Startup Snapshot, a think tank uncovering the unspoken realities of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, has released its latest report, The Untold Toll (Part 2): Navigating Stress, Wellbeing, and Burnout in Startup Teams .

The emotional and mental state of startup teams has emerged as one of the most overlooked drivers of company performance. Startup Snapshot illuminates the unseen side of startup life through global data collected from startup employees. It’s the first study of its kind, and the findings are candid, revealing, and deeply human.

The startup grind is taking a heavier toll than expected. Only 10% of employees anticipated that startup life would harm their mental health, yet 80% say it has. Burnout affects 50% of employees, and 52% report anxiety, surpassing even the rates reported by founders themselves.

Founder stress quietly cascades through the organization. While only 10% of founders openly share their emotional challenges with their team, 57% of employees say they regularly notice signs of founder stress through tone, energy, and facial expressions. 

This unspoken tension shapes culture and affects how safe and stable employees feel. Teams led by highly stressed founders report 16% lower work wellbeing, 14% higher burnout, and 16% lower psychological safety.

The most significant stressor for employees isn’t workload or pay, but uncertainty about what’s happening in the startup. Yet only 18% say their founders are fully transparent about the company’s challenges. 

Transparency directly affects employee performance. Employees working under transparent, communicative leaders experience 19% higher work wellbeing and 26% lower turnover intention. When people understand what’s happening and why decisions are made, they feel secure, valued, and connected to the journey.

The research makes it clear: Founders set the tone for stress and well-being across their startups. When leaders neglect their own mental health, that stress spreads to employees, driving burnout, disengagement, and long-term cultural damage. Startup Snapshot will continue to investigate the emotional and psychological landscape inside startups. If you want to be part of this dialogue, reach out to yael@startupsnapshot.com .

I’m currently at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress 2025 in Indianapolis. Yesterday, at the end of the day, I spent several hours at High Alpha hanging out with my friends and then doing a Give First: The Power of Mentorship book event with them and about 150 people.

One of the questions during the book talk was around mental health and entrepreneurship. I talked about my own experiences with anxiety and depression and explained that my core diagnosis, which I was diagnosed with in my 20s, was obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). I said that one of my goals for being open was to destigmatize mental health issues, especially in the context of entrepreneurship and mentioned that I periodically hear something like “I’m OCD and it’s my superpower” and dismissed that idea as nonsense, since OCD is an insidious thing that gets in the way of so many things in life.

While I was in hibernation , I conducted a long-form (60-minute) video interview with NOCD , an outstanding company in Chicago that is now the world’s leading provider of OCD treatment. I mentioned it during the talk yesterday, but woke up this morning realizing I’d never blogged about it.

(If you are receiving this via email, a YouTube embed should be included below. If it’s a bunch of text that looks like garbled code, click through on the header of this email to my website to watch this. There’s no need to tell me since I’ll get the same mess in the email as I try to get MailChimp working correctly again.)

In the video, I cover a lot of ground, as shown in the show notes.

0:00 Intro
1:07 If OCD Was A Movie Title
1:58 Underlying Obsessions
3:38 How OCD Has Affected Brad’s Life At Different Points
11:02 Mental Exhaustion And OCD
15:06 Separating The Obsessions And The Compulsions
20:15 Why Brad Speaks Openly About Mental Health
30:42 Dispelling OCD Misconceptions
37:27 Brad’s Purpose
40:27 Brad’s Advice For His Younger Self
51:18 What Companies Can Do For Mental Health
55:12 Post-Therapy Movie Titles
58:30 Outro

Feel free to reach out to me anytime around this topic (OCD or mental health) as it continues to be important to me to destigmatize this, especially in this moment.

After I wrote my post on Unhibernating , my long-time, empathetic friend Christopher Schroeder , whom I originally met through Ben Casnocha (that story is discussed in Give First: The Power of Mentorship ), sent me a short note asking, “Have you been ok?”

I responded with a long email explaining why I decided to hibernate in the summer of 2023 and why this hibernation lasted almost two years. After writing a long email (which I’ve been doing a lot of during my hibernation), I asked Chris if I could post my response to my blog, and he said, “Of course.”

The following is my answer to Chris’s question, “Have you been ok? ” I’ve edited it for grammar.

Yes – I’ve been ok.

A couple of things were going on that converged in the summer of 2023.

• I realized I was completely burned out from public stuff. The inbound requests were endless, and even though I could say no to many of them, I wasn’t enjoying them.

• I was tired of the VC industry and its noise. The endless self-promotion combined with “I know the answer – look at me” mixed with thought pieces ghostwritten by marketing professionals and then endless VC Twitter from the same person, much of which didn’t line up philosophically, got me down. And, well, podcasts are so easy compared to writing – the person blathers on about whatever is on their mind, reacts to a current thing, and influences so many with such thin suppositions that are often nonsense.

