In my latest article, I give highlights from my conversation with Lisa Mikkelsen, Head of Global Human Capital at Flourish Ventures. She shared a statistic that should alarm every investor and founder: only 10% of founders will go to their VCs when something is going wrong.
Let that sink in: Nine out of ten founders are navigating their most challenging moments alone, afraid that showing vulnerability will cost them everything.
This is the paradox at the heart of entrepreneurship. We celebrate founders as bold risk-takers, yet we’ve created a culture where they can’t admit when they’re struggling.
As Lisa put it in our conversation, “As a founder, you’re supposed to project this image that you’ve got everything figured out. You’ve got everything under control. You can’t show any sort of weakness.”
But here’s what we’re missing: that mask of control is killing innovation, destroying mental health, and ironically, reducing the very chances of success we’re all betting on.
The Duck Syndrome: Paddling Furiously Beneath the Surface
When Lisa described the biggest barrier to founder flourishing, an image immediately came to mind: a duck, gliding serenely across water while its feet paddle frantically beneath the surface. This is the daily reality for most founders.
The birthing of a company is fundamentally about navigating uncertainty. You’re testing whether an idea should exist, can exist, will be adopted. There’s so much that’s genuinely not in control. Yet founders feel compelled to portray a reality that doesn’t exist, one where they have all the answers, where the path is clear, where doubt never creeps in.
What would become possible if we acknowledged the truth? As I asked Lisa, “What if we were vulnerable enough to say, listen, I have an idea. I’m passionate about figuring it out. I haven’t got it figured out. And actually have a different pathway?”
Her response: “That openness and vulnerability lends ourselves to more of a growth mindset anyway, where we’re like, hey, I mostly believe in this. Here’s what I think. But obviously there’s these other things that might go wrong.”
The Olympian Feat We’re Not Preparing For
We know that high performance requires holistic wellbeing. I work with national governing bodies in the US Olympic movement and these organizations understand that Olympian-level performance demands physical, emotional, social, mental, spiritual, and occupational wellbeing.
Yet when it comes to founders, who are attempting an equally Olympian feat against staggering odds, we act as if wellbeing is optional. As if you can defer sleep, sacrifice relationships, and ignore mental health until you reach some mythical milestone of success.
There’s a beautiful teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh where he says people should do a six-month meditation course before getting married. I told Lisa, “I think before people start startups, they should do a six-month meditation course to prepare their mind and body.” If you wouldn’t climb Kilimanjaro without preparation, why would you start a company, an equally arduous journey.
The data backs this up. Research from Dr. Michael Freeman showing that founders are three times more likely to have depression, three times more likely to have bipolar disorder. The entrepreneurial population is significantly more at risk for debilitating mental illness.
And here’s the crucial insight: “Everyone has experienced stress and anxiety, whether or not they are thriving or just surviving,” Lisa noted. This isn’t about a few struggling founders. This is universal. Which means if you’re struggling and you think you’re alone, you’re not. In fact, you’re in the vast majority.
The Maslow Trap: When Survival Mode Becomes the Default
I’ve been thinking a lot about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and how it applies to startups. Most of us in the Western world have our basic needs met, safety, food, shelter. We can focus on relationships and self-actualization because we’re not in survival mode.
But here’s the trap: when you start a company, you often drop back down to the base of a smaller pyramid. Suddenly, you don’t know if the business will survive. You’ve taken a financial hit. You have fifty people depending on you. And so you tell yourself: “I’ll sleep later. I’ll take care of this when the time is right. I’ll be civil and present once I know the business will exist tomorrow.”
But this creates a vicious cycle. “If you’re not having these cycles of rest, if you’re not able to regenerate, your creativity tanks, your ability to communicate tanks, all of these negative elements come out.”
You’re on a fast path to burnout, operating at 30-50% capacity exactly when you need your fullest creativity and highest performance.
What Actually Works: The Flourish Ventures Approach
So what’s the alternative? Lisa and her team at Flourish Ventures are pioneering a different model of venture capital, one that puts founder wellbeing at the center, not the periphery.
Their approach is holistic and includes three key interventions:
- Direct Support : Funding for coaching and therapy, recognizing that founders will need support on their journey. As Lisa explained, “If you’re successful, we know there’s a higher chance of the business being successful than if you’re not successful.”
- Community : CEO communities that meet monthly, not for chest-pounding about crushing it, but for genuine, vulnerable connection. “We try to set up space where there’s an opportunity to engage at a more human, deeply vulnerable level,” Lisa shared.
- Investor Training : Teaching VCs themselves about empathy, psychological safety, and how to create trust. This includes understanding the power paradox, that “the more you are in a position of power, the less likely you are to connect and relate to someone who is on the other side of the table.
“This last point is crucial. As Lisa wisely noted, “Why don’t you share what you need to do and what is on your mind and your stressors in a way that opens up the vulnerability pathway so that we can start having real conversations?”
The 60% Solution: It’s All About Relationships
Harvard’s landmark study, spanning over 80 years and now following three generations, has consistently found that 60% of life satisfaction, success, and outcomes are driven by the quality of our relationships. Not intelligence. Not wealth. Not even hard work. Relationships.
This matters profoundly for founders. Building a company isn’t a solo endeavor. It’s built on relationships, with co-founders, with employees, with investors, with customers. When we create cultures where vulnerability is weakness and asking for help is failure, we’re undermining the very foundation of success.
The Work Ahead: Individual and Systemic Change
Here’s a truth I hold deeply: No amount of individual flourishing will help unless you work on both the individual and the system. Individuals shape systems, and systems shape us.
The McKinsey Health Institute, research shows that 97% of burnout factors are at the job, team, or organizational level. Only 3% are individual. Yet we keep focusing primarily on individual resilience.
We need both. We need founders to practice self-awareness, to disconnect daily (even for five minutes), to prioritize sleep, to build their mental fitness. And we need investors and boards to create psychologically safe environments, to ask “How are you really doing?” and not accept “fine” as an answer, to hold space for the full human experience of building something from nothing.
The Invitation
If you’re a founder reading this, here’s my invitation: You don’t have to have it all figured out. In fact, pretending you do is the biggest risk you’re taking. The vulnerability you’re afraid will cost you everything might be the very thing that unlocks your next breakthrough.
And if you’re an investor, board member, or advisor, here’s Lisa’s challenge to you: The next time you talk to a founder, start with “How are you doing?” Not the business. Them. Take a pause. Listen. And when they say “fine,” ask “How are you really?” Don’t let them off the hook. Hold the space for two minutes.
Because at the end of the day, businesses are created by people. And people who are flourishing create flourishing businesses and a flourishing world.
That’s the future worth building.
This article is inspired by a conversation between Ashish Kothari and Lisa Mikkelsen on The Flourishing Edge Podcast. Lisa is head of global human capital at Flourish Ventures, a venture capital firm pioneering conscious investing in founder wellbeing.
Learn more about Lisa Mikkelsen on LinkedIn.
Listen to the podcast with Ashish and Lisa Mikkelsen below, You can also listen on Apple Podcasts.
Access and subscribe to all of the episodes of the Flourishing Edge Podcast here.
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