The Universal Struggles of Early-Stage Founders (and What We’re Doing About It)

Photo by Sydney Latham on Unsplash

Most first-time founders don’t need to be told that entrepreneurship is hard. What they often do need is language for what they’re experiencing, and a practical way to keep moving when the emotional and tactical problems collide.

At Edventures, we’ve been researching early-stage founder struggles for years — through founder conversations, interviews, and on-the-ground experience building alongside entrepreneurs. This post is one of many where we surface patterns we see again and again, so founders feel less alone and more equipped to act.

Recently, we added another layer of evidence: we reviewed hundreds of candid founder discussions across public entrepreneurship communities to check whether the pain points we’ve been hearing in direct conversations still show up when founders speak freely and informally. The short version: they do.

What keeps coming up (again and again)

Across our research, one theme stands out: early-stage founders aren’t just fighting a business problem — they’re often fighting a feedback problem. Founders put in serious effort, but the response from the market can be slow, unclear, or nonexistent, and that “silence” changes how people think, work, and lead.

We see the early-stage struggle as two connected layers:

• The internal layer: emotions, identity, uncertainty, stress, motivation.
• The external layer: decisions, execution, sales, co-founder choices, distribution, cash.

When the internal layer gets ignored, the external layer usually gets messy.

The internal stuff founders don’t always say out loud

1. Loneliness (even when you’re “busy”)

One of the most common experiences founders describe is isolation — not only working alone, but feeling like there’s no true peer who understands the stakes, the pressure, or the doubt.

This often spills into relationships. Friends with conventional work rhythms can switch off, while founders carry the business in their head every day, and that mismatch can (and most often does) shrink your support system.

What we want founders to hear: feeling isolated doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong; it’s a predictable by-product of building without a built-in team, manager, or shared context.

2. Comparison pressure (even when you “know better”)

Most founders understand that public success stories are curated. Still, seeing other people’s progress — degrees, job titles, funding headlines, revenue screenshots — can create a low-grade stress that never fully turns off.

In our research, founders repeatedly describe a feeling of being “behind”, even when they’re working hard and even when they can rationally explain why comparisons are flawed. The “build in public” hype is also not helping.

A more useful reframe we’ve seen help: compare yourself to your previous week, not someone else’s public narrative. Measure progress by learning speed and customer closeness, not vibes.

3. Burnout that looks like “I can’t start”

Burnout isn’t only exhaustion. For many founders it turns into avoidance and paralysis: you know what to do, but you can’t bring yourself to do it.

A pattern we saw repeatedly is “effort without reinforcement”: long hours, unclear results, and very little positive feedback — which makes the work feel emotionally expensive.

If this is you, one practical move is to shrink the work until it’s startable. Don’t ask “How do I fix the whole business?” Ask: “What is the smallest action I can take today that creates information?” (A message to one customer. A single landing page test. A call with a potential user.)

The external stuff that breaks businesses (often for emotional reasons)

1. The solo founder trade-off

Some founders choose to go solo to avoid co-founder conflict. That can be a rational choice, but it comes with a trade off: fewer skills, fewer perspectives, and less built-in accountability.

In our research, solo founders repeatedly describe decision loops (“thinking in circles”) and the feeling that every domain is on their shoulders: product, marketing, sales, operations.

If you’re solo, you don’t need to “be stronger.” You need systems and networks that replace what a healthy co-founder relationship would normally provide: reflection, prioritisation, reality-checks, and accountability.

2. The “build more” trap

We see this a lot with technical founders: building is measurable and comforting; selling is uncertain and exposes you to rejection.

So the business quietly drifts into a dangerous shape: lots of product activity, not enough distribution activity. The founder feels productive, but the market still doesn’t know the product exists.

A simple rule that helps: every week, ship one “distribution action” before you ship one “product action.” Not because product doesn’t matter, but because early-stage truth comes from contact with customers. And on an honest note*: distribution is really hard, and we struggle with this too.

3. Co-founder and legal mistakes that start as “conflict avoidance”

Another repeated pattern: founders move fast with a friend or early collaborator, skip the uncomfortable conversations, and delay putting agreements in writing.

The issue isn’t only legal risk, it’s misaligned expectations. When roles, equity, IP, and decision rights aren’t clear early, the company inherits a future crisis.

We’re not lawyers and this isn’t legal advice, but we are firm on one principle: if it feels “too awkward” to discuss clearly, it’s probably more important to discuss clearly.

4. The cash constraint that shapes everything

Limited money is not just a finance problem, it shapes psychology and strategy. When runway is tight, it limits your options to experiment, buy time, and rest, which increases both fear and mistakes.

This creates the classic early-stage loop: you need traction to get resources, but you need resources to create traction.

When cash is tight, focus becomes a survival skill. The best founders we’ve studied don’t do more, they do less but with sharper goals.

What founders are actually looking for (and not finding)

In our research, founders aren’t asking for more content. They’re asking for support that behaves like a reliable partner.

We repeatedly see four unmet needs:

• Operator-grade guidance, not motivational “guru” advice but help with the specific problem in front of you.
• A real feedback loop that challenges your thinking before you waste weeks building in a vacuum.
• A space where honesty is safe, not performative: somewhere you can admit doubt without damaging your reputation.
• Accountability that turns intent into action, especially for solo founders.

Put simply: many founders are trying to recreate the best parts of an ideal co-founder relationship, without having an ideal co-founder.

How this connects to Edventures (and our upcoming relaunch)

This is exactly the gap we’ve been building for.

Whether or not you have a co-founder, Edventures exists to give first-time founders personalised guidance and structure (not generic startup advice) so you can make decisions with more clarity and move with more consistency.

Our upcoming Alpha 4.0 is one of the next steps in that direction: turning these repeated founder pain points into practical, day-to-day support (decision clarity, execution structure, and learning in the moment you need it).

We’ll keep publishing posts like this because we want to do two things at once:

1. Make the early stage feel less isolating through honest language and shared patterns.
2. Keep pressure-testing our product against what founders actually struggle with, not what the internet celebrates.

If you’re a first-time founder and any of this felt uncomfortably familiar, know that you don’t have to navigate it alone. We are building the companion that was missing from our own journeys. Whether it is Anna, our AI coach acting as your strategic feedback and accountability partner at 2 AM, or providing you structured guidance on founder practicals like sales, marketing, distribution, and more, we are designing the “co-founder as a service” that early-stage founders truly need.

Get your Edventures account here and join our community to tell us what you’re building and where you feel stuck!