• Some people I thought I’d respected had shifted some of their behavior, not as extreme as it is now, but it was increasingly distasteful to me. 

• Critical thinking seems to have been discarded in many parts of my world. The view was, “If I assert something loudly or strongly enough, over and over, it becomes the truth.”

• We had closed our latest fund (spring 2023), and I wasn’t enthusiastic about making new investments. After—I dunno—a thousand direct investments, hundreds of fund investments, and a zillion indirect investments, I was cooked.

So, I took a break from all public engagement. It took me about three months to stop looking at anything but I eventually whittled it down to the daily Techmeme email . I also unsubscribed to almost everything, so my inbox became only work and personal emails. I even unsubscribed to Axios Pro Rata (by far the best VC daily) for a while.

I worked plenty (15 boards, supported anyone in our portfolio that needed help), spent a lot of time with Amy, continued not to travel for work, read a few books a week, and ran a lot. I continued supporting philanthropic and government efforts in the background, helping anyone who wanted to lead, but not being public or forward-facing. I also shifted to default no on everything, so I needed a close relationship with someone asking for help to say yes.

I was in great physical shape and planned a three-week, 300-mile run across New York State on the Empire Trail in August 2024. Jerry Colonna would accompany me in an SUV, move my stuff from place to place, and hang out with me when I wasn’t running. And then, Amy and I got Covid for the first time on June 2nd. After being diligent, avoiding it for a long time, and being very hermit-like, I got it randomly during a month in Boulder, where Amy and I were more social than usual. I never figured out who I got it from, and didn’t appear to give it to anyone we were with, so it was as random as it gets.

I tested positive for 21 days and felt extremely crappy for six weeks. I cancelled my run across New York State and, as the summer unfolded, realized I was exhausted all the time. If I went for a three-mile run, I’d have to sleep for a few hours in the afternoon just to be functional. This continued into the fall, after which I accepted that I needed more sleep. Nine months later, I sleep 90 to 120 minutes more a night than I used to (I haven’t used an alarm clock since 2013, so I get up when I wake up.) I’m running a little more (maybe 10 – 15 miles a week), but if I run over 20 miles weekly, I fall apart and need to rest for two to three days. Maybe it’s long Covid, but no one knows what this means. Perhaps it’s sneaking up on 60. Maybe it’s something else.

I picked up Pilates and got disciplined through the winter (twice a week). I’m stretching more (age). I’m trying to get into a weight lifting rhythm (I have inadequate upper body strength – I’ve always been an upper body wimp). But I’m accepting age and know that strength is vital to longevity. I lost a lot of weight (thank you, gila monsters , for helping with that), and all my bloodwork, including cholesterol, is in a normal range for the first time in as long as I can remember.

I worked on Give First: The Power of Mentorship  a few years ago after finishing The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors , sent it out to about 25 people for feedback, and, after getting the feedback, was pretty unhappy with the state of the book. I decided to put it on the shelf. I took it down in the fall and started working on it again, but slowly. By the end of the year, I had restructured and rewritten a lot of it, and was excited about it again. I felt my internal energy around engaging with people starting to build up again, and upon reflection, realized how depleted I was in the summer of 2023.

Amy and I are doing great. She continues to be an amazing partner, and I’m overjoyed to spend most of my time with her (both waking and asleep!). While I’ll travel a little this summer, maybe she’ll come with me—or maybe not. 

Regardless of everything going on in the world, I’m ok. Thanks for asking.

Startup Snapshot, a data-sharing platform for the entrepreneurial ecosystem, recently released its latest report, The Untold Toll: The Impact of stress on the well-being of startup founders and CEOs .

Clearly, the emotional state of founders and entrepreneurs in any period, especially now in this economic environment, is a critical driver of success. Yet the emotional, cognitive, and physical toll that founding and leading a startup takes is dangerously overlooked and rarely spoken about. 

Startup Snapshot is illuminating the current state of the startup mindset through global data collected from hundreds of founders in startups of all sizes, in all verticals. It’s the largest study of its kind. And it is honest and gritty, with no punches pulled.

• The startup grind takes a major toll on a founder’s mental health. 72% of founders reported that the entrepreneurial journey affected their mental health, 37% suffered from anxiety, and 36% from burnout.
• Founders are known for their innovative spirit, but in terms of therapy, they are stuck in the past. Only 23% of founders report going to a psychologist or coach.
• 50% of founders report a negative stigma around professional mental health support. Surprisingly, the stigma is higher for younger founders, with 59% of founders under 35 reporting a negative stigma, compared to only 47% of founders over 35. 
• Founders mask the stress, and it catches up to them. 81% of founders reported they do not openly share their stress, fears, and challenges, worried that vulnerability could affect their reputation or chances of success. 
• Venture capitalists need serious self-reflection as their portfolio companies don’t turn to them for support. Only 10% of founders reported that they talk to their investors about their stressors, worried that transparency could affect their chances of securing additional funding. 

