Founder Mental Health Pledge

LA founders - the past few weeks have been particularly challenging for many due to the #LAfires. Pro bono founder coaching & therapy sessions are now available for LA founders through the Founder Mental Health Pledge community. Resources here: https://lnkd.in/gNG52Qtt We do not become resilient randomly. We become resilient through support and training during times of extended pressure or ongoing crisis. Please allow the community to support you at this time. For those outside LA, please send this to an LA founder you support and want to see thrive. If you'd like to add your own pro bono services, you can do so through the form here: https://lnkd.in/g_bTFci5 Thank you to the community for showing up in support of #foundermentalhealth.

The recent fires in LA have affected nearly all of us in one way or another. Many founders in our community are navigating extraordinary challenges -- particularly those in LA who have lost homes and offices while others are carrying the extra weight of supporting team members, employees, family and friends who have been affected. We are reaching out to rally the strength of our community behind LA. There are 3 ways you can join us in support: 1. Offer your services pro bono. Volunteer your expertise. If you are a coach, therapist, or other service provider and are willing to volunteer your time to support founders during this crisis, you can do so by completing the?Google Form?in the comments by Sunday, January 19th. We’ll circulate it next week. 2. Offer your LA event space for an upcoming community event. Healing begins in community. We will be hosting a dinner series for LA founders to come together in person to support each other in the recovery phase. We are looking for a space suitable for a 20-40 person gathering in January. If you have access to a gathering space, office, restaurant, or private home suitable for this, or know someone who does, please notify?Cristina Poindexter ([email protected]) 3. Financially sponsor LA founders in need. We are receiving donations from sponsors to fund upcoming LA community gatherings and to provide ongoing mental health care for founders during this time. If you, your family, or your company would like to sponsor this critical work,?please donate here. 100% of each donation will go directly to supporting LA founders in need. You can also reach out to?Jason Cavnar ([email protected]) Thank you for being a champion of founder wellbeing. - Jason, Cristina, Naveed, Brad, Claude Alan

Mental health and wellbeing shapes our collective future. If you are looking for a high-impact way to personally invest in improving lives and society before the year closes, we want to invite you to donate to the The Founder Mental Health Pledge. In less than 2 years, FMHP has grown into a movement elevating wellbeing in the tech ecosystem. 814 individuals have signed the pledge including 240 VC firms and accelerators like YC, Techstars, Antler, Benchmark, General Catalyst, Felicis, Flybridge, and more. In total, our community represents 30,000+ portfolio companies. 15 institutional VCs have already adopted the Term Sheet Clause and over 2,000 founders, funders and providers are engaged in our community. This momentum is a great start, yet we still have a lot of work to do (as you will see in the data). And we need your help. As we look ahead to 2025, we are raising money to: 1?? Strengthen investments in founder flourishing through deeper commitments (like the term sheet clause) and providing resources to pre-seed founders 2?? Elevate mental health and performance intelligence in both founders and investors with free workshops, intimate gatherings and spotlighting powerful stories and programs 3?? Partner with the world’s top psychologists and performance researchers to link business success with founder wellbeing. We want to strengthen the case for founders and funders to prioritize investing capital in the health and wellbeing of founders Your gifts can catalyze a future in which all founders -- and their companies -- flourish. See instructions in the comments. Wishing each and every one of you a happy and healthy holiday season!

What is it really like to be a founder today? Hear Andy Dunn of Bonobos, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Brian Chesky of Airbnb, Sumedha Ganjoo, Jerry Colonna, Claude Alan Woodruff, Brad Baum, and Alex Raymond speak to the founder experience like only those who’ve been in the trenches can. It’s time to shift startup culture away from hustle crisis and towards sustainable wellbeing. We do so not by telling the same stories of success after the fact (unicorn founders who win glory and accolades) but by sharing stories of founders’ truths and inner journeys. Far more common than unicorn startups are the invisible, self-sacrificial ones that hustle and struggle, leading to crisis and business failure. The prevailing culture takes a toll not just on the founder, but on their employees, investors, families, and the economy as a whole. Shifting our paradigm to founder flourishing is an economic opportunity for change. The era of glorifying hustle culture is coming to an end.? The era of prioritizing founder flourishing for humane and economic reasons is on the rise. Tomorrow’s successful founders, businesses, and investors will become such because they’ve made investments in the “weak link” at the root of it all: human vitality. It is possible to be a founder and thrive. It is possible to learn to hustle responsibly. It is possible to build more successful startups and resilient portfolios as a result. To do so requires we prioritize founder wellbeing, in earnest. Join us. ????♀? Founders: Take the pledge to prioritize your mental health as a business expense. ???? Investors: Implement our term sheet clause to re-set the norm and make it default for founders to set aside resources to support their mental health. ?? Sponsors & Donors: Reach out to our Chairman, Jason Cavnar. We're kicking off a capital raise in the new year to support our cause and our initiatives. https://lnkd.in/gXPQWWBa --- Share this to your network if you support our mission to create founders who flourish. Thank you to Sam Silverstein, Jeremy Paczos, Caden Ghen and the team at Exit 14 Productions for bringing the story to life.

