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When founding a company, it’s crucial to surround yourself with the right people—those who complement your skills, share your vision, and whom you truly trust. Building a business as a team makes the

Lea Lange, Founder of Lunary & JUNIQE



Lea Lange is no stranger to the startup scene. In 2014, at just 25 years old, she co-founded her first company, Juniqe, a creative marketplace. Seven years later, she successfully sold the company for a multi-million-euro deal. With Lunary, her newest startup that she founded solo in 2023, she is now venturing into the field of nutrition supplements and women’ s health.

In this interview, Lea talks about her personal work-life balance and insights from founding two companies.

1. You founded your first company in 2014 and your second in 2023. Have you noticed any changes in the startup scene for female founders during this time?

I founded my first company more than 10 years ago, and the second one one and a half years ago. What is most striking looking at the German ecosystem is that the percentage of female founders has even decreased in the last years. So all your female founders out there, the ecosystem really needs you.

2. For your first startup, you worked with two co-founders, but with Lunary, you’ve chosen to go solo. What led to this decision, and in your experience, what factors should early-stage founders consider when deciding between founding solo or with partners?

My first company, JUNIQUE. I founded it together with two men, Mark and Sebastian. And I would always say, when you find potential founding partners with a very complementary skill set that you trust a lot, and you know you will be working in the same direction. Always found companies as a team. It shares the heights and highs and the lows.

However, this time with my new company, Lunary, there was just simply not someone who came along very naturally on the way, I would have been a big fan, and this may change very soon.

3. In between founding your two companies, you have also become a mother of two children. How has this impacted your experience as a second-time founder?

I'm not only the founder of Lunary, I'm also a mother of two young boys who are five and almost four now, and when I founded my second company, and the younger one was only one and a half years old, and I think you just get a lot more conscious in the use of your time, because time suddenly is very valuable, and if you're not working, you may want to spend it with your with your children. So you're just a lot more active in how you manage your time.

4. In a previous interview, you mentioned that your greatest challenge is balancing your personal needs with those of your children, your family, and your business. What strategies or tools have been most transformative for you, and what advice would you give to women navigating similar situations?

Obviously it's a very big challenge to balance babies and business, and I think there's not one that fits all solutions to it. Quite the contrary, everyone has to find their own way to approach these things.

For me, it's very important to approach it very structured, so we have a helping hand for at the same times of the week, the same person for the last years. And on top of that, we have quite a good family support system, because all of our family lives quite nearby. However, I think you just have to accept that with small children, very often things don't go as planned, and maybe you don't even have the same energy level that you used to have a couple of years back.

So with founding this company, I started to work on weekends, on Sundays, I can work very, very focused, and I started doing so because I just don't get that much done during the week like I used to before children.

So for me, this gives me a lot more calmness during the week, when something unplanned happens, and I'm so much more focused on Sundays. But as I said, I think everyone needs to find that, find their own way to approach this.

5. With the experience of having founded two companies, what practices have proven effective for you, and what approaches have you found to be less successful?

My company that I founded with two co-founders before I had children, I was 24 and we had quite some external money from business angels and VCs. And our goal was to grow very quickly and to build a very big company with a lot of employees fast.

With my new company, Lunary my goal is to grow organically and to be self financed and funded, and to build a sustainable business that is profitable from day one. So the approach to how I built my companies is very different. And I just think that there are different life phases that you go through, or different goals that you have at certain times in your life, and that very much influences how you build your company.

So it's very difficult for me to have these practices that I can recommend to other people. So I think it's totally fair to say that there are different life phases for how you approach building your companies.

For me, it's just very important to always be very efficient and know what the big goals are that I need to work on. And I feel that today I know this much better than 10 years ago, because I just have so much more experience, and I think it's so important who you work with. And today, this is much more important for me than it was 10 years ago. So build your network of people that you love working with.

6. With Lunary, you’ve entered the health and wellness space. How do you ensure your own health doesn’t take a back seat as a founder?

When I founded my first company more than 10 years ago, health was not particularly a topic that I prioritized, or that was even on top of my head, which is totally different today, which has, I think, very different reasons to is, one is that I got 10 years older.

With my second company, I do a lot of things differently this time. I prioritize my sleep, so I go to bed very early, and these days, I take very much care of my nutrition and what I eat, which was also very different back in the days.

Another habit is that I move regularly, and sports is not anymore something that I do when I have enough time, but it's rather a blocker in my calendar that is always there and is non-negotiable.

So these are the main pillars or habits that are very different to how I used to approach things at the beginning of my 20s. And then on top of that, I spend a lot of time with my family, with people that give me good energy.

Thank you, Lea, for the interview and your insights!

 

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