My Life Story,
and a warning for those who are doing well today
(This text is long, completely open, and honest if you read it until the end, it may give you something valuable for your own life)
My Second Chance – In Short
I lost everything after one failed project that was too big, too risky, and too naive.
Not just money.
But my sense of self-worth.
My stability.
My mental health.
I went from building companies to lying on the floor, unable to function, watching my family carry the weight of my collapse.
Today, I’m standing again.
Not to chase wealth — but to rebuild a meaningful, stable life for my family and to finish a project born from everything I learned the hard way.
I want to share my life story with you.
Not to impress you. Not to ask for sympathy.
But to offer a warning to anyone who is currently successful in business — a reminder of how fragile success truly is and how easily we can lose humility, humanity, and connection to the reality of other people’s lives.
What Your Support Makes Possible
Your contribution helps me:
• Stabilize my family after years of uncertainty
• Build a small, focused team around a new project
• Turn painful experience into something that helps others
• Move forward without rushing, ego, or shortcuts
This is not about quick success.
It’s about doing it right this time .
If You Want the Full Story
Below is my full, unfiltered life story.
It’s long.
It’s honest.
And it explains how I got here.
Where it all began
I was born in the Czech Republic into a middle-class family.
My parents always did everything they could to give me stability, even when it meant denying themselves many things.
It was never about luxury - it was about safety and peace of mind.
From a young age, they repeated a simple life path to me: Graduate, Find a job, Get married, Have a happy family.
But even as a child, I felt drawn to entrepreneurship.
I wanted to create, to experiment, to take responsibility for my own decisions.
My parents supported me in this and never blamed me for choosing a different path.
At the age of fifteen, I started dating my partner — the same woman who is still by my side today.
First steps and rapid growth
At eighteen, I started working as a financial advisor at Generali.
It was a tough school of life — working with people, constant performance pressure, my first real money, and real responsibility.
My partner and I saved up for our first vacation. For us, it was a big milestone. It was romantic, but the services were terrible.
On the way back, I remember thinking:
“If others can do this, I can do it better — and more honestly.”
I left Generali and founded my own travel agency.
Thanks to Slevomat, we grew rapidly, and over the years we transported approximately 600,000 people.
For me, it felt like a huge success. At the same time, I founded an internet service provider a company that is still operating today.
In 2016, I closed the travel agency due to terrorist attacks in Europe and a dramatic drop in demand.
Thanks to financial reserves, I managed it without debt and with a clean slate.
In 2017, I entered cryptocurrency mining. I built one of the largest crypto farms in the Czech Republic.
At that point, I felt like I had everything I had ever wanted:
Stability, Freedom, Family a daughter born in 2016.
And that’s when I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life - I stopped appreciating ordinary things.
The person I had become
In 2019, I was 29 years old. Today, I can say this openly:
I was arrogant, lacking empathy, and detached from the reality of the people around me.
Two moments stand out the most and they still haunt me today.
1) Luxury Without Thinking About Others
When I traveled with friends, I automatically chose five-star hotels. It never even crossed my mind whether others could afford it.
Years later, one friend told me:
“It was really uncomfortable for me to admit that I couldn’t afford that hotel. I borrowed money from my parents just so I could go with you.”
That was the first time I truly realized how blind I had been to the reality of other people’s lives.
2) A Million in My Hands
Once, I withdrew 1,000,000 CZK in cash and walked through the city holding it in my hands.
I wanted to observe people’s reactions.
My Ego, stupidity, a sense of superiority.
Today, I know it wasn’t strength - it was weakness.
If I could go back, I would slap myself.
A decision that changed everything — not just my life
I’ll be brief here, although I could talk about this for hours.
In 2019, a friend approached me - he managed an investment fund and had experience in the energy sector.
He mentioned cogeneration units and a patent for hydrogen production.
At the time, we were at the top, we had capital, we had courage.
And we were not afraid to take risks.
We decided to build a hydrogen power plant a project so large that it eventually consumed everything I had.
I believed I had enough experience, connections, and resources.
