One day I was making myself coffee, as always—calmly, enjoying a nice summer morning. Or maybe it was the afternoon. No, I’m sure it was after lunch. (This is me trying to sound like a writer—hello, Ivan Malkovych, don’t mind me.)
Anyway, sometime after lunch, a guy walked in. Young, but already a man. He even looked a bit like me. He said something along the lines of: “Yeah, yeah, I heard about you. Supposedly great coffee. Give me something good.” I did. And that is how we started to become friends.
At first, it was just small talk about this and that. As usual, I told him everything about the café—including the finances. And it was obvious, especially to him, that Fenster was a classic startup, already gaining momentum and with serious potential.
Around that same time, I had my first big day of sales. €600 in one day. Six hundred! Back then, my daily average was around €200–400. So €600 felt unreal. I remember thinking: If I could do €600 every day, I would be the happiest coffee entrepreneur in the world. And then it took me four more months to reach that level again.
He witnessed all of this. Saw it happening in real time. And then he started. Saying things like: “Give me a franchise, let me try, we can do this together.” The problem was, I had no idea how to build a franchise. I mean, I knew what it was, but I had no clue how to actually set one up. So I did not take him too seriously. Still, he even started looking for a space. That takes time, of course, during which we kept in touch.
Then one day, I came across an incredible space. Unreal. Huge. Massive windows. Two enormous rectangular rooms shaped like an L. Six-meter-high ceilings. In the center of the city. A dream. And the rent was shockingly low. The only problem was a large “key money” payment to secure the lease. Which I did not have. Nor did I have money to renovate it. But he did. So we started talking.
That is how the idea of a “big” Fenster was born. We discussed it enthusiastically. Overall, we shared the same vision of what it should be. And I was thrilled by that. I wanted to apply my skills on a bigger scale!
This was going to be the largest specialty coffee shop in Vienna—with its own roasting, a training department, and so much more. I saw it. I believed it could be incredibly successful. And it seemed he believed too.
We even met with the person who would transfer the lease to us, and with his lawyers. There were meetings about the lease, about registering our joint company, and so on. I even wrote a business plan. (Yes, me. Imagine that.) And so did he.
And then—he disappeared. Just vanished. No emails. No texts. No messages. No calls. Nothing. I waited for about a month—life happens, after all. But eventually, I decided that I would never do anything with this person again, even if he came back.
We still bump into each other in the city sometimes. We say hello. That’s it.
A curious reader might ask: What happened?
It is hard to answer for sure—that only he knows. But the last thing we talked about was that he wanted me to transfer Fenster into our joint company as my contribution, while he would contribute money to “balance” our shares.
First, he disagreed with my valuation of Fenster. I valued it modestly, at €80,000. (By the way, our record since then is €85,000 in one month, for context.) Meaning, he could have effectively bought Fenster back then for the price of its current monthly turnover—and multiplied his investment many times over in just a couple of years.
Second, transferring Fenster was not simple. At the time, its space was only held through a very questionable sublease—like many startups—and my conscience did not allow me to treat it as a secure asset. And I told him that.
There were a few other important conditions, not relevant here. But the point is: at that time, I did not see Fenster as something that could be co-managed. It would have been too complicated. Still, I was ready to compromise. But my terms did not satisfy him.
Do not forget—Fenster was my only source of income. If I gave it up into a joint company, I would immediately have had to find a new source of money just to live.
My impression—though I could be wrong—was that his real goal was to get Fenster as cheaply as possible. But I could not agree to his conditions. My idea was that we would build a new company from scratch: I would invest my time and expertise, he would invest his money. That did not happen.
He disappeared. And I stayed. With Fenster. To my enormous relief.
For a long time, I kept thinking about this situation. Mostly, I regretted the lost opportunity. Especially since, by his own words, the money he would have invested was about equal to my monthly living budget. All he really needed to do was skip buying a new car for a year.
But now I see it differently. Fate protected me from a huge mistake. And it put a giant period at the end of the question: do I need financial partners, beyond the good old bank?
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