Beyond the Ego: Why Your Business Needs External Eyes ft. VEDA Works (E122)

Can founders really scale without letting go? In this episode of The Recursive Podcast, we sit down with Boyan Stoyanov, an entrepreneur and operations strategist with a decade of experience building and running teams across Europe & Southeast Asia.

After leading recruitment and people operations for digital-first companies, Boyan now helps organizations scale sustainably under the VEDA brand — uniting operational design with accounting, payroll, and financial strategy to help founders move from working in the business to working on the business. We talk about his journey from Asia back to Bulgaria, why most companies get stuck small, and how VEDA’s merger with Hireworks is designed to solve the scaling problem end to end.

What you’ll learn:

🏗️ The hardest founder shift: delegating not just tasks but decision-making, and how to build the infrastructure to do it safely.

🏝️ How Southeast Asian business culture compares to Eastern Europe: trust-first relationships, indirect “no,” negotiation norms, and why you need boots on the ground.

📈 Why hiring can hurt capacity in the short term, and how onboarding, process, and performance loops must improve across the whole funnel to truly scale.

⚖️ The case for fractional operational leadership vs. a full-time hire, common mistakes with consultants, and how VEDA’s integrated ops + finance approach accelerates growth.

This episode is a must-watch for first-time founders, scaling operators, and leaders eyeing international expansion, especially those considering fractional services as a smarter path to senior expertise.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

01:39 Boyan's Journey to Startup Founding

04:29 The Crossroads of Employment vs. Entrepreneurship

05:07 Business Culture: East vs. West vs. Southeast Asia

09:49 Hard-Learned Lessons in Asia

15:11 Operational Shift: Moving from Asia to Bulgaria

19:27 The VEDA Merger

25:37 Market Focus and Complementary Networks

26:33 The Future of VEDA and Bulgarian Brands

28:10 Scaling a Company and the Core Team

31:01 Advice for First-Time Founders and the Value of Fractional Services

39:27 Common Mistakes When Using External Services

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Learn more about VEDA and Boyan:

https://www.veda.works/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/veda-works/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/boyan-stoyanov/