Econa is the global center of excellence for entrepreneur mental wellness. Learn more about our programs and our partnerships with accelerators, investment funds, and founder networks at www.econa.net.
Entrepreneurs pursue audacious goals by pouring extraordinary effort into achieving extraordinary results. Their rocket fuel is a blend of visionary innovation, extreme self-confidence, persistent optimism, enduring motivation and relentless engagement with ambitious goals. However, extreme goal engagement has a dark side: the damage that is caused by taking risks that don’t work out, and by crowding out the rest of life in pursuit of an all-consuming passion.
This special event, originally aired April 22, 2021, is for founders who want to stay emotionally well and interpersonally engaged while tackling ambitious goals with passion. It’s also for those who want to make sure that they don’t wipe out as people even if they wipe out in business. Determine how to mitigate ambition-related damage by recognizing the dark side of intense goal-focused behavior and proactively preventing it from causing negative life and business outcomes. Three renowned experts will share solutions reflecting the wisdom accrued by a successful serial entrepreneur, a leading entrepreneurship mental health researcher, and a Silicon Valley investor.
About Econa
Ten years ago, the mental wellbeing of entrepreneurs was rarely discussed. As a fourth-generation entrepreneur, clinical professor of psychiatry at UCSF, and practicing psychiatrist and executive coach for entrepreneurs, Econa founder Dr. Michael Freeman saw the crucial need to change that. Every day, founders brought him stories of stress, burnout, depression, ADHD, bipolar, substance use, co-founder conflicts, and emotional leadership challenges. After learning about the suicides of prominent entrepreneurs like Aaron Schwartz and Kate Spade, he was inspired to create Econa.
Today, Econa is emerging as a global center of excellence for entrepreneur mental wellness. We offer evidence-based workshops and peer support groups, we co-create programs with founder communities globally, and we support academic research on entrepreneur-centric mental wellness solutions. Our groundbreaking researchers, clinician-entrepreneurs, facilitators, founders, investors, and operators help entrepreneurs optimize their life and business outcomes.
Erik Severinghaus
Erik Severinghaus is a serial entrepreneur who has been developing products and bringing them to market for the last 20 years, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of exits and revenue generated. Thousands of jobs have been created by his companies and his business units within firms that acquired them, including SimpleRelevance, Rise Interactive, SpringCM, and DocuSign. He and his enterprises have been featured in the Wall Street Journal and many other business media outlets. The recipient of a Chicago Innovation Award and many other distinctions, Erik graduated from UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and received his MBA in entrepreneurship from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. He also climbed to the summit of Mt Everest in 2018. Erik’s mission is to share his struggles and failures along the journey. He opens up about the real world of entrepreneurship with empathy and vulnerability in the hope that he can help others avoid some of his mistakes and darkest moments.
Jake Chapman
Jake Chapman is the co-founder and managing partner at Alpha Bridge Ventures, a Silicon Valley tech-oriented early stage VC firm that advocates for founder development and mental health. Jake focuses on technology companies in sectors like autonomy, robotics, space, advanced sensors, AI, synthetic biology and next generation foods. His venture firm helped to launch an innovative founder development and mental health program that serves entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. His firm believes that the success of its companies depends upon the health, happiness and resiliency of their founders. Alpha Bridge supports founders in their leadership development as well as in their physical health and emotional and mental wellbeing so that they can build without burnout. Jake graduated from the U.C. Berkeley School of Law, began his career as an attorney working for venture firms, and later took on operational and strategic roles in several startups before launching a few companies of his own. Subsequently Jake co-founded Gelt Venture capital where he led seed-stage investments before co-founding Alpha Bridge. He has been published in business media outlets including TechCrunch, WIRED, Forbes, Venture Beat, US News and World Reports. He is also a certified Sommelier, an amateur boxer, a former poker dealer, and a mentor at 500 Startups and Runway SF.
Sheri Johnson, Ph.D.
Dr. Sheri Johnson is a professor of psychology at the University of California Berkeley, and the director of the California Mania Lab (CALM). She is internationally recognized for her research related to entrepreneurship, bipolar disorder, goal engagement, creativity, personality, and impulsivity. Dr. Johnson was a principal investigator on the University of California-Gallup entrepreneur mental health research program that was funded by a grant from the Kauffman foundation. This study confirmed the prevalence of bipolar spectrum conditions among entrepreneurs, and the association between this condition and positive business results. She finds that people with bipolar disorder are more prone to positive moods, more reactive to rewards, more creative, and more deeply engaged with goals than others, even when they are asymptomatic. Dr. Johnson received her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pittsburgh and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University. She has published over 200 articles and five books for both professional and lay audiences. Her research has received funding from the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) and from the National Institute of Mental Health.
About Michael A. Freeman MD
Michael A. Freeman, MD is a psychiatrist, a fourth-generation serial entrepreneur, an executive coach, an entrepreneurship researcher and a behavioral health systems architect. Dr. Freeman serves as a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, and as a Mentor in the Entrepreneurship Center at UCSF. He received his MD from UCSF School of Medicine after completing related advanced training programs at U.C. Berkeley and the Sorbonne. With support from the Kauffman Foundation, Dr. Freeman studies issues related to entrepreneur mental health in collaboration with colleagues from U.C. Berkeley, the Gallup Organization, and other universities. His psychiatric and executive coaching practice is focused on entrepreneurs. As an entrepreneur, Dr. Freeman has held founder, co-founder and C-level positions with several for-profit and non-profit behavioral healthcare organizations. He was the founding Chief Medical Officer at U.S. Behavioral Health, now United Behavioral Health, the United Health Care managed behavioral health plan. He is politically active in initiatives to expand access to and insurance coverage for mental health and addiction treatment services.
Healthy ambition: defeating the dark side of audacious goals (April 22, 2021)