I think for me, it was it was ah it was a different build model. it was being able to um build more thoughtfully and have a time horizon that didn’t think maybe in six to 12 month increments, but think maybe more in years, but then break things into smaller components and de-risk them. And so I think April is a good example of that.

Ben Borodach: It took us three years to build our national tax engine, but along the way, ah we were able to launch, you know, just with the IRS and a couple of states, then we rolled out more states and we were able to bring um other fintechs and organizations that were building on top of our infrastructure along with us for pilots and initial rollouts. And that allowed us to de-risk the model and de-risk the technology that we were building. So I credit a lot of the way that we built April, um you know, based on on on the time that I’d spent at Teammate.

Ben Borodach: And obviously I spun April out of Teammate. So they became an investor and now board member, and and I have a great relationship with them.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing. and And now, you know, in this case, how did you how did you find your co-founder? Because, I mean, co-founder relationships are the biggest thing decision that one you know makes. So how did you guys say, you know, really come across each other?

Ben Borodach: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think you know the first thing I’d say is what I was looking in a co-founder. So I tend to be more of the operationally minded, business oriented person. And I knew that to do what I wanted to do, I needed a technologist. So that was kind of one.

Ben Borodach: And then I think also from a worldview, I wanted someone that thought about the world in some ways similarly to myself. um in the sense of you know our our the the grit that would be required to take on a problem of this magnitude, ah someone that would work really hard, someone who is also a good person, um but also so and someone who could challenge me, um but also someone that complimented some of the things that I’m not as good at, both on a technical level, but also you know on a on a personal and professional one. And so I kind of had done, I this was sort of in COVID, and so I had had time to reflect on sort of who I was as a person.

Ben Borodach: I’d gotten married and had our first kid, so it kind of, you know, during those times you tend to be a little bit more introspective maybe. and um And so I was thinking a lot about what I wanted and then also how do you actually date, like how do you do co-founder dating?

Ben Borodach: um Right. That’s not exactly a you one thing is to work with a person and meet them and and realize that. But I didn’t sort of have that person that I’d worked with that I thought was going to be the right fit. And so actually, I did a matchmaking process that teammate helped me with. And I ended up meeting a couple of people um mainly through their network.

Ben Borodach: um that were that were great technologists. And I found Daniel, who at the time was CTO of Waze and Google Israel, very prolific data scientist and also a wonderful person. um And Daniel and I actually did ah sort of a self-inflicted matchmaking, which involved both meeting one another, both in person and ah you know, virtually, it was a little tough because it was COVID then. So a lot of it had to be virtual.

Ben Borodach: But I think the thing that sort of I’m most proud of when I reflect on the on the now four plus year partnership we have is we actually both wrote a pretty lengthy manifesto about what we both believed about the world and what needed to be true to make this venture successful.

Ben Borodach: And then we would edit ah one another’s writing until we got to a place that there was sort of either no more disagreements or agreements and and and sort of agreeing to to commit. And that’s how we’ve run the company ever since.

Alejandro Cremades: and And April, just so that the people that are listening get it, what ended up pay being April? What’s the business model and how do you guys make money?

Ben Borodach: Yeah, so the genesis of April is that tax, which is a very painful activity for Americans ah across the board to do, currently it’s siloed, it’s retrospective, it’s once a year. We think that ought to be done inside of existing finance apps that you’re already using. So your bank, your payroll company, your money management platform. And we built an amazing platform to embed tax and inside financial decisions ah by building the most connected tax software in the world.

Ben Borodach: So we sell our product, which is think of it as as a white label version of TurboTax is probably like the easiest kind of way to think about it. We sell that to the largest banking, wealth management, payroll platforms in the US market and provide them a wholesale enterprise platform ah to be able to launch their their their solutions on top of.

Alejandro Cremades: Now, for April, you guys have also raised some money. How much capital have you guys raised to date?