Startup Snapshot is continuing to research founder mental health, if you want to take part in normalizing the dialogue around this important topic, reach out to yael@ybenjamin.com .

After my post about the Founder Mental Health Pledge , I received a note from Kari Palazzari, the Executive Director of Studio Arts Boulder , a local nonprofit that manages a community pottery studio. She lamented that very few members of the Boulder startup community seem to take advantage of their programs.

She said, “Studio Arts Boulder would love to help support the Founder Mental Health Pledge.”

A couple of my local colleagues have taken classes at the pottery studio, and they speak avidly about the impact of working with clay. It helped them be less stressed and more focused, which makes a big difference when tackling a startup’s unique problems. Kari said, “People come out of the studio less twitchy, for sure.”

There’s a lot of data about the impact of the arts. Making art, in particular, helps combat anxiety and depression. It improves cognitive function by making our brains more resilient and flexible, which means we become more creative problem-solvers all around. 

We can tackle the mental health challenges within our industry in many ways, and I encourage more of us to try art. Start small with a date night – offered by Studio Arts Boulder every Saturday. Or better yet, schedule a private program for your team at your office or in the pottery studio.

And if clay isn’t your jam, early next year, Studio Arts Boulder is opening a new facility that will include woodworking, blacksmithing, printmaking, and glass art studios. How cool is that?

Since the middle of last week, there has been extreme stress on founders, startup leaders, and the extended startup community. This stress accelerated on Friday when the FDIC shut down and took over Silicon Valley Bank. By late Friday, anyone who banked with SVB was concerned about … well … everything.

Once it became clear that payroll accounts needed to be funded on Monday to make Wednesday’s payroll, we focused on the immediate short-term to ensure our portfolio companies’ thousands of employees got paid on time. We bank at SVB, so our maneuverability was also unknown, so we searched for what I’d consider heroic options from various sources.

While this de-escalated on Sunday night after the US Government took decisive action, the level of stress and anxiety, especially for first-time founders, was extreme. I had many 1:1 conversations, emails, and messages with our portfolio company CEOs, along with several open Zoom lines where people could ask questions and just commiserate and feel part of a shared community. Much of this focused on addressing the immediate problem. But, many founders told me that just feeling part of a larger community was helpful.

Much will be written about this. Maybe I’ll get around to my version someday.

But, once again, I saw and experienced the extreme stress and anxiety that founders, CEOs, and leaders of startup companies face almost daily. It reinforced the importance to me of continuing to help destigmatize mental health (and mental fitness) issues across the startup community.

Yesterday, Aaron Gershenberg, a long-time friend and LP of ours from SVB Capital, emailed an introduction to Naveed Lalani, Founder & CEO of Pioneer Mind. Naveed has launched a Founder Mental Health Pledge for Investors and Startup Leaders. 

He’s announcing the first supporters tonight. Foundry is supporting it as a firm, and I’m supporting it personally along with my partner Jaclyn Hester.

If you are interested in signing Founder Mental Health Pledge for Investors and Startup Leaders, please email Naveed at naveed@pioneermind.com  

The pledge follows:

We make a commitment to take an active role in encouraging mental healthcare for founders and the greater startup community.

We pledge to encourage the founders we partner with to invest in their personal mental health and build a workplace culture that promotes mental health. 

Ensuring the mental health of founders and their teams is crucial and leads to the highest probability of startup success. We pledge to be supportive of founders treating the direct cost of caring for their mental health as a legitimate, worthwhile, and encouraged business expense – including therapy, coaching, group support, and app-based solutions. Founders should look at their mental health as a business priority.

David Cohen and I have co-hosted the Give First podcast for 71 episodes. I think our host ratio is 80/20 David/Brad, and he’s covered everything in 2021 because I was burned out on all things public-facing and needed a break.

He figured a good way to get me back in the mix would be to interview me about entrepreneurship and mental health, so that’s what Episode 71 is about.

Listen & subscribe to the Give First podcast on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , and more .

It’s time for the 2nd annual Emerge Virtual 5k Run produced by Rise Against Suicide (formerly Second Wind Fund of Boulder County). It’ll be from 8:00 am to Midnight MT on Sunday, May 2, 2021. Amy and I are helping underwrite it as we did last year and I just signed up to run it.