Today, I know what I really had was something else entirely: an oversized ego.
Collapse
This story is long and complex, so I’ll avoid excessive detail.
Just two weeks before completion and final approval, everything collapsed.
The building permit was revoked due to one square meter of a neighboring plot.
Years of investigations followed — NCOZ, FAU, police, authorities.
The company was registered solely under my name.
All responsibility fell on me.
The fund ran into trouble and demanded full repayment, as the investment was structured as a loan.
Under enormous pressure, I was forced to sell everything:
my house, cars, lands, cryptocurrencies...
I was left with nothing.
No assets.
No certainty.
No answers.
The darkest period
It was 2021. My daughter was five years old.
From someone who once had everything, I suddenly had nothing.
Years of deep depression followed.
I never drank alcohol or used drugs - and that likely saved my life.
When my wife went to work and my daughter went to school,
I lay under the table and cried for hours.
One day, my wife said to me:
“Wouldn’t you like to take a shower and shave? It’s been two weeks.”
That was the moment I realized something was seriously wrong.
Another moment that still hurts deeply:
We went grocery shopping - me, my wife, and our daughter.
My bank cards were blocked. We only had cash.
I always calculated the total in my head, making sure we would have enough to pay.
This time, I made a mistake.
We had to put one bottle back.
At home, we talked with my wife about it - exhausted, frustrated, helpless.
Then our daughter (seven years old) - came to us and said:
“Daddy, Mommy, I’ll give you all
my saved money from my piggy bank so we can buy food.”
That is the last thing you ever want to hear from your child.
The breaking point
Then came the suicide attempt
Then came the moment I never thought I would face.
One night, at 3:30 a.m., I sat on a stone wall near Prague Castle. I was mentally exhausted. Empty.
Convinced I had reached the end. I believed, with absolute certainty, that everyone would be better off without me.
A police car stopped about five meters away.
They looked at me.
They saw my condition. And then they drove away.
They simply left - no words
In that moment, something inside me broke.
Not despair. Defiance.
For the first time in a long time, I felt anger instead of hopelessness.
I said to myself:
“So this is it? I’m not even worth help anymore?”
And then another thought followed: “No. Never give up. I will rebuild everything.”
Cleared and a new beginning
After four and a half years, I was fully cleared.
Their official statement, in short, was this:
“We had suspicions. We had the right to investigate. Delays occurred due to COVID. Our procedures were correct.”
No guilt was ever proven.
The release of the frozen funds allowed me to repay my debts but not to return to my former life.
What remained, I used for a basic restart and to begin building something new.
A project born from Experience
The project is called SentiSnap.
Its mission is to help companies and institutions truly understand emotions, satisfaction and real human problems before they grow into serious crises.
It is a direct reflection of everything I have lived through:
working with psychology, empathy and understanding instead of arrogance, pressure, and blind performance.
If you would like to see what we are building today and where this journey is leading:
Today
I am 35 years old. My daughter is nine.
My wife is still by my side and I value that more than words can express.
We are currently expecting a baby.
I want to make up for everything they went through with me.
Final words
Today, I know that the greatest loss was not money, assets, or status.
The greatest loss was humility, gratitude and the ability to truly see other people.
I once believed a person’s value was measured by success, wealth, and position.
Life taught me the opposite.
A person’s true value is revealed when everything is taken away. When nothing remains.
When only character is left and the ability to stand up in the face of unbearable pain.
I had to fall to the very bottom to understand lessons that no success could ever teach me:
humility, empathy, respect for ordinary days, gratitude for family, health, and the chance to stand up again.
I no longer want more than a life with meaning.
I don’t want to be the richest. I don’t want admiration.
I want my children to look at me one day and say:
“My daddy Didn’t Give Up. And he changed.”
If you help me on this journey, you’re not just helping me.
You’re supporting a story that proves second chances exist.
That transformation is possible. And that character is not shown in victories but in what we do when everything is lost.
Thank you for reading, for sharing, for every single euro a symbol of trust.
I will not betray that trust.
Never Give Up
Michael
