Blog
How Dr. Neetu Johnson is Building a Healthier Future for Startup Founders
Dr. Neetu Johnson, psychiatrist and co-founder of Prescribe Life, on founder burnout, neurodivergence in entrepreneurs, and why mental health is a performance issue for startups.
About the guest
Dr. Neetu Johnson
Co-founder and Medical Director, Prescribe Life Global Health
Dr. Neetu Johnson is a consultant psychiatrist and the co-founder and Medical Director of Prescribe Life Global Health, a platform specifically designed to support founders’ mental health and performance. After experiencing burnout herself during her NHS psychiatry career, she retrained in Ayurveda and yoga and built a holistic model that integrates these disciplines with conventional psychiatric care. Her decision to focus on founders was shaped by her business partner’s own severe founder burnout, and by the consistent patterns she observed across hundreds of founder interactions.
Episode overview
Steve Grace sits down with Dr. Neetu Johnson for one of the more unusual and important conversations in the Give It A Nudge archive. Neetu brings a psychiatric lens to what most founders treat as a resilience or lifestyle question: what is actually happening inside the minds and bodies of the people who build startups, and why are they so structurally at risk of burning out?
From burnout to building a solution
Neetu’s path to founding Prescribe Life started with her own burnout as a consultant psychiatrist in the UK’s NHS system. She was working 100-hour weeks, prescribing medication without feeling she was actually helping people reclaim their lives, and experiencing what the Indian philosophical tradition calls a disconnection from your dharma, your life’s purpose. She felt like a machine. Prescription in, patient out. She retrained in Ayurveda and yoga, integrating those holistic systems into her practice. The move to specifically serving founders came from watching her business partner go through severe founder burnout, and from recognising that the profile she kept seeing in founders matched a distinct neuropsychiatric pattern that deserved dedicated support.
“It’s not a sprint, it is a marathon. And it’s not about just getting to the end working so hard in your 20s.”
Dr. Neetu Johnson on the founder journey
The neuropsychiatric profile of founders
Dr. Johnson draws on research by US psychiatrist Dr. Michael Freeman, who has conducted brain scan studies on founders. The evidence points to a distinct dopamine profile. Founders are, by definition, risk-takers, creative thinkers, and thrill-seekers. That profile creates what Johnson describes as a structural predisposition: before the business even starts, the founder’s neurobiology is already calibrating toward high-stimulation, high-reward states. Layer on the emotional rollercoaster of fundraising, co-founder dynamics, and the inevitable setbacks of building a company, and you have a recipe for burnout that is not just possible but statistically likely. High rates of ADHD, dyslexia, and high-functioning autism are also observed in the founder population.
What burnout looks like before it looks like burnout
The early signs are subtle: apathy where there used to be motivation, dragging yourself to a desk you used to run to, a creative spark that has gone quiet, irritability with family, and neglect of the physical self-care habits that kept things stable. The problem, as Steve and Neetu both acknowledge from their own experience, is that you can’t see it from inside. It is wood for the trees. And being young compounds the problem, because founders in their 20s tend to believe they are invincible, that self-care is something to sort out later. By the time it becomes obvious, significant damage has often already been done.
“If you’ve got an undiagnosed ADHD or autism, you’re going to mask and be really amazing in business meetings, but you are more likely to crash and burn very quickly.”
Dr. Neetu Johnson on neurodivergence and masking
Investors as a lever for founder wellbeing
One of the more provocative threads in the conversation is the idea that venture capitalists should be invested in founder mental health as part of their investment thesis. If a founder’s performance declines because they have not maintained their health, that directly affects the return on the VC’s investment. Building support structures around founders, something analogous to the team around a professional athlete, is not just a wellbeing nicety but a commercial decision.
Key takeaways
Chapters
00:00Introduction and Prescribe Life overview03:00Neetu’s burnout and why she left the NHS model07:00Retraining in Ayurveda and yoga10:00The neuropsychiatric profile of founders14:00ADHD, dyslexia, and neurodivergence in startup founders18:00Early warning signs of founder burnout22:00Masking and high-functioning autism in founders26:00The role of investors in supporting founder wellbeing
Mentioned in this episode
Frequently asked questions
What is Prescribe Life and what does it offer founders?
Prescribe Life Global Health is a founder-specific health and performance platform co-founded by Dr. Neetu Johnson. It provides holistic mental health support that combines conventional psychiatry with Ayurveda and yoga-based approaches. It is specifically designed around the unique pressures founders face, including fundraising stress, co-founder dynamics, and the psychological profile common among entrepreneurs.
What are the early warning signs of founder burnout?
Dr. Johnson identifies apathy and loss of motivation, dragging yourself to work, a disappearing creative spark, irritability with family, and declining self-care as the key early signals. These signs typically precede a more serious crash by weeks or months, and are often difficult to recognise from inside the experience.
Why are founders disproportionately prone to burnout?
