Mental health issues among startup founders and the ‘unicorn’ pressure

Two years of the pandemic, on and off lockdowns, the uncertainty of jobs and cloud over the survival of businesses has put a lot of pressure on a huge segment of India’s millennials to become entrepreneurs—start their own “hustle”, follow their “passion”. While becoming job givers instead of job seekers is a good change, there is a dark side to the story, which often misses the limelight.

Behind million dollar fundings, billion-dollar valuations, millions of founders struggle every day and face the unnerving pressure of becoming a unicorn. While the basics of business have shifted from profitability to scalability and valuations, these founders found themselves in the middle of a crisis – creating value for businesses or for the world to see them merely as “success stories”. Our ecosystem tends to make heroes out of successful entrepreneurs. And by definition here, ‘successful’ means founders of companies with huge valuations.

However, we often fail to understand before these founders made it big, they struggled through moments of enfeebling anxiety attacks and hopelessness – times when it seemed everything might come down shattering.