Why we’re doubling down on founder wellbeing with our second annual survey and new parenting partnership

Running a startup takes incredible amounts of hard work, dedication and resilience. But just putting in more hours isn’t sustainable over the long run and founders agree: our research has shown that 83% of founders believe there are diminishing returns from just putting in more hours, past a point. As investors, we play an important role in helping founders overcome challenges they face – not only at milestone moments for the company, but day-to-day as well. This is why we are launching our second annual founder wellbeing survey: to better understand what entrepreneurs need from their support networks to be successful and perform at their best over the long term. If you are a startup founder, we’d love to hear from you here

We are also introducing parental support for founders, in partnership with digital platform Cooper Parenting (Gabby Slome and Mariel Benjamin). We have heard first hand how family care responsibilities are a major point of stress, especially for female founders who often take on much of the burden and may be hesitant to even let investors know when they are pregnant. We want to make it clear that we support our founder parents and offer tools and resources to help them manage their parenting responsibilities alongside growing their companies. I have been a member of Cooper for more than a year, and think about it like an executive coach or a YPO-type group, but related to childcare rather than business challenges. 

The program offers tailored community support and access to Cooper’s team of licensed clinicians and researchers for expert-led parenting classes, definitive guides to key challenges, drop-in virtual parent coaching, access to workshops and events, and a 24/7 community chat for always-on advice, support and product recommendations. 

Our ambition for Balderton’s Founder Wellbeing and Performance platform is to provide industry-leading, comprehensive support for our founders, if and when they need it. We currently cover health and physical fitness, peer to peer support, executive coaching, and ongoing wellbeing focused events. Since its launch a year ago, more than 100 Balderton founders have made use of at least one of the programs – and feedback has been encouraging. 88% of founders who completed the WellFounded health and nutrition program reported better team relationships. And 75% even slept better. 

We’re proud to now include parental support as the first VC firm globally to partner with Cooper. We hope this program will be another way for Balderton founders to find the support they need to perform at their best, so they can build world changing businesses.  

(Many thanks to Hélène Guillaume Pabis + Kai Nicol-Schwarz  for drawing attention to the matter in their articles as well)

If you're a founder or CEO of a VC-backed business, we'd love to hear from you! The survey should take about 10-15 minutes and is completely anonymised: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BZH5Q9H