A Call for Founders to be Proactive - Not Reactive - About Mental Health
Why Mental Wellness Needs to Be Proactive—Not Reactive—for Founders
At Flying with Founders, we recognize that you can’t scale what you can’t sustain. We design our monthly meetups around this core idea: giving founders tools to care for themselves as deliberately as they care for their businesses. This month’s topic? Mental health.
And if there's one thing we walked away with, it's this: mental wellness isn’t something you “deal with” after a crash. It’s something you plan for—intentionally, daily, and ideally before you're forced to.
The Startup Toll No One Talks About
Entrepreneurship demands resilience. Long hours. High uncertainty. Big decisions under pressure. It’s no surprise that founders experience higher-than-average rates of burnout, anxiety, and depression.
But mental health typically still gets tucked into the category of “personal,” as if it’s separate from the success of a business. In reality, it is the business.
Jeffrey Johnston, founder of Brightn—a mental wellness planning app designed especially for Gen Z—shared his deeply personal journey with us. After a successful career in wealth management, his life took a dramatic turn following the tragic loss of his son to a fentanyl overdose. What followed was a years-long journey through grief, recovery, and eventually—renewed purpose.
From his pain came a mission: build a tool that helps people get ahead of their mental health challenges, before they reach a breaking point.
Health, Wealth, Purpose: New KPIs
Brightn takes a proactive approach to mental well-being. It's AI-powered, personalized, and rooted in three pillars: health, wealth, and purpose. Users don’t just track moods—they engage in structured self-assessment, journaling, meditation prompts, and resilience planning. In a world flooded with apps, Brightn stands out to us: its 30-day retention rate is 3x higher than Headspace’s.
We were especially inspired by how Jeffrey frames mental wellness like a business plan, appealing to how founders and entrepreneurs already think. It’s not just about responding to pain—it’s about designing a life you want to live, with intention and structure.
What This Means for Founders
If you’re building something that matters, your mental wellness isn’t a side quest. It’s the foundation. And while tools like Brightn are powerful allies, the bigger takeaway is this: it starts with the decision to be honest with yourself. To assess where you are. To get support. To build your internal infrastructure before scaling your external one.
Our community continues to explore this intersection of the founder’s journey and well-being—not because it’s trendy, but because it’s essential.
Let this be your reminder: just as you’d map a product roadmap or business strategy, you can—and should—create a plan for your mental wellness too. It won’t be easy, but it’s a challenge you can equip yourself to take on with confidence.
Do the hard things. Take the stairs (literally and metaphorically), even when the elevator is available. Reap the results for your overall wellbeing, in business and life.
Let’s reach new heights, together.
Check out these additional resources to take the next step:
JANUARY 2026 Founder’s Retreat
AUGUST 2025 ELEVATE: Founder Wellness Meetup
SEPTEMBER 2025 Inside the Mind of a VC Workshop for Founders
