Uplift Founders

We uplift great founders to extraordinary. Unlocking the hidden 10% to scale faster.

Co-Founder 

Partners in Clime

Backing green tech founders by providing capital and mentoring.

Founding Partner

Till Augner

My holding. 

Co-founded
🚀 Uplift Founders
🐻‍❄️ Partners in Clime 

Investments
🚢 Nautica Technologies
🥛 senara.bio
🌱 arkeon.bio
🔋 aampere

Founder

Aampere

Advisor & Coach

Steinbeis School of International Business and Entrepreneurship (SIBE)

Teaching Entrepreneurship

Digital Business School an der HfWU

Teaching Digital Business Models

Junto

Venture Development

SportHacks

RegioHelden GmbH

Entrepreneur in Residence

Mercedes-Benz AG

International Product Manager

Decoding founder psychology.
Obsessed with how founders think, feel, decide, and lead. 
Sharing lessons from 1:1 work with 157 high-growth founders.

Sitting at the airport, heading back to Cape Town after 4 years, I wrote down one essential learning in my journal:

I’m terrible at predicting the future.

4 years ago, I lived there for 6 months.

And I told myself…

- I’ll come back every year.
- I’ll become a solopreneur.
- I’ll start the digital nomad lifestyle.

This Monday, sitting at the airport…

- I haven’t been there in 4 years.
- I co-founded two companies with co-founders.
- I settled into my dream flat in Stuttgart.

So much for my “plans.”

Psychology has a few explanations for this:

→ Planning fallacy:
we underestimate time and effort.

→ Optimism bias:
we assume things will go way better than they usually do.

→ Projection bias:
we think our future self will want what our current self wants.

→ End-of-history illusion:
we believe we’ve changed a lot up to now, but won’t change much in the future.

So yeah… we’re pretty bad at predicting what’s next.

And in startups, that effect is multiplied:
more uncertainty, more change, more moving parts.

What I’ve learned for myself and in my work with founders:

1/ Planning is there to get me excited about an outcome.

2/ I’ve stopped over-engineering long-term plans.

3/ I try to make decisions that keep options open, not locked in.

4/ I remind myself that today’s clarity will probably look naive in hindsight.

5/ I treat “plans” less like promises, more like hypotheses I’ll keep testing.

Today, I’m sitting in a coffee shop I used to visit almost every day.
I feel so different now. I can’t even explain it. No plan ever included that feeling.

What’s your take on planning in life and in business?

PS: Anyone in Cape Town?

Co-Founder at Uplift Founders | Founding Partner at Partners in Clime

I coached a founder for 1.5 years. He raised 8 figures. Became a father. Solved huge conflicts. Rode the rollercoaster and came through stronger.

When I asked what made the biggest difference, he said:

“I realized I’m the Chief Energy Officer. It’s part of the job. It’s my responsibility.”

The common limiting belief is:

“Taking care of energy means work-life balance. But I need to hustle. It has to be draining. It’s supposed to feel hard.”

That belief comes from misleading comparisons:

Founders look at shiny founders hustling, crushing it, riding momentum. 

From the outside, it looks like a nonstop grind in the office.

But the best founders I’ve ever observed?

- They operate in their zone of genius.
- They have strict energy rituals. 
- They protect their time. 
- Gym. Nutrition. Sleep. 
- Some even go full biohacker.

...and they don’t compare a lot. They focus on winning.

So at the beginning of our work, I push founders to raise energy awareness and stop comparing.

Not to slow down. Not to work less.

But to learn what drains them, what fuels them, and how to design weeks for high performance.

Professional athletes treat this as part of the job.

Why shouldn’t founder CEOs? 

The shift starts with the limiting belief. Then tactics follow.

Start with tactics alone and you’ll sabotage yourself sooner or later.

And why energy matters: the best founders radiate energy to every stakeholder.

That’s how they attract A+ talent, funding, and customers.

It’s wild how much I love this part of building with a co-founder. Sharing the same obsession. Spotting something new. And you can’t wait to tell the other.

EVERY DAY Yannick and I are ping-ponging voice messages on Slack. 

Hyped about what we just learned in a founder session.

Yesterday, he sent me this:

“Man, that founder audit just cracked a big blind spot for this team. I keep seeing the same three patterns show up.”

This is what drives us. (sometimes too much 😅)

We’re obsessed with making the inner game of entrepreneurship tangible and measurable.

That meant doing things that don’t scale for a loooong time.

- 2.5 years.
- More than a thousand 1:1 sessions.
- Tracking real-world insights.
- Spotting patterns in how founders grow or get stuck.

→ Where they sabotage themselves.
→ Where they plateau.
→ What they need to unlock to scale faster.

Now we’re turning this into something every founder can use.

The Founder Audit.

Try it yourself → https://lnkd.in/eunDv3FC

It’s already shifting how founders see themselves.

And we’re just getting started.

This is only 10% of our vision.

I built a morning routine with a founder that needs no willpower. It tripled his clarity and productivity. Now I use it myself every day.

Have an imaginary call with your imaginary assistant while walking in nature.

1/ 30-minute walk outside
2/ Open Granola (voice note app)
3/ Start a note and put the phone in your pocket
4/ No structure. Just talk.
5/ Structure the transcript later with AI at the desk

I made this post that way.
And two more in 30 minutes.

My screen time dropped.
My thinking got sharper.