Research points to a distinct dopamine and neuropsychiatric profile in founders: high risk-tolerance, thrill-seeking behaviour, and creativity create a predisposition to high-stimulation living. This is compounded by high rates of ADHD, dyslexia, and other neurodivergence in the founder population, and by the structural stresses of building a company.
How does ADHD affect startup founders?
ADHD in founders often presents as a superpower in early-stage building, with hyperfocus and fast decision-making. But undiagnosed ADHD also drives masking behaviour, where founders perform extremely well in visible settings while managing significant internal stress. When the mask slips, the decline can be rapid and severe.
Should investors care about founder mental health?
Dr. Johnson and Steve Grace both argue yes. A founder whose mental health is unstable makes worse decisions, damages relationships, and underperforms commercially. Building support structures around founders, analogous to the team around a professional athlete, is both an ethical responsibility and a commercial decision for investors who want their portfolio companies to succeed.
Topics discussed
Full transcript
Auto-generated, may contain minor errors. Click any timestamp to jump to that point in the video.
Show full transcript (30 minutes)
00:00 Introduction
Welcome to Give It A Nudge. Today we have a guest I’m super excited to have on. I think the subject matter is going to be different and it’s going to be interesting. So Dr. Neetu, welcome to Give It A Nudge. Thank you so much for having me, Steve.
I’m a consultant psychiatrist, which means I’m a senior medical doctor in the field of mental health medicine. I’m also a founder, a fellow founder, and I’ve given myself a very posh title of Medical Director of Prescribe Life Global Health, which is a very founder-specific platform and service in order to help founders elevate their mental health, wellbeing, performance, and life in general.
03:00 From burnout to building a solution
Medicine and specifically psychiatry is a really hard training program. I burnt out myself. We’re working 12 to 14 hours per day, 100 hours per week, trying to balance your social life and professional life. It’s really really difficult. And I became really physically unwell. That was together with not feeling like I was carrying out my soul’s purpose. For me, getting to a stage where all I was doing was prescribing medication for depression and anxiety wasn’t enough for me.
I felt like I was a bit of a machine. Patient coming in, here’s your prescription, off you go. And I didn’t feel like I was enabling our patients. I became physically unwell so I retrained in Ayurveda and yoga, which is the Indian medicinal system, very holistic, about breathwork, meditation, yoga. Everything that’s becoming very popular in the west now.
10:00 The founder profile
Founders are quite exceptional. For business building you’d like to think a founder is creative, resilient, thinking outside the box and a risk-taker. With that you’ve already got a bit of a profile. There are studies in the States by a fellow psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Freeman, who has carried out some brain scans and studies around founders. A founder has a specific dopamine profile. There’s a different profile neuropsychiatrically. If you’ve got founder traits of being a risk-taker, being creative, together with the adrenaline rush of creating new business, then the rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship, you’re already almost on a pathway of burnout because that’s a lot for a person to put up with before you’ve even started.
14:00 Neurodivergence: ADHD, dyslexia and autism
We’ve got evidence to show that there is a high rate of neurodivergency within founders. ADHD, so that could also help with the dopamine profile we’re talking about. Again, impulsive, maybe making decisions around business, again through seeking. And being on the spectrum, I don’t know if you’ve come across some founders where they’re really so good at business and making all the commercial decisions but maybe their social interaction isn’t as great or as polished. So there could be high-functioning autism as well.
If you’ve got an undiagnosed ADHD or autism, you’re going to mask and be really amazing in business meetings. But you are more likely to crash and burn very quickly compared to a neurotypical. Someone could really be putting on a completely different persona to you in a business meeting, and then they’ll just crash and burn. So that’s another aspect we really want to highlight for founders.
18:00 Early warning signs of burnout
You start getting the early signs of burnout which could be apathy, not really being motivated how you were before, almost dragging yourself to work, sitting in front of a computer for 16 hours and not being your high-performance self that you were. Your creative spark is gone. So you’ve got all these amazing founder profiles that get the business going but then you start getting the signs of burnout: irritable with family, neglecting self-care, neglecting your health. This is the profile we’re looking at.
What do you think this type of human being did before we had businesses if you go right back? I think so. If we’re already suggesting a thrill-seeking behaviour profile for a founder, they probably were the hunters. Out there. The warriors perhaps. The overachievers.
About the host
Steve Grace is the CEO and co-founder of The Nudge Group, a talent and advisory firm working with Australia’s fastest-growing companies. Give It A Nudge features unfiltered conversations with founders, operators, and investors. Connect with Steve on LinkedIn.
More Blogs
View All
Blogs
How Authentic CEO Video Messaging Transforms Employer Branding
Blogs
Building a Corporate Leader Video Strategy for LinkedIn Growth
Blogs
What to Expect From High End Thought Leadership Video Production
Interested in finding out
more about The Nudge
Group?
Find out more about how we work and how we can help you grow your business.