Rise Against Suicide provides access to funded counseling services for at-risk youth struggling with suicidal ideation in the geographic areas included in Boulder Valley School District and St. Vrain Valley School District. Youth up to the age of 19 who are at elevated risk for suicide, uninsured, or underinsured are eligible for funded counseling services through Rise Against Suicide. The organization receives referrals from private and public elementary, middle and high schools, community social workers, psychologists and mental health professionals, hospitals, and mental health facilities. Within hours of receiving a request for help, at-risk youth can be connected with qualified, private therapists. This immediate response is unique to Rise Against Suicide. 

The mental health crisis has been dramatically accelerated as part of the Covid crisis. Now, more than ever, communities need to engage with and help support organizations that provide mental health related services. Recently, this challenge has been particularly acute with children our community given the unique stressors of the Covid crisis.

The Emerge Virtual 5k Run is free to anyone, but also provides an opportunity to give financial support to Rise Against Suicide. Please join us.

The Covid crisis has generated an extraordinary amount of what I like to call “false reassurance.”

Consider how many times you heard something general like the following some time in 2020.

• Everything is going to be ok.
• We will get through this pandemic.
• Things will go back to normal.
• You’ll look back on this as a unique time in your life.

Or, consider all of the messages you heard about the severity of the disease over the past year. Most of the messaging, until recently, was not “79,000 people in the US are going to die of Covid in the first 26 days of 2021.”

Or, “By the end of January 2021, over 425,000 people in the US will have died of Covid.”

It’s tough to focus on what is actually happening and what to do when bombarded by false reassurance. It doesn’t matter what the context is – Covid, business, relationships, health, sports, …

Pema Chödrön’s book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times is a powerful place to start when considering false reassurance. But, an even more grounding place is Jerry Colonna’s comment that “things are falling apart all the time.”

I’ve always loved the clichés about mortality, such as “Life is a fatal disease” or “Life is a process of continual oxidation.” I’m sure the physics majors out there can add to the clichés, especially since entropy always wins in the long run.

Amy and I work hard to eliminate false reassurance in our life. Instead of saying, “It’s going to be ok,” we try to address what is in front of us. Instead of denying reality, we deal with it. I try to do this in my work, although it’s much harder as the number of people in a system increase beyond two.

2020 has been brutal for many people, on many different dimensions. I expect 2021 will continue to be brutal, in some similar ways, but many that are different. There will be wonderful things mixed in, but they won’t be distributed evenly or equitably.

If you defer your own reality because of false reassurances, consider what would change if you deleted the false reassurance and started considering what was directly in front of you.

Mental health has been an issue among tech entrepreneurs for a long time, but has been exacerbated by the stresses of the Covid crisis.

On March 31, I wrote a post called The Three Crises  in which I suggested that the Covid crisis was the collision of three crises, each of which is a complex system. The health crisis (the disease) created the economic crisis (our economy was in strong shape before Covid), which would accelerate a mental health crisis. In the US, we have a fourth crisis amplified – the racial equity crisis – which has been going on since the inception of our country.

Since these are complex systems, they are interconnected and don’t have a deterministic outcome. There are endless unintended consequences from actions in one crisis that have long term and unexpected impacts on other of the crises.

Humans are not built to be isolated in their homes for months at a time. Founders, who are already under immense pressure from many directions, now have to contend with that dynamic for themselves in an uncertain business environment, connected only by video conferencing and email to their teams, investors, and customers. At the same time, there is no relief from the endless intensity of creating and leading a business.

It should be no surprise that the mental health part of the crisis is real and accelerating. Toss in the dissonance in our society. Some tech companies stock prices are at record highs, while established businesses are in a complete retreat or freefall. Many small businesses are on the verge of extinction – ponder all the local retail businesses and restaurants in your city. Local and state governments are under economic and functional stress. We have record unemployment and a macro communication environment (media, politics, news) that is divisive rather than unifying. We are in an election year in the US. Oh yeah, and the disease.

Fortunately, the stigma associated with mental health, especially among founders, is lessening. It’s still real, but more are talking about it. There are many more coaching options like Reboot  to help founders, CEOs, and leaders through this. There are companies, like Meru Health  (which we recently funded) that are working to make mental health services more broadly accessible and affordable. And, many leaders are speaking out regularly about their struggles with their mental health, making it much easier to start and navigate conversations about mental health.

In the future, I hope we are much more effective as a species around addressing and helping with mental health issues. The sooner we can eliminate the stigma around mental health, especially in entrepreneurship, the better.

I got a note from someone who recently saw my Techstars mental health video . He said that could relate to how I describe depression as the “absence of joy.” He went on to write me a long, thoughtful, and brave note about his experience with depression.

