Founded a startup, climbed Mont Blanc, completed a mammoth 100-kilometer walk and got an internship in the CEO office of Mercedes Benz: for John Müller, life goes according to plan. Until a diagnosis at the age of 22 suddenly changed everything. Career plans, performance thinking, future – everything has to wait. Bone cancer.
From student startup to VC
John Müller grew up in the Allgäu and gained his first start-up experiences at an early age. While still a student, he designed and sold bicycle bottles. He founded his first “real” startup in 2021 during the Corona pandemic: the party card game Soulmate. “It was about bringing people together again. You were alone, even in shared apartments, and there were hardly any topics to talk about. You needed an icebreaker – something that would lighten up the situation,” he tells Gründerszene. He did everything himself: design, marketing, sales.
But it’s not just starting up that fascinates him, he’s also fascinated by the world of finance: investments, the stock market, financial topics. “I come from a very simple background. Since my mother had me very young – she was 20 years old and had just moved to Germany from Ukraine – I knew that I had to take care of my family’s financial security.”
In 2022, after a VC internship, Müller will end up as an intern in the CEO office of the Mercedes-Benz Group in Stuttgart. It seems like the next step in a linear career. But that’s exactly where his life changes completely.
Symptoms discovered while hiking
He first noticed symptoms while on vacation. “I was in Sweden and on the last day I had a pain in my rib. I thought: We had been hiking a lot, heavy backpack, maybe I had pulled something or moved something.” But the pain doesn’t stop, it keeps getting worse.
This is completely unexpected for the sporty young man. He is used to physical challenges. He has already climbed the Cotopaxi volcano, walked the Way of St. James and stood on Mont Blanc. After a short hospital visit in Sweden, Müller traveled back to Germany – straight to the emergency room at the Stuttgart Clinic.
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“It turned out that a tumor had grown there on the rib. And so quickly that it was pressing on the nerve from the rib.” The exact diagnosis comes later: Ewing’s sarcoma – a very aggressive and extremely rare form of cancer that usually occurs in children and adolescents. “It’s like winning the lottery, only in a negative sense. 25 people receive a diagnosis like the one I got in Germany.” He breaks down crying, not knowing how he’s going to get through this. At the age of 22, Müller was already one of the older patients with this tumor.
10 months in hospital, one operation, 14 cycles of chemotherapy
Once the diagnosis is made, everything happens quickly. Müller spent a total of ten months in the hospital. He will receive 14 cycles of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and major surgery in which doctors will remove the tumor along with two ribs.
His body changes radically. The hair falls out. He becomes bedridden, loses muscle mass and fitness. “I had been to Mont Blanc a year before and then a year later I could barely get up to the second floor. That was difficult for me to process. I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror.”
For a long time, Müller considered it inconceivable that such a diagnosis could affect him of all people. He is a competitive athlete, eats healthily and spends a lot of time in the mountains. “Maybe I’ll die in a bike accident, but I’ll definitely never die of cancer,” he thought at the time. The healthy lifestyle also has family reasons. “My grandfather was an alcoholic and died of it. My dad was an alcoholic and died of it. I was ten years old then. I knew that I wanted to do everything in my power to not succumb to the same fate.”
Startup podcasts as motivation
He had a lot of time in everyday hospital life between drips and radiation therapy. A lot of time to not only deal with the physical changes, but also with his future plans. He doesn’t want to waste a day on his healing journey. He remembers the thoughts that stuck with him in his sick bed: “I don’t know how long I have left. I want to deal with the issues that have the greatest social leverage. Leave something behind.”
He finds his motivation to keep going, among other things, in the startup cosmos. “During my hospital stay, I worked on the topic of founding companies day and night. I listened to podcasts 24/7 from all kinds of founders and VCs.”
From chemotherapy to job interviews
Müller survives the illness. He says today that he built up a certain level of resilience and resistance. And sets goals. He begins writing applications while he is still in therapy. “I really wanted to go straight back into VC and thought Porsche Ventures would be really great. For the first interview, I had the chemotherapy drugs run through faster so that I could make it in time. With the last of my strength I went home, opened the laptop and had the interview.”
He sits in front of the screen with a cap on his head to cover his bald head. “Because I thought that way you wouldn’t know that I was seriously ill. And I thought that if I told you that I had cancer, I would have no chance of being accepted. Afterwards, they told me that it was clear in the first second that I was completely ill. But they found my courage impressive.” He gets a job as a visiting analyst. The feedback is: “John, he’s so crazy that he wants to join us despite such a serious diagnosis, we have to have him.”
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Survival is not enough
Müller has been considered cancer-free for three years. Now he wants to give something back: “I would have loved to have seen someone in the hospital who had found their way back to life so quickly despite a fatal cancer diagnosis.” After a stay abroad in Mexico, his university degree and a stint at the EdTech startup KnowUnity, he decided to set up his own project.
His mission: “With my story I want to give hope that cancer doesn’t have to mean the end, but that you can still take your dreams into your own hands.”
From May 8th, exactly three years after the tumor was removed, John Müller would like to cycle from Berlin to the Taj Mahal, the most famous sight in India. On the way he wants to visit hospitals along the route and document the journey on the website 8000km.live and on social media.
Support from the startup world
He also receives support from the entire startup network: “I had nothing but an idea and a website when Marius Meiners already believed in me.” Its AI startup Peec AI is the main sponsor of the project.
He also receives operational support from the ecosystem: Langdock and Lovable help him build his website. The soft drink startup Holy and LapCoffee provide the “Energy Boost”. He gets sun protection from Sun Matters, known from the TV show “The Lions’ Den”.
He uses the website to collect donations for an emergency fund for young sarcoma patients and sarcoma centers in Germany. “Even before the start, I was able to collect 25,000 euros in donations.” He is proud of this sum.
“Bike 100 kilometers for 80 days – I’m doing it exactly for those who can’t ride a bike right now. For those who are currently fighting for their lives in the hospital.”
Three years ago, John Müller was still fighting for his life. Today he shows other cancer patients that even after the darkest diagnosis, a future can be possible again. And in doing so, he becomes exactly the role model he would have wanted back then in the hospital.
