Those with the entrepreneurial spirit tend to be extremely ambitious, and the process of building a company from scratch has its thrills. But startup founders, whether in the healthcare industry or otherwise, also encounter a great deal of stress, relentless competition in some cases, and there are always some inevitable disappointments when approaching new territory.
That can have a real affect on mental health. Accepting the possibility of failure isn’t easy for most of us, and with 90 percent of tech startups failing, for example, it’s a reality many must face.
Business Journal put together a compelling national story to highlight the reality of depression in the world of startups and to look for potential solutions.
The subject will be a focus today on Twitter to encourage a national discussion starting at 2 pm EDT, 11 am PDT under the hashtag #StartupDepression.
For the story, reporters in Tampa Bay, Puget-Sound, Denver and New York City spoke with different people in the entrepreneurial ecosystem to discuss the challenges of facing stress and pressure.
As Business Journal points out, these struggles can have tragic results in some cases.
Since the latest surge in entrepreneurship began in the aftermath of the Great Recession, a handful of stories about company founders killing themselves have commanded attention. Among them: Reddit co-founder and internet privacy advocate Aaron Swartz, Disapora co-founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy, and a trio of unrelated suicides of entrepreneurs with ties to the Downtown Las Vegas project.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
One piece of advice from the feature, among other interesting input, came from Dave Parker of Seattle’s UP Global.
“Invest in friendships with people who understand what you’re going through as an entrepreneur — before you need them,” Parker says. “People always ask me if I can introduce them to my network of investors. But they should be asking for [introductions to] other entrepreneurs. It’s too late to make a friend when you need one.”
Today’s Twitter conversation will be a great opportunity for voices to be heard and for the impact of community to be felt.
