FounderScreen Initiative · UC Berkeley · Econa
The FounderScreen Initiative will screen 5,000+ entrepreneurs for free — building the world's first resilience, wellbeing and mental health safety net for entrepreneurs. Collaborate with us to make it happen.
Innovation is a social, emotional, cognitive and behavioral practice. Advancing regional innovation economies means advancing the people who innovate — especially entrepreneurs. FounderScreen delivers the outcomes this requires at no cost to business builders and job creators.
Ecosystem engagement is an exclusive opportunity — Econa will accept only 2 ecosystem engagements in 2027.
Working with Flourish Ventures, QED Investors, Techstars, the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative; with scholars from U.C. Berkeley, Palo Alto University, and other academic centers; and with financial support from other Launch Team members, Econa is building the world's first resilience, wellbeing and mental health safety net for entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship is one of the most psychologically demanding experiences a person can undertake — yet the venture ecosystem has no infrastructure to identify or address that toll. The FounderScreen Initiative changes that. Econa is deploying the validated Entrepreneur Wellbeing Check (EWC) at scale: a peer-reviewed, 7-question screening instrument validated with entrepreneurs across the US, Canada, EU, UK, and Israel, and published in Emerald IJEBR in 2026.
Our framework — Shift the Curve — moves entrepreneur support and performance optimization upstream, from crisis intervention to proactive screening, detection, and engagement. The FounderScreen Initiative produces something that has never existed: actionable insights from ecosystem-wide, anonymized wellbeing data that reveal how entrepreneurs are actually doing, across geographies and cohort types. Institutional collaborators are the engine that makes this possible — and the first to benefit from the insights it generates.
The Partner Proposition
Entrepreneurs in your portfolio, cohort, or region complete the validated EWC — free, confidential, and entirely voluntary. Seven evidence-based questions, designed for the entrepreneurial context. Results are immediately actionable for participants, and aggregate data flows to your collaborator report.
We deliver anonymized, aggregate resilience and wellbeing reports for your ecosystem, network, or community — segmented by cohort type, geography, or founding stage, depending on your tier. This data has never existed before. You receive a first-of-its-kind window into the performance-related psychological health, the resilience, and the wellbeing of the entrepreneurs you serve. To protect against re-identification, aggregate insights are only shared for groups of at least 500 entrepreneurs, and confidential individual data is never sold or shared.
Your collaboration contributes to peer-reviewed science with your name attached. Faculty members affiliated with universities and research institutions access anonymized aggregate data for secondary research, deepen their entrepreneurship research programs, and are eligible to consult on commissioned Econa ecosystem reports. These are first-of-their-kind findings that outlive the grant cycle and establish your organization as a leader in the intersection of mental health and entrepreneurship.
Partnership Tiers
Fund free screenings and a full year of resilience-building services for your portfolio, community, or accelerator cohort. Sponsor tiers range from $10,000 to $250,000, each unlocking social impact and sponsor benefits.
FounderScreen is free. Individual membership in the Econa Village is not required. Village members receive ancillary and wraparound programs and services.
Econa’s flagship program: a one-year virtual professional development program for your firm’s platform leaders and venture partners, plus confidential screening and unlimited free access to the FounderScreen resilience and performance optimization program for all of your portfolio founders, each paired with customized resources. Cohort members receive a collective insights report with actionable recommendations for improving your founder support offerings.
FounderScreen Launch Team
Seed Round is the entry level. Most ecosystem collaborators sponsor at a level matched to the size of the community they serve — every level keeps screening and a full year of wraparound services free for the entrepreneurs it reaches.
Sponsors free screening and a full year of wraparound services for 138 or more entrepreneurs.
Sponsors free screening and a full year of wraparound services for 277 or more entrepreneurs.
Sponsors free screening and a full year of wraparound services for 416 or more entrepreneurs.
Sponsors free screening and a full year of wraparound services for 833 or more entrepreneurs.
Sponsors free screening and a full year of wraparound services for 1,388 or more entrepreneurs.
Sponsoring at a higher level? Talk with the Econa leadership team about a larger or multi-year sponsorship →
Who Collaborates With Us
Understand the resilience strengths, vulnerabilities and needs of venture-backed entrepreneurs. FounderScreen gives you an inexpensive risk management resource that protects the resilience and performance of the founder custodians of your investments; a proactive founder-friendly benefit to offer before they hit a wall. Individual results are never shared with investors.
You already invest in your cohort's short term growth. Invest in their resilience and long-term growth too. FounderScreen integrates directly into your program — giving your entrepreneurs a validated wellbeing baseline, personalized resilience support, and performance optimization skill building when they need it the most.
Your alumni are founding companies at record rates. Are they OK? Business schools that work with FounderScreen position themselves as institutions that take the full experience of entrepreneurship seriously — and produce graduates equipped to lead with awareness and durability.
Population-level resilience and wellbeing data for your region — for the first time ever. Advance your regional innovation ecosystem by advancing the people who innovate!
A high-impact, academically rigorous use of philanthropic capital at the intersection of mental health and economic development. FounderScreen offers DAF advisors a unique opportunity: peer-reviewed science, measurable reach, and named association with a first-of-its-kind public health initiative for entrepreneurs.
Development banks reach entrepreneurs at population scale. Econa collaborated with the Business Development Bank of Canada, which serves 90,000+ borrowers — exactly the kind of reach that turns free screening into ecosystem-wide impact and insight. FounderScreen gives development banks a validated wellbeing baseline, risk reduction resources, and performance improvement resources across the entrepreneurs they finance.
We're eager to serve entrepreneurs who are too often underserved — refugee and immigrant entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs with disabilities, and those who face discrimination. For mission-driven philanthropies, FounderScreen channels capital into measurable resilience, wellbeing and mental health support for the communities you exist to serve.
Current Ecosystem Collaborators
Launch Team & Supporters
Start the Conversation
Complete the form and a member of the Econa leadership team will follow up within 3 business days to discuss the right level of support for your organization.
Every entrepreneur who takes the EWC and gets resources because of it — that's a person who got support before they hit a wall and derailed. That's the whole mission.
Three paths: join the FounderScreen Launch Team as a sponsor, apply for the Portfolio Resilience Accelerator for VC Firms, or collaborate as a university-based Academic Affiliate.
No. Individual results are never shared with investors or sponsors — FounderScreen is a proactive founder-friendly benefit, with privacy protections that preserve entrepreneur confidence.
A member of the Econa leadership team.