One thing stood out to me was a statement near the end:

“I can’t convince myself to “speak to someone” because it feels wrong if I am paying them. It doesn’t feel whole.“

I responded with a long note that follows:

When I was in my mid-20s, I had my first major depressive episode (it lasted over two years – very deep clinical depression.) I was functional at work, but that was it. Zero anything else …

I resisted therapy for about a year. I was ashamed of many things, including how I felt. I didn’t think someone would be able to help me. Early on, my dad, who is a retired endocrinologist, said to me, “Just shake it off” which was profoundly unhelpful, but just reinforced my shame.

Finally, my PhD advisor said something like, “Brad, there is no downside to trying therapy. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But if it does, it’ll make a big difference. It did for me. Give it a one year commitment. Here’s the name and phone number of my long-term therapist.”

It still took me a while to call. I did, and committed to a year.

It changed my life. I ended therapy in my late 20s, but started again (with a new therapist) at 47 when I had another major depressive episode.

The way I think about it is that I “go to planet Brad for 50 minutes a week.” (I now go every other week). My therapist gets to hang out with me on planet Brad. Sometimes he guides me into a new part of the planet that I haven’t yet explored. Sometimes we get out shovels and dig holes in the ground to look for buried treasure. Sometimes we sit on a rock together and just stare into the distance. And lots of other things that you would do with a guide on a planet as you explore around.

About a year ago, I had a massive depression for a short time (less than a week) that in hindsight was induced by ambien. I rarely take ambien, but was on a multi-week international trip, had a bad cold, and was having trouble sleeping. About 10 days into the trip I feel off an emotion cliff into one of the deepest holes I’d ever experienced. Fortunately, I was safe and with my wife Amy, and after about three days realized it might be the ambien after randomly surfing around on the web looking at depression+travel and other stuff like that. 48 hours I was fine. 

Three days of complete absence of joy was awful. But I knew I could call my therapist in an emergency if I needed to. I was a few days away from going home and had a session right after I got home, so just knowing he was there helped a lot.

Therapy isn’t “the only answer”, but – like my PhD suggested many years ago, there’s no downside to trying.

The Covid crisis has generated, or amplified, a number of separate crises. One of them is a mental health (or mental wellness) crisis. As humans, our entire way of living has been dramatically impacted by Covid. We are isolated from each other, many of us are afraid of being in public, and we are feeling enormous weight from economic, social, familial, and organization pressure.

One of our goals with Energize Colorado is to create a non-profit for the extended business community of “Coloradans helping Coloradans”. We decided to make providing Mental Health Resources one of the primary initiatives.

The Energize Colorado website has a comprehensive list of mental health resources that are available, but here are two new ones.

Free or low-cost therapy or mental health support with a licensed therapist : As of the other day, we currently have therapists in Colorado who have donated a total of up to 1,000 free hours. If you are a therapist and you are open to donating up to five hours of free therapy, please sign up on the Therapist Volunteer page .

3 Free months of Simple Habit : Sign up to access meditations, sleep content, and movement exercises, designed to help you care for your mind — all free for 3 months.

Also, Energize Colorado now has a mailing list so you can stay informed on upcoming webinars as well as information from Energize Colorado.

Techstars just released a 4-part original video series on entrepreneurship and mental health. I’m featured in one of the four short (< 10 minute) videos.

If there was ever a moment in time that challenged our individual and collective mental health, it’s the Covid crisis. When Techstars began working on this project last year, the focus was on increasing awareness of the issues around mental health and entrepreneurship. There was no anticipation of the additional pressure the Covid crisis would put on – well – everyone, everywhere. The timing goal was simply to release it during Mental Health Month 2020 .

I’ve spoken regularly since 2013 about my struggles with anxiety and depression. As a result of a depressive episode that I had, I decided that I wanted to try to lower the stigma, especially in entrepreneurship, around mental health issues. I personally no longer separate between physical health and mental health – they are both part of our existence as humans, something everyone struggles with at some level, and something everyone can work on, if they want.

I’m officially DSM-5 300.3: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder . If you know me, you know that I’m a counter, arranger, and checker with some washing (mostly hands) tossed in for good measure . My magic number is 3.

Since I became public about this in 2013, I’ve met many entrepreneurs who have opened up to me about their own struggles. In some cases, I’m the first person they’ve ever talked to because of the stigma associated with mental health issues, especially around leadership (e.g. a leader can’t show weakness). Some of the people I’ve developed relationships with around this are much more visible and successful than I am, yet, very few people know that they struggle with mental health issues. While that’s their choice, I’m glad they feel safe talking to me and I hope it’s at least a little bit helpful to them.

