Founder
Wellbeing and Performance

We believe the best way to change the world is to build a business. But building a business is incredibly hard – and founders need to be resilient in order to deal with the challenges and stresses along the journey. That is why we are making holistic support a priority at Balderton, creating a programme to offer broad support to our founders.

Programme Overview

The Balderton Founder Wellbeing & Performance Platform includes a tailored six-month health and nutrition programme, peer-to-peer support and our on-staff executive coach.

Resources & Events

We have a dedicated programme of events, webinars, content and resources, designed to empower and educate founders to help them perform at their best.

Founder
Survey

We asked the founder ecosystem about the challenges they face and what they need from their investors.

Entrepreneurs are often under relentless pressure. This is an unavoidable part of being a founder. And when things get difficult, the assumption has always been that you just have to work harder, for more hours.

But science tells us that this is not the best approach – and won’t lead to the best outcomes. Instead, founders can optimise their performance by dedicating time to key areas – like wellbeing, mental health, coaching and peer support. High-performance athletes don’t train at 100% intensity, 7 days a week and ignore everything else – and neither should high-performance founders.

We believe taking a holistic view of what impacts performance is in everyone’s interests – from founders to investors, to the wider startup ecosystem in Europe.

“Over the past few years I had to re-learn to manage my time and energy more responsibly and it turned out to be relatively small things – like switching off all notifications from my phone, doing sports regularly, taking time off from work and family once in a while – that made a huge difference.”

Nico Jaspers Founder

“Balderton’s Founder Wellbeing and Performance platform was life changing for me, especially the WellFounded programme. It helped me figure out my ‘personal resilience manual’. Before joining the programme, I was operating at 20-25% energy, I was effectively burned out. Like many founders, I used to ‘fly, crash, fly, crash’ but WellFounded gave me the gift of personal resilience. Since completing the programme, I’ve consistently maintained a 85% energy and mood, day in day out without crashing. Worth absolute gold.”

Tim Guilliams Co-founder and CEO

“Had I planned my life for a 30 year journey, things might have been quite different. We believe there is a better, smarter way of working – as the elite sports industry and individuals in far-ranging fields, like the performing arts or medicine, have already figured out. We are doing this because we believe that the best way to change the world is to start a company. And that for those companies to change the world, they need leaders who can last as long as their vision.”

Suranga Chandratillake General Partner at Balderton Capital and a former co-founder and CEO of Nasdaq-listed blinkx

88%

of founders feel that VC investors can help create a culture where entrepreneurs can look after their wellbeing, directly impacting performance and increasing the likelihood of success.

I was in the burnout zone most of last year. Mixture of challenging markets and endless investor meetings with bad sleep, bad diet and low exercise. Putting more and more hours in as the solution… It was lose-lose-lose for everyone. It impacted strategic decision-making, team dynamics, morale and performance.

88%

agree excessive stress can result in bad decision making.

I find that when I’m under a lot of pressure, I am terrible at longer term thinking. Setting strategy and direction requires deep thinking, research and creativity. This is vastly reduced under high pressure – your mind is not free to explore when it’s crowded.

84%

feel there is an expectation that entrepreneurs must always work long hours in order to be successful.

There was a very noticeable impact on how well we tracked as a company. Spent too long working on the wrong things, we were not agile enough, etc. I was distracted and unable to focus and work effectively on the right things.

FounderWellbeing and Performance