# Erik Severinghaus

Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Bloomfilter

Canonical: https://mornings.network/shows/center-stage/guests/erik-severinghaus

## Biography

Erik Severinghaus is a Chicago-based serial entrepreneur, author, mountaineer, and AI startup founder whose career spans more than two decades of building, scaling, and exiting technology companies — with combined exits exceeding $600 million. Rooted in the twin disciplines of extreme endurance and entrepreneurial grit, Severinghaus has become one of the Midwest's most compelling voices on the psychological realities of building companies — the ambition, the identity crisis, the addiction-adjacent drive, and the hard-won peace that sometimes comes after.

Severinghaus co-founded iContact, an email marketing platform, as a college sophomore at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School. That company was acquired by Vocus in 2012 for $169 million. He went on to join IBM, rising to Partner in IT Optimization, before founding SimpleRelevance in 2011 — a machine learning platform for digital marketing that attracted Fortune 500 clients and earned a Chicago Innovation Award in 2013. He then served as Chief Strategy Officer & Global Head of Alliances at SpringCM, which was acquired by DocuSign in 2018 for $220 million — representing the two bookend exits that define the headline figure of his entrepreneurial career. In 2022, he co-founded Bloomfilter, an AI-powered process mining startup for the software development lifecycle, now working with some of the largest enterprises in the world, including major banks and auto manufacturers.

But the biography that Severinghaus most wants told is not the one with the exit multiples. It is the one with the failures: the six companies he closed, the over $2 million in investor capital he lost, the board game business whose inventory ended up in a landfill, the seven Papa John's pizza franchises he built in Chicago and eventually sold for minimal return, the engagement he lost, the best friend he lost, the prominent Chicago investor who called him 'the single worst investment ever made.' He is insistent that those failures are the actual story — the substrate on which the wins were built.

In 2018, Severinghaus summited Mount Everest. He has completed two Ironman triathlons. He holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and is an alumnus of Techstars and Chicago's 1871 entrepreneurial incubator. He is a columnist for Inc. Magazine, writing on mental resilience and entrepreneurship, and has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal. In 2021, he published Scale Your Everest: How to be a Resilient Entrepreneur (Post Hill Press) — a guidebook for founders navigating the psychological terrain of building companies, grounded in his own experience of success, collapse, and recovery.

At the center of Severinghaus's worldview is a question he first posed publicly in his book and returned to on Mornings in the Lab: 'If I lose my anxiety, will I lose my drive?' It is not a rhetorical question. He has spent years studying Buddhism, building a daily meditation practice of ten minutes every morning, and attempting to separate the fuel of his ambition from the corrosive anxiety that has powered — and at times nearly destroyed — him. He does not claim to have resolved it. He describes an existential crisis that came when a business failed and he could no longer anchor his identity to his achievements, asking out loud: 'I couldn't figure out what I was, who I was, or why I should even stick around on this planet if I wasn't who I thought I was.'

Today, Severinghaus brings all of this to his work at Bloomfilter, his speaking and writing, and his continuing pursuit of the Seven Summits — with Bali reportedly next on the calendar. He is a husband, an adventurer, and a man still in active dialogue with his own ambition — making him one of the most honest and fully-formed entrepreneurial voices currently working the speaking and media circuit.

## Links

- linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikseveringhaus
- twitter: https://x.com/wanderlust_erik

## Transcript

You ever catch yourself working harder just to avoid sitting still with your own thoughts? The calendar is full. The goals keep moving and the one thing you never schedule is a conversation with yourself because somewhere along the way you started to wonder if the thing pushing you forward is the same thing wearing you down. Eric Severinghaus built a life that looked like proof it wasn't. Built his first company as a college sophomore. It sold for $169 million. He kept going, made partner at IBM. He helped lead another company to a $220 million dollar acquisition. Over 600 million in combined exit. He summited Everest. He finished two Iron Mans and then he lost an engagement, a best friend and his savings. Closed six companies. A prominent Chicago investor called him the single worst investment ever made and somewhere in the middle of all of it he lost his ability to feel joy. The wins [music] kept coming. The work kept moving but nothing landed anymore. He described it as joylessness. So he sat down. Every morning 10 minutes eyes closed. He started studying Buddhism and asking a question most achievers won't touch. If I lose my anxiety, will I lose my drive? That question is still open. If you've ever wondered whether your edge and your exhaustion share the same root, this is a conversation you don't want to miss. Eric, welcome to Mornings in the Lab. We're glad you're here. Johnny, I'm excited about this one, man. Imagine summiting Everest, standing on top of the world at just under 30,000 feet. You've done two Iron Mans. You built successful companies worth over $600 million and then on the way down you sit down and you say climbing Everest was the second hardest thing I've ever done. Yep, the second. Eric Severinghaus, what's up, Eric? Keith, John, thanks so much, man. I'm excited to be here. I appreciate you guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How are you after the week? So first of all, where are you joining us from today? Chicago, Illinois. Yes. I saw you smiling while w