How a 'sleep faster, do more' culture in startups is threatening mental health

Sleep faster; do more; be limitless: the language of startup culture is meant to be inspiring. But starting a new venture is not all about blue sky thinking, wearing trainers to work and high-fives over high protein lunches. It also requires long hours, difficult decisions and a lot of financial stress. When things aren’t going well, those slogans can seem like millstones, weighing on founders already running at their maximum.

James Routledge started MatchChat, a social networking site for sports fans, with three friends when he was just 20 and still at Sheffield University. “We went on the whole venture capitalist bandwagon and raised a couple of million dollars,” Routledge says, “but we were doing it for the wrong reasons. We were doing it for the business and the image, not for the sports fans. It never had a clear mission which meant we pivoted and turned until we eventually burned.”

The founders called time on MatchChat, and Routledge went to work for another startup. While he was shutting down the company, he began to get feelings he could only describe as “weird”.

“At 24, I was used to going for beers and talking about football, not my mental health, so I let it fester. I thought it was just work and I would let it pass. I continued going out and drinking too much on the weekend and living my life. Eventually it began to manifest into anxiety and panic attacks,” Routledge remembers.

After starting MatchChat so young, Routledge found shutting it down was like losing part of his identity. “I was grieving. I was questioning who I was and my values. In the end, I had an identity crisis. The anxiety and the panic attacks were a manifestation of that,” he says.

In February last year, he wrote a post on Medium that changed everything. Called “Mental health in startups”, the post set out how Routledge was feeling, including the panic attacks and the pressure. “People do not talk about mental health enough, that’s a fact,” he writes. “So let’s start by talking about it.”

He was staggered by the response. “It felt like it went viral,” he remembers. “I got hundreds of messages from people I knew and from people I’d never met before: investors, founders, employees, the girlfriends of startup founders, the husbands. It made me realise that mental health isn’t an isolated topic, it transcends every single one of us.”

The response made Routledge realise that compared to some people, he had been lucky. “People were petrified of letting on that maybe they weren’t on top of everything, especially CEOs,” he says.

Suddenly, Routledge became what he calls “Mr Mental Health”, regularly called upon to speak on panels. He discovered that there was demand for a service that would change the perception of mental health issues from something shameful to something more positive.

With George Bettany, one of his best friends and a co-founder of the ill-fated MatchChat, he started Sanctus.

“Our vision is to create the world’s first mental health gym, where people can go and work out their mental health fitness as they would their physical fitness. Right now we are working with businesses to create space within a company for people to take time off and talk to a Sanctus coach,” he explains.

Routledge’s story is not uncommon. Many founders are young and many have barely worked at all before they embark on their own business. “The founders are, understandably, driven by passion and ambition. But they are also under huge pressure,” says Louise Chunn, a former magazine editor and the founder of welldoing.org, a site that helps people find the right therapist.

“They may be desperately trying to find investment to get off the ground, or the next level of investment to keep going. Their investors will expect success – and quickly. Meanwhile, they can’t talk about how tense they are in front of their teams as they must seem ever-enthusiastic and visionary, and also if they seem to be failing, the team will simply leave,” she says.

Difficulty admitting to mental health issues was one of the biggest risks identified by founders including Routledge and Chunn at an event hosted by venture capitalist Rory Stirling from BGF Ventures at the end of 2016.

“It can often be lonely as a founder: you can’t necessarily be fully transparent with your investors, board members or advisers, for fear of scaring them off. You can’t talk to your team because you need to motivate them; you can’t talk to your spouse, because you are probably not making enough money and don’t want to worry them. Too often, you just put your head down and keep hammering away,” Stirling wrote in a Medium post following the event.

Peer networks emerged as one of the most important ways of managing pressure. “Hearing the stories of those who are having similar experiences to you is not only cathartic, it can also be a great way to learn how to deal with issues and a source of deep friendship and support,” says Stirling.

Routledge says Sanctus is creating work environments where people feel more comfortable talking about their problems and asking for help. “We try and do that by leading by example. When we work with an organisation we’re having a big indirect impact on the business as a whole. We are creating a beacon of openness and authenticity and whether people know it or not, they are talking about mental health at work."

Outside of work, services like welldoing.org give people privacy to explore hundreds of posts from therapists explaining what they do and how to cope, alongside the experiences of other people suffering from psychological problems. That can be invaluable for those who are unsure how to talk about their feelings. Chunn created the resource after searching for one during a difficult time, but not finding anything to help. “It was based on my own experience of not knowing how you were meant to tell what would work for you,” she says.

Routledge says with Sanctus, they are not looking for explosive growth, millions in venture capitalist cash or a buyer in five years’ time. “We want to get this right with the companies we work with,” he says. “We’re trying to play the long game.”