Max Richter grew up in Stuttgart, Germany, surrounded by cameras—his father was a photographer with a Leica who ran an advertising business. After studying engineering and business, Max found himself restless in corporate life, eventually making his way to Shenzhen, China, where he met a campus legend named JK who had borrowed $2,000 from his father to start a camera company. What happened next was a decade-long journey of near-bankruptcy, pivotal pivots, and ultimately building Insta360 into a company that challenged GoPro and partnered with the very camera brand that filled Max's childhood home. Today, Max serves as a co-founder of Insta360, a company that's redefined how millions of people capture and share their lives.
In this episode, you'll discover:
- The "dark year" of 2017 when Insta360 had over 100 employees, was running out of cash, and Samsung had just entered their market—and the unexpected user behavior that saved the company
- Why the moment you're closest to giving up is often the exact moment you need to push through, and how this principle turned a struggling startup into a company that makes $30+ million annually
- The career advice Max wishes he'd known at 25 about the dangers of overthinking and why "just starting" beats perfect planning every single time
- How immersing yourself in uncomfortable, foreign environments shapes you into a more open-minded person—and why Max believes traveling early is one of the most underrated career accelerators
- The sacrifices nobody talks about when building a global company, and why finding the intersection of passion, profit, and societal impact matters more than any single factor alone
