Join the
‍Founder Mental Health Pledge

"Following the Silicon Valley Bank crisis, 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. I’m pleased to add my personal support to this movement."

"As anyone who has been on the entrepreneurial journey will tell you, building a company from scratch is a lonely and exhausting endeavor. Things go wrong more often than they go right. Your life is an endless list of intractable problems. And the pressure, once it takes hold of you, rarely lets up. That is why it’s so important that as an ecosystem, we continue to prioritize our personal mental health, that of our teams and of our founders."

"The mental health of founders matters because our future is in their hands. 80% of net new jobs are created by companies that are less than five years old. The visionary entrepreneurs that build these companies give us full employment today plus breakthrough solutions for the challenges of tomorrow. Econa researchers have found that 3% of entrepreneurs make suicide attempts and 1.7% experience psychiatric hospitalization. This is unacceptable. Entrepreneurs take care of us. It’s time for us to take care of them as well."

"Too often, founders and other folks who join startups lose their way and find themselves struggling to stay mentally well. Worse still, when we merge our sense of self-worth with endeavors like our companies, it is not only us who pay the price but those who love us--our partners, our families, and even our children.  It's not enough that we normalize talking about our struggles to maintain mental well-being. While normalizing the struggle is important, it's time that we made investments in mental well-being tools an essential component of investing in companies."

"Like other investments in optimizing business performance, paying for a founder to receive support is simply an investment in the business’s future performance. Founders deserve access to the same tools and techniques that help all high performers be their best when it matters most. That’s why we’re bringing mental performance to the founder community — it’s a way to help founders make meaningful progress on something they care about, their own performance, and to engage with a professional that’s there to  serve them and their business."

"I wish more founders realized that they do not have to go it alone. A range of mental health experts and coaches are much more accessible than founders realize. Working with the right expert can be a game changer to a founder's personal well-being, productivity, creativity, communication, and overall well-being. It is a very small investment of time and resources given the potential gains for the business and the human lives involved."

"The mental health and wellbeing of founders is often overlooked, yet it’s critical to their business. Founders who are mentally well make better business decisions, are more creative and persistent. Therefore, their businesses thrive. Nurturing founder mental well-being is likely one of the most cost-effective investments for success."

"The upside of supporting an entrepreneur's mental health far outweighs the cost to do so. A more resilient entrepreneur — one who is developing more control over their mind and emotions — is an entrepreneur that can run a company longer, build a healthy and productive work environment, and make better decisions across all aspects of their company."

"Mental health is a deeply personal and important topic for me. Since founding Brex, I’ve been deeply ingrained in the startup community.  I’ve seen many founders succeed and build great companies, but I’ve also seen others quit prematurely and not reach their full potential because of the impact the job has on their mental health. It’s a sad and limiting situation for the tech ecosystem, and one that founders, investors, and executives should deeply care about."

"As a founder, the steps you take to protect your mental health are constant, and frankly, it's the most strategic dimension of your success. If investing in startups becomes a more meaningful part of my life, one of the very first themes I'll explore with my founders is their well-being plan, and how I might provide guidance in that regard. If a founder doesn't have an active strategy to protect their mental health, it's a red flag, as much as it's a red flag to have investors who are not actively supporting their portfolio companies in this way, if only to protect their investment itself."