Success Mantra of Start-up Founders

Everyone’s talking about mental health, and they should, as it’s the most critical problem that the human race has faced for centuries.

So let me also say my piece, hoping that it will inspire someone who reads this article!!!!

We all know that mental health includes emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. Mental health is essential at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood till you cease to exist.

To my readers passionate about the topic, I discuss positive mental health, which refers to the positive emotions and a feel-good factor of well-being in both individual and social environments.

I hope that none of my readers has had an experience of negative thoughts hovering around the way I have. These negative thoughts made me feel numb, emotionless, carefree, or careless about life and my future. All hopes got drained out of me, and I lived with the constant fear of losing everything I have. It was as dark as the darkness our DC and Marvel Universe fans get to see on screen. I was in that grey zone, just a breath away from making it my last.

TIC TOCK TIC TOCK!!!

I now believe that “Nothing lasts forever,” the terrifying journey ended, and positive mental health showed me the availability of millions of opportunities.

The journey may begin with failure and stress and may take turns, and if you are lucky enough, you fight demons and stop treating yourself like a victim. You start your self-love journey. I will write about my journey someday as it’s a long and hard one. However, we shall talk of the journey of various Founders — a set of people with goals and expectations, which sometimes are realistic and not so real otherwise.

When founders take the plunge, their skills, mental strength, and resilience will control the outcome as they walk the path.

My startup founder’s journey is just one year old. Fortunately, I got an Industry Challenge focused on “Startup Challenges and Startup Accelerator Programs” while struggling with my small not-for-profit venture, thanks @EdifyAccelerators . All that motivation, collaboration, market research, product development, and product marketing efforts were done but stayed in the pipeline as part of our roadmap. We were just not able to find a way forward.

• Have you heard of writer’s block?
• Do startup founders also have something similar?
• Is mental strength and resilience the critical ingredient that successful Startup Founders have?

We backed our research with some qualitative and quantitative data analysis. We executed an industry challenge by Edify Accelerators, a business and startup consulting firm that wanted to understand how they can increase the value of the offerings for struggling founders (Results available on request).

Let’s look at who responded, as this was a minimal and concentrated group:

• ~90% of our respondents were either tech-focused or solving an existing problem using technology.
• ~90% of our respondents were startup founders or already in a process.
• Over 80% of our respondents know and use the latest market and industry trends.

They all had decent to excellent Market Acumen, Customer understanding, Revenue Plans, and Product Strategy. However, out of all the challenges you can imagine, these three came out on top

• Revenue Generation
• Customer or Market acquisition
• Fund Raising

India has the third-largest startup ecosystem, yet 80–90% of Indian startups fail within the first five years of their inception. Why?

Aspects like the idea’s quality, execution, domain expertise, and customer expertise exist. But, when a company termed as the next unicorn fails, everyone wonders what went wrong? Most people we interviewed had all of that and even more, we did not capture mental strength and resilience in the interviews, however, founders opened up during interviews and shared challenges they went through to reach so far and the negative pressure that is a constant in their lives.

Once the idea gets validated as innovative and feasible, mental strength & resilience becomes the most significant factor for success. Adverse mental health leads to the downfall of any person, nation, enterprise or a startup founder.

In-fact, startup founders are 2X more likely to suffer from depression and 3X more likely to be susceptible to substance abuse, they deal with these pressure from all sides.

• The pressure of delivery from investors
• Pressure to manage family expectations
• Financial Pressure
• Pressure on physical and mental health

The unrealistic pressure on each startup to become a unicorn is just baseless. India always had small entrepreneurs, always happy with what they could achieve and the ecosystem is even better now:

India is a land of opportunities, the fastest country to adopt digital users during pandemic times. If you have the skill, passion, focus, and resilience, only horrible luck, like our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, can stop you from achieving your dreams.

India boasts of a vibrant creator landscape with ~100m creators spread across Tier1, Tier2, and Tier 3 cities in multiple sectors. An individual is enabled to create content and make money, and we have famous social influencers who make millions.

To add, India is waking up to women’s capability in shaping the country’s future, culture, and economy. Our government policies and rural educational drives are all spreading the same message. People in power realize what economic power and revenue women can generate for the nation. They have been proving it repeatedly for centuries and continue to fight patriarchy and social injustice. I don’t think any country in work is entirely free of this evil. DE&I has become a significant value add from a creative and cultural perspective.

Mind over matter is an old proverb, and you need a positive attitude and resilience to cross the chasm with the right help. Stay strong, and angels will replace the demons.