My wife Amy Batchelor is front and center in this video. When I listen to her talk about her experience with me around these issues, I realize how incredibly lucky I am to have a partner who has supported me from the very beginning. I know how challenging I can be at times, and I don’t think I’d be here, at this point in my life, without Amy.

I also highlight my first business partner Dave Jilk in the video. Dave is still one of my closest friends and probably knows me better than anyone on Planet Earth other than Amy and my brother Daniel. Dave’s support of me during my first depressive episode – when we were partners at Feld Technologies – was profound to me. And his support during my depressive episode in 2013 (which is a story I tell in the video) was incredible.

Many of the organizations I’m involved in are increasing their focus on mental health support. For example, one of the primary initiatives of Energize Colorado is mental health support for business people during the Covid crisis. And, there’s a lot more coming in my world.

Techstars – thanks for making this a priority for entrepreneurs. And to my fellow participants in the video series – Andrea Perdomo and Matthew Helt – thank you for being brave enough to tell your stories. Finally, Tishin Donkersley, thank you for the foresight, motivation, and endless efforts to make this project come to life.

Covid-19. Presidential Primaries. Gyrations in the Stock Market. Global Pandemic. Trisolarians arriving in their droplet to exterminate us.

It’s pretty intense out there right now. Somewhere. But not in my backyard where my dogs roam around.

I was in the hospital recently, attached to those devices they attach you to that monitor everything. I was trying to relax by closing my eyes, breathing deeply and slowly, and meditating. Every 30 seconds or so something beeped. After a few minutes of that, I asked the nurse if he could turn off the beeping. He looked at it and said my HR was going below 60 so that’s why it was beeping. I told him my resting HR is low 50s and could he turn the beeping off. He said he couldn’t turn it off because he needed to be alerted whenever my HR went below 60. I suddenly identified with Kafka.

People conflate worry, stress, and anxiety all the time, but they are different. Worry and stress create anxiety. There are different ways of dealing with each of them, and addressing them individually is better than thinking about them as a big clump of things bundled together. Or, not addressing them at all. But all three get in the way of concentrating on, well, anything.

When I’m worried, I realize that my obsessive worrying has negative value. Instead, I write down what I’m worried about and decide whether I can do something about it. If I can, I do. If I can’t, I don’t and let it go.

When I’m stressed, I focus on understanding what I can and can’t control. I put my energy against what I can control. I let go of what I can’t control. I exercise more and sleep more.

When I’m anxious, I slow things down. I take deep breaths. I sit quietly until the anxiety passes.

I sense an enormous amount of worry, stress, and anxiety around me with many of the people I interact with. I’ve always been a huge absorber of other people’s worry, stress, and anxiety, which is a strength of mine, but at a real cost to me. Figuring out how to continue to be an absorber, without it having as much of a cost to me has been an important part of my last few years. I notice this more as things amp up, and they are pretty amped up right now.

If you are feeling any of this, consider how you are dealing with it and what it is doing to you. Take action on what you can impact and let the rest go.

Yesterday, Josh Felser of Freestyle Ventures wrote a post titled For the Love of Founders and their mental health . In it, he discussed his own struggles with mental health as an entrepreneur.

“Like so many others I just sucked it up, grinded away and punted, hoping for relief down the road. That strategy of denial and repression worked until it didn’t. My founder stress and burnout couldn’t be contained despite my best efforts. In fact, my mental unhealthiness impacted my physical health, by causing debilitating sleep apnea, as diagnosed by UCSF and missed by Stanford (but that is another post). I sold my 2nd company, Crackle, and vowed to leave the high anxiety of being a founder for the relatively easy life of venture, not that it’s actually easy. I was lucky to have exited Crackle before my situation worsened and ultimately found the relief I desperately needed to feel whole again.“

More importantly, he talked about his fear of discussing it with his investors.

“Unsurprisingly, my investors, back then, never once inquired about my mental state and certainly didn’t offer any resources I could tap. In fact if I’d shared my actual state of mind, I would probably have been fired or at the very least encouraged ostensibly to take time off. Those were the times.“

Thankfully, this is changing, in part to leadership by firms like Freestyle. The partners, Josh, David Samuel, and Jenny Lefcourt have announced an initiative initially focused on their portfolio founders in an effort to break down the barriers to better mental health for all in our industry.

To begin, they are underwriting 100% of the cost for two programs – Meru Health and Hoffman Institute , for all of their founders.

• Meru Health is a three-month digital program for treating depression, anxiety, and burnout that leverages remote therapists/psychiatrists, CBT, meditation, and biofeedback.
• Hoffman Institute is a one-week intensive on-site program, leveraging therapy, meditation, experiential exercises and peer-to-peer community, designed to break the most formative negative patterns from our childhood.

