Watch On Demand
Three special Econa programs, recorded live and free to watch in full. Each brings entrepreneurs together with researchers, investors and an entrepreneur-psychiatrist, on subjects that rarely get discussed openly.
Please note that this site is not intended to provide clinical care. If you are struggling right now, see How to Seek Mental Health Support Now.
Program One · Filmed April 22, 2021
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 share solutions reflecting the wisdom accrued by a successful serial entrepreneur, a leading entrepreneurship mental health researcher, and a Silicon Valley investor.
Speakers
Serial entrepreneur
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.
Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Alpha Bridge Ventures
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.
Professor of Psychology, University of California Berkeley
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.
Econa founder
Psychiatrist, fourth-generation serial entrepreneur, executive coach, entrepreneurship researcher and behavioral health systems architect. Read the full bio →
Program Two · Filmed January 14, 2021
Successful entrepreneurs are often rebels, misfits, deviants and trouble-makers as kids who challenge norms in business and society as adults. This workshop is for anyone who wants to learn the secrets behind how the best entrepreneurs channel their disruptive energy into building powerful businesses and happy lives.
Meet serial founder Alon Shaya and track his journey from starting out as a rule-breaking troubled kid and high school dropout to becoming a world-class entrepreneur who won two James Beard awards and built both a culinary empire and a fulfilling life.
Recognize how investors like Silicon Valley venture capitalist and 2X super-founder Josh Felser value the disruptive personalities and behavior of their founders, and discover how they invest in rebellion without investing in recklessness and destructive impulsivity.
Learn from serial entrepreneur and psychiatrist Dr. Michael Freeman about how to spot and manage the mental health issues that are common among disruptive entrepreneurs. Determine how to channel your disruptive emotions, energy and impulses to get better outcomes in business and life.
Speakers
Serial founder · Pomegranate Hospitality
As an adolescent, Israeli-born Alon Shaya was a rule-breaker, trouble-maker and dropout who was simply not with the program. Instead, he learned to cook from his mother and grandmother in Philadelphia, where he was raised, and since then he has gone on to create a global culinary vernacular that's wholly his own. After training at the Culinary Institute of America, Shaya pursued posts in Las Vegas, St. Louis, and Italy. He made his home in New Orleans where he was a partner and the creative force behind restaurants Domenica and Pizza Domenica. He found his most influential position in New Orleans, under the guidance of John Besh, and in 2009 the duo opened regional Italian-inspired Domenica. Its fresh pastas and wood-fired pizzas earned Shaya several notices, including a StarChefs Rising Stars Award in 2012, and launched the opening of his second restaurant, Pizza Domenica, a casual spin-off that challenges traditional Italian comfort foods. He opened the Pomegranate Hospitality company in 2017 and two new restaurants, Saba in New Orleans and Safta in Denver.
In 2015, inspired to return to his cooking roots, Shaya began professionally cooking Israeli food. Shaya opened his namesake Israeli restaurant, paying tribute to the foods of his upbringing while imbuing them with New Orleans' ingredients. Since then, Shaya's inventive style has earned him a number of honors. He was nominated for five James Beard Awards and won two, including the James Beard Award for “Best Chef, South” in 2015 with his restaurant winning for “Best Restaurant” the following year. He was a judge on the 15th season of Top Chef. Shaya released his cookbook in Spring 2018. Shaya: An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel. The book includes 26 short stories with accompanying recipes inspired by foods that changed his life.
An advocate for troubled kids – like he once was – Alon Shaya won the “Youth Advocate Award” from Liberty's Kitchen, and was honored by InspireNOLA Schools for his work with Edna Karr Charter High School. In 2016, Shaya partnered with his high school home economics teacher, Donna Barnett, to form the Shaya Barnett Foundation, which brings culinary education to high schools. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Shaya turned his closed restaurants into soup kitchens offering free meals to furloughed hospitality-industry workers. He also partnered with chef Edward Lee in founding the Restaurant Worker Relief program. He is a chef fundraiser for No Kid Hungry, Alex's Lemonade Stand, and DC Central Kitchen/Martha's Table.
