Eric Partaker’s career looks like a cheat code from the outside.
McKinsey, early Skype team. Multi-billion dollar exit to eBay.
Then he built a restaurant chain, grew it to 13 locations with 20% EBITDA margins, only to watch it all go up in smoke when COVID hit.
Life savings, the lot. Gone.
Most people would quietly disappear after that. Eric decided to start again.
At 47, with zero social media presence, he set himself a new target: build a following of a million on LinkedIn.
Three years later, he’s at 1.2 million.
We got into a lot in this one, including:
- Why work-life balance is a myth (and what to aim for instead)
- The goal-setting trap most founders fall into
- What he got wrong scaling Chilango, the restaurant chain in question
- And the interview mistake that keeps companies stuck on their fourth or fifth hire for the same role
There’s a moment in this conversation where he talks about baseline happiness. Whether driven people can ever actually be content, and whether achievement is a blessing or a curse.
He doesn’t pretend to have a clear answer, but the honesty is refreshing.