I’m fortunate that I have a strong, long-term relationship with a psychologist who works with entrepreneurs. However, he, like many others in the field, is extremely busy so even though he is open to referrals from me, he is limited in who he can take on as a client. Part of the challenge here is the time delay that a referral takes, and Meru Health is an impressive approach to providing rapid response care in a specialized way with an economic model that can work in entrepreneurial contexts.

The Hoffman Institute was new to me, but after spending some time on the website, I went and signed up to attend one of the week-long retreats. While I feel like I’ve explored – in therapy – some of the things they talk about, I know that I’m still struggling with a bunch of this, especially as I shift into the next phase of my life.

As an LP in Freestyle, I’m extremely excited to see their leadership in this area. While they are not the first firm to announce an initiative like this – last year Felicis Ventures gifted Founders 1% Of Every Invested Dollar To Spend On Coaching And Mental Health – I’m hopeful that this is addition momentum in an area that needs a lot more attention, support, and help.

Josh, David, Jenny – thank you!

Over the weekend, we spent time with a friend who works for Ten Percent Happier .

I’ve explored most of the popular meditation apps in the past few years after getting started meditating on a regular basis by using Headspace . I eventually switched to Insight Timer since I usually now just do silent meditation for 20 minutes first thing each morning.

I had never tried Ten Percent Happier, but I felt connected to it because of Ben Rubin, one of the co-founders. We looked seriously at investing in Ben’s prior company Zeo early in the life of Foundry (around the time we invested in Fitbit) and I had several Zeo’s scattered around my world that I used regularly. When I had the headband on, Amy referred to me as “King Brad” which was about the only redeeming thing that happened when I had the headband on (other than getting some data about my sleep.)

On Sunday, I downloaded Ten Percent Happier and gave it a try. I’ve been doing it alongside my 20 minutes of silence with Insight Timer and have been really enjoying. The onboarding is extremely clean and the first teacher – Joseph Goldstein – is spectacular.

I’ve applied beginners’ mind to my Ten Percent Happier use. While I meditate regularly, I’m listening carefully to what Goldstein says. He’s one of the founders of the Insight Meditation movement in the west and his tiny, bite-sized starting points are incredibly poignant. I remember having similar aha moments when I started up with Headspace, so I don’t have a strong opinion as to which is better, but my beginner’s mind has been well-nourished the past few days.

If you are interested in meditation and mindfulness and just want to see what it’s above, give the Ten Percent Happier app a try. It’s got a 7-day free trial to give you a taste to see if it’s for you.

Recently, I read a well-written article in Fast Company by Jon Dishotsky titled We need to be more honest about what tech culture is doing to our mental health.

In it, he had a list of lessons he has learned over the years.

• Look out for your wake-up call
• Create routines that prioritize mental health
• Work in line with your body’s rhythm
• Make time for silence
• Find space to unplug
• Give your emotions credit
• Cultivate (and listen to) your inner circle

These mental health suggestions are all right on the money. I encourage you to go read the article if this is a topic that interests you.

Insight Timer popped up this message after my daily morning meditation yesterday.

I’ve been meditating on and off for a while. But it’s been an on and off thing, not a daily habit.

In April, after some complex emotional dynamics (how’s that for a euphemism), I decided to start meditating daily. I missed a few days here and there and then in mid-May decided to cut the bullshit with myself and just do it first thing every morning when I woke up.

Last week, both Fred Wilson and Seth Godin blogged about the power of streaks and how they’ve both built daily blogging habits. Fred highlighted the same section of Seth’s post that I’m highlighting below, which is just pure gold.

Streaks are their own reward.
Streaks create internal pressure that keeps streaks going.
Streaks require commitment at first, but then the commitment turns into a practice, and the practice into a habit.
Habits are much easier to maintain than commitments.

I made a conscious decision many years ago that I wouldn’t blog daily, but regularly, partly in reaction to my desire to go off the grid for chunks of time (digital sabbath, weekends, weeks, or even longer in some cases.) I didn’t want the blog to be a habit that I did daily, but then took vacations from.

I’m the same with running. It’s a deeply developed habit that I love, but I know the importance of rest, so I don’t try to run every day.

But, for me, meditation is different. I’m 90 days into a daily routine and it has definitely become a habit. It’ll be interesting to see if the streak lasts 180 days, or 365 days, or 3653 days.

I’m a huge fan of Elizabeth Kraus, Sue Heilbronner, and the work they do through MergeLane .

Recently Elizabeth started a platform for the next generation of venture capitalists called Fund81 . It includes a podcast , which has both a public section for everyone and a private section for the Fund81 members.

Elizabeth recently interviewed me for Episode 13 where we talked about maintaining mental health in the fast-paced venture capital world while supporting portfolio companies, colleagues, friends, and family wrestling with mental health issues. The public section follows.

