Podcast

A Founder's Life:

Balancing Entrepreneurship, Family, Health, & Fun​

Podcast

A Founder's Life:

Balancing Entrepreneurship, Family, Health, & Fun​

The Real Cost of Overworking - Vova Fledman - S5 - E12

What happens when a technical founder realizes that building software is easy but building a business is not?

In this episode, Vova Feldman, Founder & CEO of Freemius, shares how turning a side project into a SaaS company revealed the hidden complexity of selling software globally. We talk about burnout, family, health, prioritization, and why calm, balance, and intuition matter more than constant hustle.

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Guest Info

Vova Feldman is a serial entrepreneur, full-stack developer, and SaaS founder who has spent his life turning complex ideas into practical, scalable products. A builder at heart, Vova has been coding professionally since the age of 14 and brings a rare blend of technical depth, discipline, and entrepreneurial intuition to everything he creates.

Before entering tech, Vova was a professional swimmer for seven years, where he learned the fundamentals of hard work, consistency, and mental resilience, traits that later shaped his approach to startups and leadership. During high school, he worked as a developer at a local startup and co-founded a company that participated in the Israeli Junior Achievement program, marking his first steps into entrepreneurship.

Vova went on to study at Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Israel’s top engineering university, where he specialized in Distributed Systems and Artificial Intelligence. He earned a BSc in Computer Science and a BA in Mathematics, graduating cum laude. While serving in the army, he co-founded SircleIt, a social Q&A platform leveraging social graphs, and later founded RatingWidget.com, a Ratings-as-a-Service platform that grew to over 30,000 registered users in its first six months.

Following the challenges of early ventures, Vova and his co-founder launched Senexx, an enterprise knowledge-management platform powered by NLP and machine learning. The company was accepted into Techstars Boston and UpWest Labs, where the team transformed Senexx from an early concept into a disruptive, enterprise-ready product.

Today, Vova is best known as the Founder & CEO of Freemius, a SaaS platform that helps software companies monetize, sell, and grow globally. His work reflects a thoughtful approach to entrepreneurship one that values clarity, balance, and sustainable growth over constant hustle.

Outside of work, Vova is a dedicated Capoeira practitioner, enjoys psytrance music, and can often be found coding alongside his two cats. He believes excellence is built through curiosity, discipline, and calm execution and that building a great company should never come at the cost of a meaningful life.

Show Notes

About this Episode

What happens when a technical founder realizes that building software is easy but building a business is not?

In this episode, Vova Feldman, Founder & CEO of Freemius, shares how turning a side project into a SaaS company revealed the hidden complexity of selling software globally. We talk about burnout, family, health, prioritization, and why calm, balance, and intuition matter more than constant hustle.

Highlights

Early Career: Developer with a background in computer science and math.

Big Challenge: Turning software into a real business.

Turning Point: Discovering the hidden complexity of SaaS monetization.

Personal Growth: Learning to prioritize family, health, and focus.

Business Success: Building Freemius to empower indie developers globally.

Future Vision: Helping founders ship faster without sacrificing their lives.

Resources

👤 Connect with Today’s Guest – Vova Feldman
Company: Freemius
Website: https://freemius.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimir-feldman/
X (Twitter): https://x.com/vovafeldman
YouTube: Captain Vova

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