Startups frequently face high-stakes decisions, intense pressure to pivot rapidly, and emotional ups and downs. Given these factors, anxiety is understandably common among founders at every stage. However, what if anxiety could be reframed—not as a debilitating liability, but as an advantage that could actually strengthen decision-making and leadership capabilities?
Dr. David H. Rosmarin, a clinical psychologist, Harvard Medical School faculty member, prominent author, and founder of the Center for Anxiety, will explore this concept at TechCrunch All Stage 2025, taking place on July 15 at Boston’s SoWa Power Station. Dr. Rosmarin will lead a candid and insightful roundtable session entitled “Thriving with Anxiety: How Startup Founders Can Turn Fear, Pressure, and Self-Doubt into Their Greatest Advantage.”
This discussion will explicitly avoid traditional narratives about “overcoming” anxiety. Instead, Dr. Rosmarin intends to offer founders practical, stigma-free strategies for channeling anxiety into productive energy, improved clarity, and decisive action. His approach emphasizes embracing anxiety as a powerful internal resource that can fuel sharper decisions, stronger resilience, and authentic leadership in times of uncertainty—qualities critical to startup success and growth.
With extensive experience advising entrepreneurs, executives, and corporate teams across various sectors, Rosmarin’s insights have already reached a wide audience through platforms like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Good Morning America, and TED.com. At TechCrunch All Stage, he will share tangible methods to leverage anxiety constructively, urging founders to recognize fear and stress as valuable—yet significantly underutilized—tools in their entrepreneurial toolkit.
Participants attending the session will leave equipped with practical takeaways on systematically transforming pressure into clarity and action, building emotional resilience to safeguard against burnout, guiding their teams sincerely through crisis moments, and confidently converting fear into profound opportunities to innovate.
For any founder familiar with the rigors and uncertainties intrinsic to building a startup, Dr. Rosmarin’s session promises to shift perspectives fundamentally, turning anxiety into a strategic ally rather than an obstacle.