Elizabeth and Sue – thanks for everything you and the team at MergeLane do for entrepreneurs and now other VCs.

This first appeared in the Boulder Community Health Foundation Summer 2019 Magazine in an article titled Taking On The Mental Health Stigma.

I started the second week of 2013 in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. Within two hours of arriving, I was in my hotel room, the shade closed, the door locked, and in bed with a pillow over my head. I couldn’t deal with anything at all. Having been here before, I knew I was in a deep depression.

From all external perspectives, my life was going great. I was healthy, my business (Foundry Group) was successful, I had an excellent marriage to Amy Batchelor, was surrounded by numerous friends, and I got to live in Boulder, Colorado. But I was physiologically exhausted from 2012. I’d run an ultra-marathon in the spring that I never recovered from, had a near-death bike accident, and squeezed a marathon in October when I had no business running one. I was on the road 75% of the time, working constantly, dealing with the explosive growth of several of our investments while struggling through the challenges at others while writing two books. Ending up with a kidney stone in November that required surgery and a month of rest should have been the warning I needed to slow it all down and take care of myself.

I’m fortunate that my wife, business partners, family, and friends are helpful to me when I’m depressed. I’m in a privileged position of having the financial resources to do whatever I need to do. I have a job that provides me a lot of flexibility. And I’m no longer afraid of being depressed or ashamed of being public about my struggles with depression and anxiety.

I had my first major depressive episode in my mid-20s. While I probably had been depressed prior to that, I never really processed it as depression. I was one of those kids who was successful at almost everything I tried, loved by my parents, and comfortable growing up. One day I found myself in the middle of a divorce, being kicked out of a Ph.D. program, and bored of my work at my first company, even though it was successful. I was lucky to have a Ph.D. advisor who was able to recommend a psychiatrist to me. I was quickly diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and again lucky to have a psychiatrist who was able to combine CBT and medication to help me overcome OCD while providing a safe space for me to explore my underlying anxiety disorder and the root causes of it.

At the time, I was incredibly ashamed of everything around my depression. I was ashamed that I was depressed. I hated that I took medicine. I was terrified that someone would find out that I was going to a psychiatrist. I was afraid to tell anyone I worked with, other than my business partner, that I was depressed. I thought CEOs and leaders had to be strong and show no weakness.

Again, I was lucky. My business partner Dave was supportive, even when he didn’t really know what to do. My new girlfriend (now my wife) Amy didn’t view me like a broken toy she needed to fix but rather acknowledged that I was going through a difficult time as we began our relationship. I had several friends and family members who showed up for me.

During my 2013 depressive episode, I blogged openly about my struggles and what I did. Since I was no longer ashamed of being depressed, I thought it might be helpful to talk about things. I had a large audience of readers and quickly ended up interviewed by a number of national business publications, including Inc. and Fortune. Several high-profile entrepreneurs had recently committed suicide and mental health was starting to be talked about in entrepreneurial circles, so I became a visible example of a successful entrepreneur who struggled with depression but was willing to discuss it.

The combination of these experiences and my liberation from my shame surrounding depression helped me realize how pernicious the stigma around depression is in our society. I ended up talking with hundreds of entrepreneurs about their own experience with mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and mania. In many cases, I was the first person, including family members, that they had ever discussed their struggles with.

I decided that part of my mission on this planet would be to help destigmatize the issues surrounding mental health. I won’t be done with this until we have achieved parity between prioritizing mental and physical health. Instead of being a stigmatized health issue, we need to talk about and treat mental health as we would any other physical health challenge. Cancer used to be a death sentence; now many cancers are treatable. Smallpox and polio were deeply misunderstood and mistreated; now they are largely eradicated. Diabetes, once a mysterious and crippling disease, is well understood and easily treated in most cases. Destigmatizing mental health issues and removing the barriers to care are critical to addressing and treating mental health diseases.

I’m incredibly moved by the community’s support of the Bolder Community Health initiative to expand critical mental health services. When Amy and I first heard about the effort to raise money for what is now the Della Cava Family Medical Pavilion, we immediately committed to getting involved. We are honored to be able to provide funding in support of the medical pavilion and for the establishment of the Anchor Point Mental Health Endowment and I’m thankful that my partners at Foundry Group have also provided a significant gift through our Pledge1% Fund.

Most importantly, I’m proud of everyone in our community who has supported this initiative, both functionally and financially. We are a special community at the forefront of many things in our society. Providing excellent care for people suffering and taking action to destigmatize mental health issues are important steps that we are pursuing in Boulder. Thank you to everyone who is helping us find our voice around this issue, elevate the conversation, and help destigmatize mental health.