Untold Stories

Untold is a collection of raw, personal stories from Endeavor founders that shed light on the emotional challenges behind scaling a company. We created Untold to help founders better identify and understand the battles they’re facing, and find strength in the stories of other founders who have been there, too.

The Story of Untold Stories

The idea for Untold Stories originally came about when Endeavor Global CMO, Silvia Cavalcanti, encountered her own mental health struggles as a founder. After the sale of her company, she began experiencing anxiety and panic attacks.

Years later, after joining Endeavor, she was in Istanbul, interviewing founders about their scale-up hurdles. Most answers were technical — fundraising, hiring, growth. Then she decided to go off script. She shared her own emotional crash she had after the sale of her company.

The founder across from her said: “We all go through emotional hell. We just don’t talk about it, unless we’re already out of the shark tank”. That moment stuck with her. There was a gritty, raw story no one was telling, and it needed to be told.

The first interview she arranged was with Paulo Veras, the co-founder and former CEO of 99, the first Brazilian unicorn, which went head-to-head with Uber in one of the fiercest market battles in Latin America.

After that conversation, Silvia knew she was on to something. And so began Untold Stories.

As she started exploring this idea further, she wrote an article titled “Time to Take Off The Cape: Entrepreneurs and Mental Health”. You can read an excerpt of that article below, or read the full piece here, to understand a bit more why this topic is so important.

Time to Take Off The Cape: Entrepreneurs and Mental Health

I was flying back to New York from a business trip in Sydney. I had two children under two at the time and was still working as an executive in Advertising while getting my third startup off the ground.

So far this story sounds super glamorous and impressive, right? Those around me thought so too.

As I came back from that trip, a colleague said, “I can’t believe how you do it with two babies.” When I went home that night, my kids ran towards me yelling “Mainha! Mainha!”. That’s when I thought to myself, “I have no idea how I’d do it without them.”

End of story.

I loved to trot out this anecdote at conferences and events because it helped paint me as a stoic entrepreneurial heroine, holding it all together and thriving not despite, but because of the pressure.

While the story may be true, the character I played in it was all a lie. The truth is, that time in my life was incredibly difficult, and far from a stoic, I was an emotional wreck. Cash flow issues forced us to sell our business to a public company which eventually shut down everything we had built. It was agonizing and it felt like selling one of my babies because we needed the money. After the deal closed I completely fell apart. I was miserable and started experiencing anxiety and panic attacks. It took years of reflection, therapy, and reengineering my life to get to a place where I feel like I am genuinely thriving.

The Super Fallacy

I know I am not alone. For the new ‘Health and Performance of High-Impact Entrepreneurs Report’ Endeavor Brazil spoke to 118 tech founders and revealed that while just about everyone wrestles with difficult emotions, 75% of entrepreneurs feel pressure from other people’s expectations and 54% consider discussions around mental health a taboo in the ecosystem.

As we dig into additional research, it’s pretty clear that the toll of entrepreneurship on founders’ mental well-being is a worldwide phenomenon. One UCSF and UC Berkeley research found that 72% of entrepreneurs reported mental health concerns, a much higher incidence than is found in the general population.

The stigma against frank discussion of mental health isn’t limited to Brazil either. The likes of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk have often been idolized in the media as entrepreneurial heroes who created world-changing companies through sheer force of will.

While scattered articles have investigated entrepreneurs’ mental health and some founders, like Bonobos’ Andy Dunn, and Toms Shoes’ Blake Mycoskie have gone public about their struggles, the predominant narrative continues to be one of invincibility.

A few years ago, Linda Rottenberg, co-founder and CEO of Endeavor, opened up about a deeply personal moment. As Endeavor was celebrating its 11th year of empowering founders outside of Silicon Valley and gearing up to launch in its 12th country, Linda received devastating news: her husband was diagnosed with aggressive bone cancer. And all of this on top of the demands of raising their three-year-old twin girls. The weight of her emotions became too heavy to bear alone, and she decided to let it out to the team, whose response was “Now that we know you’re a real person, we’ll follow you anywhere.” While reflecting on this experience, Linda underscored the importance of embracing vulnerability, encouraging founders to “be less super, more human.”

If you are interested in learning more about this series, please contact us at [email protected].