According to their website, “Human Runway is a collaborative initiative bringing founders, investors, and ecosystem builders together to strengthen founder resilience.” Human Runway released a report based on a survey conducted in 2025 of 158 active startup founders.

I was especially interested in this report because the founders who participated were primarily located in the Finnish and Nordic startup ecosystem. I was curious to see if founders in Europe had similar experiences to founders in the United States. From the report on page 2: 

This report reflects the voices of 158 founders who chose to answer honestly about pressure, well-being, and sustainability behind the company. The findings challenge some conventional beliefs and confirm others. Most importantly, they reveal patterns that shift the conversation from individual toughness to relational and structural conditions.

The revealing divide in our data is not between founders with heavier workloads and lighter ones, but between those who feel safe to be open about struggle and those who do not.

As someone who has been facilitating conversations about stress, anxiety, and depression in the workplace, including entrepreneurs and small business owners, this last sentence immediately got my attention. I have been saying for more than a decade that we need to talk about the struggles of entrepreneurship or we put companies and founders at risk. 

Some key statistics from the report (page 4) include:

  • 89% of founders have noticed their decision making and leadership to erode due to mental exhaustion over the past 6 months
  • 72% have experienced prolonged stress
  • 65% have experienced loneliness
  • 32% have experienced burnout
  • 55% are currently “at risk”

These seem to track with what I am reading online and hearing from clients. 

The report debunked the assumption that founder stress is caused by too much work, too little sleep, unreasonable growth expectations from investors, etc. From page 5:

The volume of work is not what separates thriving founders from struggling ones. What does separate them is far more insidious: social isolation and the fear of being seen as vulnerable.

This made perfect sense to me. That saying “It’s lonely at the top” is true. Founders are often trying to do something that hasn’t been done before. There isn’t a proven plan to follow – and yet the founder may feel like they need to project the appearance of having everything under control at all times. (This is, of course, impossible.}

As it turned out, the size of the company wasn’t a factor either. Also from page 5:

None of the demographic variables we tested – gender, age, relationship status, having dependents, team size, or funding stage – show statistically significant differences in mental well-being.

Founder distress does not discriminate. It cuts across all backgrounds, all stages, all configurations. A solo pre-seed founder and a Series A CEO with 50 employees can be equally at risk, or equally resilient.

This matters for how we design interventions. Support programmes that target specific demographics or stages will miss the point. The risk factors are psychological and social, not structural.

Bingo! 

Intuitively, I landed on this years ago and talked about the importance of founders, entrepreneurs, and small business owners getting the support they need in my book, “This Isn’t Working! Evolving the Way We Work to Decrease Stress, Anxiety, and Depression.”

The Human Runway Report is a fascinating read and you can download it (no email required) here. 

Photo by Niklas Jonasson on Unsplash