Ben Borodach: We’ve raised $80 million dollars across three rounds.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing. And what has been the experience? Because, I mean, obviously, you had raised before for your first day rodeo. And, you know, it was all about, like, also learning a lot. So based on all those lessons learned, what did you tell yourself that you were going to do differently when it came to raising money for April?

Ben Borodach: You know, I think the the biggest thing is you have to really set out an audacious vision and believe that you’re going to be able to make it happen.

Ben Borodach: I think entrepreneurship, especially one that involves venture capital, is a rule of exceptions. And all too often we try to sort of revert everybody to the mean. But the reality is that the things that work are the ones that are the exceptions. And so I think you have to be willing to take some leaps and you have to be able to enumerate those leaps. And so for us, there were a number of things that we said, look, we don’t know if this is going to work, but here’s why we believe we can make it work. And here’s how we’re going to know if it’s working.

Ben Borodach: And so, for example, when we said we’re going to do this, we went to the largest let’s say, custodian in the in the world. OK, and they said, great idea, guys, but I don’t think you can build this thing. Right. And so we realized, like, just building the tax engine was a huge technical and regulatory hurdle that we were going to have to get over.

Ben Borodach: No one’s done this and and and at the time more than than 10 years now, 15 plus years. um You have to go get your software and company approved in every U.S. state. um and And you only get one shot per year at doing it and then proving it.

Ben Borodach: And so not only did we have to go get the the regulatory approvals, but we had to prove to the market that this would work. Now we’ve done six figures of tax returns on our on our system across the country. And so I think we’ve proven it without a shadow of a doubt. But that was ah a difficult process. We couldn’t just show up to the market and go to ah you know a Fortune 10 bank and say, hey, guys, we built this. Will you use it?

Ben Borodach: They’re going to want to see a track record. They’re going to want to see, you know, acceptance rates, resolution rates, you know, a multi-year process. And so I think that was one thing.

Ben Borodach: The second thing was the model, because heretofore in the U.S. market, either you went to an accountant or you went to TurboTax and H&R Block. And so from a business model standpoint, there was also risk to prove ah that digital banks, payroll companies and the like would adopt these capabilities and be willing to pay us. And so over a period of three years, we were able to show that they would be willing to engage, that they would get value out of it. So for example, we were able to show that digital banks were getting more deposits on platforms.

Ben Borodach: ah Wealth management companies were having higher LTVs. Small business platforms were generating millions in fees. So we were able to show those things and we were also able to prove that they wouldn’t just refer those business to an accountant or or into it, but they would actually be willing to engage in more of a wholesale SaaS arrangement with us. And so that really took three years.

Ben Borodach: And when you look at our funding, we kind of raised $40 million dollars right at the height of the market. So it kind of came in a seed in Series A that we had done together. And our valuation was was pretty high um at the time. And now we had an acquisition offer that was even higher. And and it was you know sort of the end of the 2021 boom era. I think people sort of say we were one of the last sort of major off fintech rounds done before the gates closed at that point.

Ben Borodach: But then we went through a pretty tough period. um where according to our plan, we were just building. I mean, that’s what we told everybody that we were we were doing, but everybody in the market wanted, it was sort of a show me ah you know market. And so you had to come with big revenue numbers.

Ben Borodach: and And fortunately or unfortunately for us, that just wasn’t the way that we designed this plan. We said, we’re gonna de-risk this, we’re going to build, but the revenue is going to come later. And you know sure enough, we got to our first million-odd revenue, and the business has grown about 9x this year. And so we’re doing you know very, very well. But there were moments there where you know some of our most trusted ah shareholders and advisors you know were asking us tough questions. And I think eventually, um with them, we we built a plan that worked, and we were able to raise a very successful $40 million dollars Series B earlier this year led by q QED investors. But I think you know history is ah

Ben Borodach: is comforting on the one hand, but I think, you know, we don’t forget some of those tough moments that we had along the way for sure.

