How Founders Can Cope With The Emotional Roller Coaster Of Entrepreneurship

Asking for money from friends and family. Pitching skeptical customers who don’t know you. Shipping a half-finished product on deadline.

Anyone launching a company knows they’re in for a wild ride, financially and emotionally. By now it’s a cliché that entrepreneurs possess a combination of narcissism, craziness and wild-eyed optimism that distinguishes them from the rest of humanity. But less-talked about is the mental toll that starting up takes on founders, from the crises of confidence that inevitably occur to the highs when things go right.

In an intimate essay last year, Dale Stephens wrote about how his energy and early optimism while launching UnCollege, a startup aimed at fixing what he felt was wrong with higher education, morphed quickly into crippling anxiety that left him unable to leave his home. Other founders have talked publicly in recent years about their emotional health, particularly after high-profile suicides. Internet entrepreneur Ben Huh took to his blog to discuss how he had considered harming himself after his first company crashed. Startup investor Sean Percival implored colleagues to get help after a death that affected him.

But less has been said about whether entrepreneurs can harness their creative energy and drive for success without having to suffer the fallout.

There’s some truth that entrepreneurs exhibit signs of mental illness in increased proportion to others. In a widely cited 2015 study, about half of a group of entrepreneurs surveyed reported having one or more lifetime mental health conditions compared with about one-third for a control group. Depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and substance abuse were among those conditions reported at much higher rates than the control group.

Mental health problems might, on one hand, signal that entrepreneurs gain some benefit from these conditions, the researchers wrote. On the other hand, they might suffer equally as a result. Finding ways to boost the benefits while limiting the harm could help entrepreneurs and society as a whole. Some of that nuance was lost in some media reports. “Crazy good: How mental illnesses help entrepreneurs thrive” is how a Washington Post headline set up the story.

While the ups and downs of startup life can’t be avoided, all tech entrepreneurs can follow strategies to minimize the harm to themselves, and thus to their employees and the firms they oversee. The startup culture should look for more systematic ways to address mental health problems.

Entrepreneurs need to recognize that success can’t define their self-worth and that being scared is OK. No less a tech titan than Intel co-founder Andy Grove admitted, “I left a very secure job where I knew what I was doing and started running R&D for a brand new venture in untried territory. It was terrifying.”

Entrepreneurs must be prepared to deliver bad news and admit when things aren’t going their way. CEOs must always focus on solutions to problems, but that doesn’t mean faking it—investors, employees and customers value honesty.

Entrepreneurs must get help when they need it. UnCollege’s Dale Stephens resisted doing so, until he had no options left. That decision to seek help saved him, but too few have heeded Stephens’ lesson. In a survey last year of Canadian entrepreneurs, less than one-fifth reported seeking professional mental health aid, primarily due to the fear of stigma and the cost of care. Both of those reasons should be addressed by the startup community, but entrepreneurs have to be ready to ask for help. They must learn that they can’t deliver for employees if they’re suffering.