Why The Startup Ecosystem Is Ruining Founders’ Mental Health

HALIFAX — For years, Michael DeVenney has been on a crusade to wipe out what he sees as a crisis plaguing the startup community.

The entrepreneur and founder of The Mindset Project says founders are struggling with mental health challenges at higher-than-average rates.

He says the stigma surrounding mental health keeps many from getting the help they need. He believes that stigma is made worse, and in some ways created by, the startup ecosystem that purports to support entrepreneurs.

Not long ago, DeVenney joined the Halifax Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Nova Scotia division to talk about mental health and the entrepreneurial mindset.

DeVenney talks often, and openly, about his own mental health struggles and how they affected his career.

RELATED: How The Pressure To Make A Million Dollars Drove Michael DeVenney Into Depression

He started The Mindset Project after those struggles cost him a company. His goal is to use honest conversation to bring awareness to the mental health crisis in the startup world.

An Overwhelming Stigma

One of the first things DeVenney did through the project was a massive mental health survey of hundreds of entrepreneurs and founders.

That survey revealed 80 percent of employees believe there’s a stigma around mental health in their organization. Only 23 percent think their leaders are doing anything about it.

Even 75 percent of leaders agree stigma exists in their organizations.

“It’s there. We know it. Yet we let it stay,” DeVenney says.

DeVenney says mental health challenges are often viewed differently than other chronic health issues. There’s a shame attached, as if it’s somehow the person’s fault.

“If I cracked my knee, I can talk about it at work. If I was falling into a depression there’s no way I can have that conversation without feeling very uncomfortable,” DeVenney says.

The Toxic Startup Ecosystem

Founders can take all kinds of steps to protect their mental health. But DeVenney says the institutions and investors that make up the startup ecosystem have created a toxic environment.

“I think the startup community is the foundation of mental health issues for most entrepreneurs. I just think it’s incredibly ill-structured… and it could be done so much better, both for the human condition of the entrepreneurs inside that system and the survival of those businesses,” he says. “I think we’re doing it completely and utterly wrong.”

He thinks an important part of the conversation about mental health in business is figuring out how to put entrepreneurs into an environment that’s better for them.

Many people start a business because they want to be their own boss, DeVenney says, “but then we live by everybody else’s rules.”

He says he wants to see the institutions and organizations that support founders correct the “Dragon’s Den” idea of what an entrepreneur should be.

It’s not giving us too much room to be human when we’re supposed to be constantly pitching and constantly on, and having this grit and perseverance and all this,” he says.

Investors are first and foremost looking for a return on their investment. But DeVenney argues taking a “human approach” to investing will make that return better.

He says there’s “no way” an entrepreneur seeking capital won’t experience stress and anxiety so pretending it’s not there is only making things worse.

Why Aren’t We Paying Founders?

DeVenney believes a good solution would be investors giving entrepreneurs a salary when they invest in their business.

“If you’re willing to invest in an idea that an entrepreneur has, go a step further and invest in them as a person,” he says. “If [investors] could take away that one worry of ‘how am I going to pay my bills, how am I going to protect my family’… that would make a huge shift.”

DeVenney believes any entrepreneur who didn’t have to think about their financial well-being for three years “could do amazing things.”

It will take a lot more conversation and advocacy before those kinds of changes happen. But DeVenney says there are some simple, concrete things founders can do to protect their mental health today.

The Mindset Project’s survey uncovered 12 percent of entrepreneurs who had healthy, balanced lives (“My first thought is what is wrong with them?” DeVenney jokes).

He found that nearly all of them do five simple things: exercise, sleep well, meditate, talk to people around them, and say no more often.

“These things just sound so common sense but they’re not, because so many of us don’t do it,” DeVenney says.

Trevor Nichols is the Associate Editor of Huddle based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].