Alejandro Cremades: Thank you, Edie, with Nigel. You know, that’s an amazing ah team. So so well done. I guess in terms of fun two things that come to mind here is, one, how did you go about choosing your investors this time around? And two, how has it been to the experience for the first time of operating and and and leading a growth stage a company that you founded? Because the first time, you know, you really got stuck on the early stage. And now, you know, is where you’re getting to see like more of the full life cycle of a company.

Ben Borodach: Yeah, redemption, or at least on our path to redemption. I think, you know, the self-doubt is definitely a factor there, right? Like, can I do it? I think the thing for me is that, you know, different different parts of the journey require different things, right? And so actually some of the places that that are required early, like patience and a little bit of finesse, are actually not my strong suit sometimes. So I think I’m actually more suited as an entrepreneur to some of ah the middle and later parts of the journey. And so some of those parts really you know challenged me at the early stages to deal with the minus one to zero and the zero to one. I think now we’re kind of clearly beyond one.

Ben Borodach: not at seven to ten, but somewhere right on the way. And so, you know, I think for me, I actually feel very relieved ah kind of moving beyond some of those early stages because now I’m out of the gate and I’m dealing with a business that’s in market and competing every day to win market share. And that’s obviously as an entrepreneur, um you know, what I love and why I’m in the game. There’s sort of the inventive process.

Ben Borodach: Right. And so for me, Daniel is is kind of really the inventor. um and And I think that’s where the partnership really, you know, take shape because he’s really excels on taking things from minus one to zero and enjoys that part of the process. And so I try to, I try to be additive to that, but you know, that’s mostly his show. And I think that’s where we’ve really benefited by being, by being great partners.

Alejandro Cremades: Now, for obviously, you know, partners and getting partners, let’s say, on the investment side and getting market share from customers, also the employees, um all of those, at the end of the day, they’re betting on a vision, no, Ben, and and on the future that you’re living into.

Alejandro Cremades: So if you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of April is fully realized, what does that world look like?

Ben Borodach: Yeah, I mean, if you think about the fact that tax touches every US citizen and every business, and you think about the fact that for most individuals, it’s the largest single check they get in the year, for most households and businesses, it’s the largest or second largest expense that they have.

Ben Borodach: We’re literally talking about trillions of dollars. And today that is not optimized for most people and most businesses because they don’t have the visibility to make decisions throughout the year.

Ben Borodach: There’s not a person that has totality of their financial picture in mind, right? They’ve got something with an advisor, something with a banker, something with you know a tax preparer.

Ben Borodach: And so our view really of the whole market is that we’re moving towards consolidated software platforms that will serve individuals with software primarily, augmented in some cases with human assistance.

Ben Borodach: but that will be able to really recognize what that individual needs at any moment in time and optimize it on their behalf. And tax, we feel, is a huge opportunity and source of alpha. So an example is if you’re running um you know a secondary transaction for stock and you want to know how much stock should I sell or how much cash do I need to set aside, there’s not a good way ah you know to you know to to really explain that right now.

Ben Borodach: You have to get an accountant. You have to pay them a lot of money. It takes some time. It’s not necessarily what they do. ah By the time this podcast is but is is released, I believe we’ll have made a very large announcement you know of a use case in that category.

Ben Borodach: And so for us, it’s really about bending the curve on the one hand of how tax manifests itself and how decision making is presented to the customer where they’re actually getting more dollars back in their pocket.

Ben Borodach: It’s a way for these all in one platforms. And whether that’s wealth management being, you know, a family office in a box, small business platforms want to be a business in a box. So it iterates differently across the the ecosystem.

Ben Borodach: But tax is obviously a pillar of that proposition. And then third, I think tax is the most powerful data asset ah you know, that’s available. And so if I elect to do my taxes with you and I elect to share my data with you, which is a right that I have as a taxpayer, then in theory, you should already know everything about me and you should be serving up the next best thing for me. You should tell me, hey, this is what other people in your income bracket are doing. These are what other, ah you know, individuals that have the same profession as you are doing. Based on your family circumstance, here’s what you need to be thinking about. And this should already be happening for you in real time and on your behalf. Right. And so I think when we think about that agentic future or that sort of self-serve personalized future, we think that tax is a must have ah behind every financial services provider. So that’s the future we imagine is that tax is embedded everywhere and we’re the financial infrastructure powering it.

Alejandro Cremades: So talking about future here, let’s say shift to the past to the lens of reflection. You know, let’s say I was to um give you the opportunity of getting to a time machine and you arrive to the NYU campus and you’re entering there, you know, the class where that younger Ben is at, where he is thinking about starting a company and you’re able to give that younger Ben one piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why, given what you know now?

Ben Borodach: Don’t be so hard on yourself. um and I And I think that’s specific to me, but it’s probably specific to a lot of my peers also. I think I’ve beaten myself up over the years and been very hard. you know hard I’m my own toughest critic, right? And I actually lost a little bit of vision in my eye ah last year and had to kind of like sort of like reassess some things in terms of just like how I managed my own health and you know played for the long run. And so I think it’s just a reminder that if you’re, it’s like only the paranoid survive. If you’re already doing everything and you know you’re doing everything, then kind of you have nothing to worry about.

Ben Borodach: and And just make sure that you you enjoy enjoyed life and enjoy the process along the way.

Alejandro Cremades: And I think that’s such ah so’s an important thing because founders, especially at the ah on on their first business, they just go all in, you know, and they make so many sacrifices and especially on their health. I guess in this regard, you know, which is what you were alluding to, how do you think, you know, founders should be looking into this, looking into the real balance, looking into prioritize what matters? I mean, what have you learned, you know, in that that perhaps you can share with with folks that are listening right now?

Ben Borodach: Look, this is just you know my learning, and I think there’s a little bit of you know provocation going on on on X and some other platforms. But look, I think I work just as hard as any founder, if not more. I think most of my family and friends would say that I’m working most of the time. But I think what work is and how you prepare for work is a little bit different.

Ben Borodach: Or I look at it differently as I got older. I think when I was younger, that meant sitting in front of a computer for the most hours that I could until I literally passed out. And I think as I’ve gotten older, I look at it through the lens, maybe more akin to the way that a professional athlete would look, right?

Ben Borodach: Sometimes I’m playing the game. Sometimes I’m preparing to play the game. Sometimes I’m working on endurance. Sometimes I need to take a step back. And so now whether it’s my diet, my exercise, um my my space to think, my space to work, um and also doing things that are not necessarily…

Ben Borodach: work, um but maybe things that are sort of like in the middle, right? Recruiting, um meeting colleagues out of the office. And so I think you you have to look at at all of those things. And the balance is going to change based on where you’re at in your career, based on the type of business you’re building, based on your own strengths and weaknesses.

Ben Borodach: um But I think it’s clear that as I’ve advanced, I can do things with more efficiency than I was able to do, right? Something that used to take me a week, I now know how to do in an hour. ah Something that I wasn’t connection you know I didn’t have as as many connections early in my career. so you know So I would have to take a month to network. Maybe now that person’s a phone call away. you know And if you transition that all the way up to the greats like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, it’s tenfold. right Those guys probably could do in in five minutes what would maybe take me an hour or or a month. I I don’t know. so um I think that that constantly finding ways to maximize your efficiency um and get more more more punch for the for the time you spend is really important. I think you have to take a wider view than just like how many hours are you in the office and be realistic that that’s not always going to be the thing that’s most productive for you in business.

Alejandro Cremades: I love it. Ben, for the people that are listening that would love to reach out and say hi, what is the best way for them to do so?

Ben Borodach: My email is ben at getapril.com. Feel free to reach out.

Alejandro Cremades: My God, he easy enough. Well, Ben, thank you so much for being on the Dealmaker Show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.

Ben Borodach: Thank you so much for having me.

*****

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