What is it really like to be a founder today? Hear Andy Dunn of Bonobos, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Brian Chesky of Airbnb, Sumedha Ganjoo, Jerry Colonna, Claude Alan Woodruff, Brad Baum, and Alex Raymond speak to the founder experience like only those who’ve been in the trenches can. It’s time to shift startup culture away from hustle crisis and towards sustainable wellbeing. We do so not by telling the same stories of success after the fact (unicorn founders who win glory and accolades) but by sharing stories of founders’ truths and inner journeys. Far more common than unicorn startups are the invisible, self-sacrificial ones that hustle and struggle, leading to crisis and business failure. The prevailing culture takes a toll not just on the founder, but on their employees, investors, families, and the economy as a whole. Shifting our paradigm to founder flourishing is an economic opportunity for change. The era of glorifying hustle culture is coming to an end.? The era of prioritizing founder flourishing for humane and economic reasons is on the rise. Tomorrow’s successful founders, businesses, and investors will become such because they’ve made investments in the “weak link” at the root of it all: human vitality. It is possible to be a founder and thrive. It is possible to learn to hustle responsibly. It is possible to build more successful startups and resilient portfolios as a result. To do so requires we prioritize founder wellbeing, in earnest. Join us. ????♀? Founders: Take the pledge to prioritize your mental health as a business expense. ???? Investors: Implement our term sheet clause to re-set the norm and make it default for founders to set aside resources to support their mental health. ?? Sponsors & Donors: Reach out to our Chairman, Jason Cavnar. We're kicking off a capital raise in the new year to support our cause and our initiatives. https://lnkd.in/gXPQWWBa --- Share this to your network if you support our mission to create founders who flourish. Thank you to Sam Silverstein, Jeremy Paczos, Caden Ghen and the team at Exit 14 Productions for bringing the story to life.

Thrilled to share the news that Founder Mental Health Pledge was honored with a Leaders in Health Award by Havas and WellFounded! "Mental health is critical for the founder themselves which translates into success or failures of the company. This is a game-changer, with VCs stepping up to prioritise founder mental health as essential to business success. This initiative finally puts in writing that founders are not just allowed - but encouraged - to prioritise their wellbeing - a huge step forward for the startup world"

This has been a big year for founder wellbeing. What started as a simple Google Doc in March 2023 has grown into a thriving movement across the startup, investor, and wellbeing communities -- thanks to you. We’re excited to share our top 5 wins from 2024: 1. We've grown our advocacy and community 2. We've tangibly supported founder flourishing 3. We've welcomed new leaders to the executive team 4. We've formed research partnerships to study founder health at scale 5. We've opened up partnerships to expand the impact of our mission Click through to read our 2024 recap and watch this space as we announce our 2025 plans in the coming weeks!

I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Member at Founder Mental Health Pledge! Starting a company is hard, and mental health is usually an afterthought (if a thought at all) behind survival, profit, and growth. There's a sense that mental health can be recovered after a certain level of success is achieved. If founders and investors don't consider mental health for themselves and their employees from day one, however, that initial success may be built on an unstable foundation and burnout may end up being the norm.

Thank you for giving a shoutout to the Founder Mental Health Pledge Andy Dunn and Amanda Silberling on the prestigious TechCrunch Disrupt stage! We're honored to have Andy as an advisor and advocate. https://lnkd.in/gQGKqB4m

Earlier this week, our own Brett Haskell (PhD, CMPC) took part in a panel at the Venture Atlanta Conference in collaboration with Goodie Nation and Founder Mental Health Pledge on "Why Resilience Is Critical for VCs.” John Avery did an amazing job of capturing some of the lessons and correlations between athletes and entrepreneurs. #Resilience #MomentumLabs #VentureAtlanta #FounderMentalHealthPledge #GoodieNation #MentalHealth #entrepreneurs #ATDC #Leadership https://lnkd.in/en-ZS9Jq