Who Is Really Behind Your Startup’s Failure?

You have been in that conversation. A mentor — experienced, well-connected, genuinely well-meaning — sitting across from you and asking how the numbers are looking, whether you've found product-market fit, whether you've thought about the Series A timeline. And you answer, because those are the questions you know how to answer.

But there is another conversation that doesn't happen. About how you are holding up under the pressure. About whether your team actually understands where you're taking them. About how you behave when things go wrong, and whether the person you become under stress is the leader you intended to be.

This is not a question the startup ecosystem has learned to ask. And the research my co-author Ivan Yong Wei Kit and I conducted with ten early-stage founders across Asia, the Middle East, Australia and Africa suggests it should be the first question — not the last.

The failure no one wants to diagnose

We know the statistics. 90% of startups fail. 10% within the first year. The reasons cited are familiar: no product-market fit, insufficient capital, wrong technology, weak team. These are real. They are also, in most cases, symptoms rather than causes.

The founder holds the lion's share of responsibility for startup success or failure. Not because they control every variable — they don't — but because they create the organisational vision and build the team. These two activities are interdependent in a way that puts the founder's identity and inner life at the very centre of the venture. You cannot separate the startup from the person building it.

Most founders are technically brilliant. They have a great idea, deep domain knowledge, real drive. What they often lack is the self-awareness to understand how they show up as a leader, and the relational intelligence to translate their vision into something their team can genuinely connect with — not just comply with.

"The founder of the startup holds the lion's share of responsibility for success or failure — as they create the organisational vision and build the team. It is difficult. They have to attract people who believe in that vision and go with them through thick and thin."

What the research revealed

When we asked founders how mentoring had helped them, every single one spoke immediately about business advice — marketing, fundraising, product strategy, network access. This is the dominant model of startup mentoring, and it is genuinely valuable. It is also incomplete.

The research identifies three distinct mentoring functions. The first is the advisor who gives business and management guidance. The second is the successful entrepreneur who acts as a role model and opens doors. The third — the psychosocial mentor — is the one who works on self-confidence, self-awareness, emotional grounding, and leadership identity. The one almost no founder in our study had intentionally sought.

One founder said it plainly: "I do not think mentors can help me with these issues because this is entrepreneurship. You are constantly dealing with challenges… it is not really emotional." He was describing his work of leading people through uncertainty. And he did not consider it emotional.

The leadership gap that survives every pivot

In my practice working with founders — particularly women founders building ventures in complex environments — I see this pattern constantly. A founder who is exceptional at product development but cannot articulate their vision in a way that makes their team feel genuinely part of something. A founder who pushes through every setback with remarkable resilience, but whose emotional suppression has created a culture of silence around hard truths. A founder whose employees admire them and feel unclear about where they are headed.

These are not product problems. They are not funding problems. They are leadership problems. And they require a different kind of intervention than the standard mentoring model offers.

Our survey of the startups' employees found that while teams generally trusted and admired their founders — visionary, resilient, hardworking were the top three qualities identified — only 66.7% of employees could clearly articulate the startup's five-year mission. The founders thought they were communicating it. The teams were not receiving it in the same way.

This gap is not fixed by a better pitch deck. It is fixed by a founder who has done the work of understanding how they communicate, why they communicate the way they do, and what it costs their team when the message doesn't land.

What needs to change

Mentoring in the startup world is still overwhelmingly focused on business skills and networks. This is valuable. But it is not enough. We need a more intentional integration of psychosocial mentoring — the kind that addresses a founder's sense of competence, identity, and emotional effectiveness in their role.

The question I'd ask any founder reading this: Who is helping you understand how you show up as a leader? Not just what decisions you make — but how your team experiences you?

If the answer is "no one," that is worth paying attention to.

The question worth asking

The startup development ecosystem is a multi-billion industry built on the premise that founders can be developed. I agree. What I am arguing — and what our research supports — is that development cannot stop at strategy and networks. It has to go deeper: into the founder's self-knowledge, their emotional intelligence, their leadership identity.

Before the next mentor conversation about go-to-market, the question worth asking yourself is simpler. Who are you being when you lead? Not what decisions are you making — but how is your team experiencing you? And if you genuinely don't know the answer, that is precisely where the work begins.

Research Foundation :This blog draws on empirical research conducted with 10 early-stage startup founders and 21 employees across Asia, the Middle East, Australia and Africa, exploring the role of psychosocial mentorship in founder self-leadership and startup leadership capacity. Co-authored with Ivan Yong Wei Kit, Nanyang Angelz. Referencing Ensley, Hmieleski & Pearce (2006), Kempster & Cope (2010), and the Startup Genome Report (2019).

Building yourself as a founder is not separate from building your startup — it is the foundation of it. If you want to explore what intentional leadership development looks like for your specific context, I work on exactly this with early-stage founders. NavigatingTransformation@amfortas.eu                                                                                   — Dr. Eleftheria Egel, NavigatingTransformation