UCL School of Management Associate Professor and Founder of the founder-coaching community Foundology, Christina Richardson, with support from Enterprise Educators UK, has recently launched her seminal Founder Resilience Research Report 2024.
The report seeks to expose the current state of startup founder health and resilience and provide valuable solutions for supporting founders to thrive, not just survive, on the startup rollercoaster.
First presented at the Global Entrepreneurship Centre conference at Babson College in Boston, MA, and recently featured in Forbes magazine, the report is packed full of insights and ideas from nearly 400 entrepreneurs around the world, making it the largest study yet on founder resilience when starting a business.
Founders with lower resilience face significant challenges
The data shows that founder resilience matters a lot: Comparing founders with high resilience scores with those with low scores, it turns out that those with low resilience scores are more than twice as likely to have considered quitting more than four times more overwhelmed and stressed.
The research incorporates the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) - a validated tool for assessing an individual’s ability to recover and bounce back from challenging situations - enabling a better comparison of high and low founder resilience to understand the underlying driving factors behind highly resilient founderhood.
Key report findings:
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Unique ‘founderhood’ struggles: 79% of entrepreneurs believe that business leadership as a founder is unique because the weight of their responsibility and the constant need for adaptability makes their experience particularly emotionally complex and cognitively demanding.
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Resilience tops the skill rankings: 92% of founders rank resilience as the number one requirement for entrepreneurship (over problem-solving, communication, and influencing skills), and this trait is directly related to job and company performance.
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Founders are passionate about what they do: Despite the constant need to be resilient, 89% remain glad to be an entrepreneur, driven to have an impact and be autonomous.
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High-pressure stakes: 52% feel that their level of pressure is seven out of ten or higher right now, which shifts to 71% for founders of funded startups.
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Mental health strain: 93% of founders show signs of mental health strain, with levels of anxiety five times the national average.
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The loneliness factor: 76% of founders feel lonely, which is 50% more than CEOs generally, impacting their self-confidence, self-efficacy, and problem-solving capability.
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Founder guilt: 69% have a fear of failure and 57% feel guilty when they take a break, which impacts performance and self-care habits.
The research reveals not just the scale of the potential health issues founders may face but also contains practical strategies and support systems that can help them thrive despite complex founderhood challenges. By committing to implementing resilience-building habits and fostering openness within entrepreneurial communities, entrepreneurs can better navigate the highs and lows of their exciting venture journeys.
Philip Salter, Founder of think tank The Entrepreneurs Network, and secretariat of the AAPG in Entrepreneurship:
