Founder Mental Health & Resilience
Part of Twin Cities Startup Week 2026, September 14–18.
Building a company can become deeply intertwined with your identity, your relationships, and your sense of whether you’re succeeding or failing. The uncertainty is constant, the stakes can feel intensely personal, and founders are often expected to project confidence while privately figuring out how to keep going.
This panel brings together founders, coaches, and leaders for a candid conversation about the human experience behind entrepreneurship. They’ll explore founder identity, failure and uncertainty, nervous system regulation, burnout, nonlinear growth, and what it means to build a company without allowing the company to consume you. Expect an honest conversation about developing the resilience to stay in the work while still building a life outside of it.
Speakers & Perspectives:
Tyler Dane, Founder / Developer - Separating yourself from the success of your company: Tyler will bring the lived founder perspective, including the mistakes, long periods of uncertainty, and failures that can make entrepreneurship such an emotional experience. He’ll explore the stories founders tell themselves about what success or failure says about who they are.
Tascha Just, Founder @ SEL Academy - Understanding what’s happening in your nervous system: Tascha will bring a perspective grounded in nervous system regulation, neurodivergence, belonging, and nonlinear growth, helping founders better understand their own responses to uncertainty and pressure and develop healthier ways of moving through them.
Alex Bangs, Founder / Fractional CIO / Advisor - Building the mindset to stay in the game: Drawing from more than 25 years in startups and leadership, Alex will speak to the irrational acts, difficult stretches, reinventions, and mindset shifts that come with building companies over the long term, including how founders themselves have to evolve as their businesses do.
Kristi Broom, Professional Speaker & Trainer- Leading yourself while leading everyone else: Kristi will bring her work in leadership, team building, and founder mental health to the conversation, exploring how a founder’s internal state can ripple outward into their decision-making, relationships, team, and company culture.
Getting here on Monday. Parking, Basecamp, lunch, and the rest of the day: tcstartupweek.com/monday