Co-Founding General Partner, Freestyle Capital
Josh Felser was the co-founding General Partner of Freestyle Capital, a Silicon Valley early stage tech-focused venture capital firm, where he currently serves as Board Partner while separately pursuing a new investment portfolio related to climate change. He is also a co-founder and board member of The Start Project, a Bay Area startup incubator, and the chairman and co-founder of FYI Living. Before entering venture capital Josh founded and sold two successful Internet businesses, with spectacular exits to Sony and AOL. Josh got his BA in Political Science and Economics from Duke University, and went on to obtain his MBA from Duke's Fuqua School of Business.
Econa founder
Psychiatrist, fourth-generation serial entrepreneur, executive coach, entrepreneurship researcher and behavioral health systems architect. Read the full bio →
Program Three · Filmed December 4, 2020
Depression is widely experienced by founders, yet it is rarely discussed. When depressed founders experience low energy, low motivation, pessimism, hopelessness and a sense of futility, their personal lives and their businesses can fall apart. We'd like to change that.
This special event from December 4, 2020 brings together a successful entrepreneur who lived through two major depressive episodes, an academic researcher who reviews state-of-the-art knowledge about depression among entrepreneurs, and an entrepreneur-psychiatrist who explains depression prevention and self-care skills that you can apply at once.
Speakers
Entrepreneur and technologist
John Roa is a lifelong entrepreneur and technologist who founded and managed six technology companies since learning to program at age 11. His largest company, ÄKTA, was one of the fastest growing companies in America in both 2013 and 2014, and was fully acquired by Salesforce Inc. in September 2015. Published in 2020, A Practical Way to Get Rich, and Die Trying is Roa's memoir on his meteoric rise, and subsequent crash, as the CEO of ÄKTA. In his book, John candidly describes coping with, living through, and recovering from two major depressive episodes. An outspoken advocate for entrepreneur mental wellness, John has chosen to help other entrepreneurs address emotional issues by sharing his own mental health journey.
Assistant Professor and Vice Chair of Research, University of Ottawa
Dr. Christine Guptill is an Assistant Professor and a Vice Chair of Research at the University of Ottawa, and a co-author of Depression among Entrepreneurs: a Scoping Review. Published in August 2020, this comprehensive review examined 34 published studies about depression among entrepreneurs, and synthesizes the findings to present a summary of what is currently known about this question. Dr. Guptill completed post-doctoral fellowships at McMaster University and with the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists. She also completed the Work Disability Prevention Strategic Training Program funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research at the University of Toronto in 2013. When she is not running marathons, her academic work is focused on building resilience and preventing disability among a unique group of entrepreneurs; self-employed musicians.
Econa founder
Psychiatrist, fourth-generation serial entrepreneur, executive coach, entrepreneurship researcher and behavioral health systems architect. Read the full bio →
Your Host
Dr. Freeman appears in all three programs.
Michael A. Freeman, M.D.
Founder, Econa
Michael A. Freeman, M.D. 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.
Three special Econa programs, recorded live and free to watch in full: Healthy ambition: defeating the dark side of audacious goals; Rebels with a cause: turning disruptive behavior into breakthrough startups; and Overcoming entrepreneur depression.
No. All three programs are recordings, free to watch in full on the Econa — Entrepreneur Mental Wellness channel on YouTube.
Entrepreneurs, researchers and investors, alongside Econa founder Dr. Michael Freeman, who appears in all three programs. The guests are Erik Severinghaus, Jake Chapman and Dr. Sheri Johnson; Alon Shaya and Josh Felser; and John Roa and Dr. Christine Guptill.
No. This site is not intended to provide clinical care. If you are struggling right now, see How to Seek Mental Health Support Now.