#200 | From Pro Basketball to a 4,000-Venue Startup: Shameless Pivots and Betting on A-Players w/Fryderyk Szydłowski (@ Embargo)

▶︎ #200 | From Pro Basketball to a 4,000-Venue Startup: Resilience, Shameless Pivots, and Betting on A-Players w/ Fryderyk Szydłowski (@ Embargo)

In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex sits down with Fryderyk Szydlowski, Co-founder of Embargo, the loyalty and CRM platform now used by close to 4,000 cafes, restaurants, and bakeries across the UK, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, and the US. Freddie’s path runs from a professional basketball career in Poland’s top division, through London hospitality {becoming the youngest Head of Marketing in the city’s nightlife scene at 21}, a first attempt at a fashion brand, and finally Embargo: a business he nearly had to sell for survival money in the earliest days of COVID.

What makes this conversation stand out is how directly Freddie ties his years as an athlete to what it takes to build a company: resilience defined not as toughness but as showing up and delivering through constant setbacks; long-term thinking held in tension with daily impatience; and what he calls a "shameless" willingness to change direction, fail, and try again, fast, because speed is a startup’s real edge over big competitors.

Freddie is candid about who entrepreneurship is not for: people who need to fully switch off, who cannot tolerate rejection, or whose sense of worth depends on saying yes to every good idea. His practical rule, borrowed from a resonant read {see below}: every yes to something new is a no to something else, and learning to say no on purpose is what makes scaling possible.

If you are building something from scratch, wondering whether the entrepreneurial path is for you, or trying to figure out what to say no to next, this episode is for you.

Mentioned in the episode:

Buy Back Your Time: by Dan Martell

✉︎ FOLLOW FREDDIE ON: ⤵︎

LinkedIn: Fryderyk (Frederick) Szydlowski

Embargo: embargoapp.com

Embargo on YouTube: youtube.com/embargoapp

✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