What I’ve Learnt From Coaching 100+ Adults With ADHD (And Why ADHD Might Be the Entrepreneurship Gene)

ADHD and its links to entrepreneurship

When I started researching ADHD and neurodiversity, I had already discovered content and research online which indicated a high level of neurodiversity amongst entrepreneurs. I also thought about it structurally: because of the rigidity of workplaces, it would make sense that neurodivergent people may get pushed out of the workplace and become entrepreneurs in order to have ownership over their environment.

These ideas are supported by research. A UC Berkeley and UCSF study led by Dr Michael Freeman, titled “Are Entrepreneurs Touched with Fire?”, found that 29% of the entrepreneurs surveyed self-reported ADHD, compared to roughly 4 to 5% of the general population. In the same survey, 72% reported some form of mental health concern. Studies and surveys within the ADHD and founder community are increasingly pointing in the same direction.

29% of entrepreneurs self-reported ADHD, against 4 to 5% of the general population. That is not a medical footnote. That is a pattern.

Neurodivergent people are pushed out, not supported

Reflecting from my own lived experience, this was certainly the case. I have felt pushed out and not supported in corporate spaces to understand my late neurodivergent diagnosis. Corporate workplaces are very demanding of your time to be productive, so even carving out time to understand my neurodiversity was hard.

Asking for accommodations was hard if companies didn’t have those policies or awareness in place, and there was a whole load of negative stigma around neurodivergent people as well.

After being diagnosed with ADHD, I left my corporate job as I knew I needed time to process the diagnosis and learn more about my brain, so that I had all the information I needed to make informed choices about the career and workplace that I wanted to work in.

As I did more research, I noticed the high unemployment rates amongst neurodivergent people, almost twice the national average. This had to be a structural reason, because being neurodivergent does not mean we are unable to work. It is either difficulties with getting employed, retention, or a high number of neurodivergent exits.

What I started seeing in my coaching

After training to be a certified ADHD coach, and also becoming a solo founder, I started talking to more founders and realised from anecdotal conversations that more of them identified as neurodivergent. A lot of my founder friends say ADHD helps them, because they have the energy to pursue new business ideas, or they can hyperfocus and learn new skills quickly. Many of my founder friends openly talk about identifying as having ADHD, and this was a first for me. In the corporate world, talking about neurodiversity is very taboo and kept hush because of the negative stereotypes and stigma. I felt very seen in the founder community to talk about neurodiversity.

Increasingly, I started helping more of my 1:1 coaching clients set up their business, or build the confidence to set up their businesses.

I realised from working with ADHD clients that there are critical things ADHD brains struggle with, and that I had developed and thought about frameworks that can help anyone, neurodivergent or not, when building a business.

Is ADHD the entrepreneurship gene?

I’m starting to think that having ADHD is indeed the entrepreneurship gene. We have around 4% of the population with ADHD, but close to a third of founders show ADHD traits. It is really something to focus on.

My goal is to take the learnings from a coaching perspective and help more founders, with ADHD or not, because everything I’ve learnt from coaching ADHD clients, like time blindness and executive functioning, also helps neurotypical people. We just focus on ADHD people because our brains are so uniquely different that we are able to look closely at these executive functioning challenges and build frameworks around them.

Three things I draw from ADHD coaching into foundership

From thinking about what I can draw from my ADHD clients and apply to foundership, three things stand out.

1. Understanding your cognitive functioning make-up

In ADHD, it is important to map out our executive functioning to see what we can work with and what we can delegate. The same is true for founders: know your make-up, lean into the parts that work, and build support around the parts that don’t. When you are a founder, there are many things to do and you may feel stretched cognitively.

As with my ADHD clients, mapping out our executive functioning and identifying what we need to focus more on helps in terms of founder strategy. For example, I myself struggle with prioritising tasks, since everything seems urgent to me. Creating a GPT that helps me prioritise tasks based on my values now helps me with daily prioritisation. This is something I imagine all founders experience, not just ADHD founders.

2. Motivation architecture

ADHD people are motivated uniquely by factors such as urgency and an interest-based nervous system. Understanding this can help founders ask what really motivates them to build the business, especially once the novelty falls away and you start having to spend more time actually running the boring business stuff, with investors and stakeholders to answer to. These frameworks I use for ADHD people are very applicable to founders.

3. Rejection sensitivity

We have heard it all before: being a founder is about getting used to failure and rejection. But with ADHD, it can feel like physical pain. With the framework I use, I help founders rethink rejection and learn to regulate and separate it from their sense of self, especially if you have a different neurowiring that literally reads rejection as a serious threat to your nervous system. I talk to my clients about a regulation toolkit, and this is applicable to all founders.

I think there is a lot to learn and extrapolate from coaching ADHD people into foundership, which is arguably one of the few roles that requires smashing your ego to the ground and really thinking about all of the above in order to drive forward and build something from nothing.

Foundership is one of the few roles that requires smashing your ego to the ground, and building something from nothing anyway.

VCs are funding neurodivergent founders

It’s not just coaching where this matters. On the funding side, more funds are starting to recognise and back neurodivergent people as founders.

Hummingbird VC openly seeks out neurodivergent founders as a core part of how they invest, and they have produced three early funds returning more than 10x. As more investors start to recognise this, the case for supporting neurodivergent founders properly only gets stronger.

I would like to see a world where there is no stigma when neurodivergent founders pitch for money to VCs, and a genuine recognition that neurodiversity is highly represented in founder communities. I remember a couple of years ago not seeing any VC fund be open about the percentage of founders they backed who identified as disabled or neurodivergent. I hope that increasingly changes, and that funders recognise the resilience disabled and neurodivergent founders have, and back them for it.

Applicable frameworks from ADHD coaching that can be applied to founders

I’ve sat in many accelerators where the conversations about fundraising, mental health and all of that make complete sense. But I haven’t seen this framework being used, where the reflections are drawn from working with the 4% of the population who actually represent almost 30% of entrepreneurs. I think it’s valuable to recognise and share with founders, whether you are neurodivergent or not.

I’d be keen to deliver a workshop with anyone, or any accelerator, that wants to tap into this.

Get in touch: kim@ownyourflair.com | Book a call: tidycal.com/kim-to

Sources

1. “Are Entrepreneurs Touched with Fire?”, Dr Michael Freeman et al. (2015), UC Berkeley and UCSF. The self-report study behind the 29% ADHD and 72% mental health figures. michaelafreemanmd.com/Research.html

2. Study summary with the headline figures (72%, 49%, 29%). Read the summary (PDF)

3. People with ADHD are around five times more likely to start a business. Thrive Law

4. Hummingbird VC: founder-first thesis targeting outlier, often neurodivergent founders, with three early funds above 10x net TVPI. Fund profile | Longer background