A neuroscientist would say
-  Choosing sunlight/movement over screens balances dopamine early in the day
- Walking activates the prefrontal cortex, your "execution brain"
- Talking out loud engages auditory loops that boost clarity and memory

I’ve seen hundreds of founder calendars up close.
I’ve asked hundreds what truly calms them down.
The answer is almost always the same "walking in nature".

So why not combine it with meetings or note taking.

Most founders obsess over time management.
The best ones learn nervous system management.

“Are you really working tomorrow? It's a public holiday.” 
Yes… I usually forget it’s a public holiday (for the past 8 years)

Like today. 

Today, my calendar was open.
3 founder sessions booked.
I texted them to check if they forgot too.
All said yes, but they still wanted to use the time.

That’s the life of a founder.

Also, yesterday I had an intro call with a co-founder team.
They were looking for a coach and had already spoken to many others.

I asked:
“What would your dream support look like?”

Their answer:
“Someone who understands our life. That you can’t just take time off when it’s intense.”

I get it.

If you feel like you need to pause, but the business won’t let you…

Here's a little experiment. 

Use Parkinson’s Law:
→ Work expands to fill the time you give it.

- Challenge every recurring meeting.
- Cut as many as you can by 10–15 minutes.

And here’s one thing I learned from Dr. med. Lutz Graumann.

As a substitute, insert micro-breaks into your calendar.
Walk. Breathe. Coffee. Whatever works for you. 

Tiny resets keep your nervous system in the game.

So…who else is working today on this public “holiday”?

I’ve given our “Founder Psychology while Fundraising” keynote more than 10 times to hundreds of founders this year. One concept always clicks:

Your burn rate isn’t just financial.

You also have 3 inner-game burn rates:

1/ Energy burn
Fuel drains faster than you can recharge.

2/ Resilience burn
Pressure makes emotions run high and resilience thin.

3/ Conviction burn
Rejections slowly kill long-term belief.

(This applies to every founder, whether bootstrapping or fundraising.)

It starts with awareness.
Then tactics extend the runway.

Here’s a menu of what we learned works for founders:

1/ Energy runway
- Prioritizing sleep
- Measuring HRV
- Implementing micro-breaks
- Evaluating performance zones
- Setting clear boundaries

2/ Resilience runway
- Learning to process emotions
- Training “low attachment, high commitment”

3/ Conviction runway
- Training “face the facts, feed the belief”
- Filtering feedback 
- Routines to counteract negativity bias

If your cash runway was at 2 months, you’d act fast.
Why treat your energy, resilience, and conviction differently?

So, where’s your inner runway right now on a scale from 1–10?

PS: Let me know if you want the full slide deck

Yesterday I walked on Seapoint Promenade and reflected on a session with a founder. I realized what the main job of a founder really is.

Creating, visualizing, and communicating momentum and traction.

→ Momentum is internal.
It’s the psychological and emotional energy that builds when you feel progress.
It’s what makes you wake up motivated and act without forcing yourself.

→ Traction is external.
It’s the visible evidence that things are actually moving (users, revenue, product growth, engagement). It’s what you can measure and show.

In short:

Momentum = how it feels to move forward.
Traction = what proves you are moving forward.

In psychology, momentum is the self-reinforcing feeling of progress.

It’s what happens when your brain links:

Effort → Evidence → Emotion → More Effort

You do something.
You see progress.
You feel good.
You act again.

That loop strengthens motivation, focus, and confidence.
It’s powered by dopamine = your brain’s “progress chemical.”

When founders feel stuck or burned out, it’s rarely from working too hard.
It’s from working hard without momentum or traction.

How to work on it:

1. Create momentum.
End each day with one clear win.
Ask: What made progress today that makes everything else easier or obsolete?
That reflection reinforces the internal loop.

2. Visualize momentum.
Track one key metric.
Plot it on a simple graph.
Zoom out.
See the curve that your brain forgets on bad days.
Put dashboards in the office. Review them in meetings.

3. Communicate momentum.
Make progress visible for everyone.
Send Slack notifications for every new customer or cash entry.
Celebrate small wins publicly and turn private effort into shared belief.

Momentum always starts small, but when it builds, it pulls the whole organization forward.

What’s one way you’ll create, visualize, or communicate momentum this week?

Last week. 6 pm. I’d had a shitty, unproductive day. By 8 pm, I was sitting at my desk in deep flow. Hyperfocused, still in running shorts, sweating.

The best founders I know have days like this.

What separates them isn’t mindset quotes.

It’s the ability to switch their state.

The simplest switch for me: 

Go for a run. 

Even when everything in me wanted to stay stuck or solve it in front of the screen.

And here’s why movement works neurologically:

1/ It reduces stress hormones like cortisol and norepinephrine, so the nervous system calms down.

2/ It increases dopamine and endorphins, which boost motivation and focus.

3/ It shifts brain activity from high beta (overthinking) to alpha and theta, where creativity happens.

4/ It releases nitric oxide, which literally increases blood flow to the brain.

5/ It helps trigger transient hypofrontality: parts of the prefrontal cortex go quiet, your inner critic shuts up, and ideas connect freely.

6/ And when you stop, serotonin rises. That’s why you feel clear and grounded afterward.

After 8 km ideas and clarity came in. I ran home so I could write it down. By the time I got back, I wasn’t tired. I was ready. 

I worked 2.5 hours straight in total flow.

Same brain. Different state.

And you know what...in my work with founders, the biggest shift begins even earlier: 

Breaking the belief that doing something physical during the day is lazy or “non-productive.” It's the opposite. 

PS: I’m even thinking about how I could record my thoughts with Wispr Flow while running.

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