Welcome to the Kabila Founder Mental Health Fund!

Why our founder, James, started this important project to support founder mental health

My introduction to being an entrepreneur happened in 2012 when I got into the gener8tor accelerator’s winter 2013 cohort in Madison, WI. I was living 1,000 miles from friends and family. 

My twins were supposed to be born at the end of March 2013, and the accelerator would end in early April. But two days before the start of the program, there was a complication with my son, and if we didn’t deliver the kids right away, he would die.  The doctors performed an emergency C-section, and the kids weighed two pounds each. 

I drove two hours each way to the accelerator and back and forth to the NICU. I woke up every day at 2 am, emotionally wrecked.  Sometimes I’d cry just because someone said “hello.”

On demo day, right before I took the stage, I got a call from an angel group I previously visited, and they said they would fill my entire round and invest $250K. I fell to my knees, cried, and thanked God. 

My daughter Zoe came home from the NICU at six weeks, followed by my son Thaddeus at ten weeks.   

The pressure

The pressure of launching a startup and raising young twins without family nearby was enormous.  My mental health consistently deteriorated. And my startup failed. 

I was functionally depressed up until 2022 when I started seeing a mental therapist. I now have tools and resources to manage my mental well-being and I’m doing much better! But I can’t help but wonder if the outcome of my startup would have been different if I had access to a good therapist.

This is why I want to help other founders get the mental health support they need via the Kabila Founder Mental Health Fund. So they can show up whole: for their startups, for their families, and for themselves. 

Want to know why James named the mental therapy grants after his immigrant grandmother?

Learn about the Carmen Reid grants 

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Hear founders share stories about their mental health journeys!

Hear founder stories

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Are you a US-based founder who wants mental therapy, but can't afford it? 

Join the waitlist for free mental therapy

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         We are excited to announce the upcoming launch of our founder's new book, Burn Bright, Not Out: Shattering the Silence Around Mental Health in Tech Startups, co-authored with Django Degree, II , with a foreword by Techstars CEO, David Cohen .

Learn more

Support Our Mission with the book
We're thankful to Focus on Words! For every book purchased between now and September30th of 2028, Focus on Words will donate 90% of proceeds to the Kabila Founder Mental Health Fund to support our work.

Click the button above to learn more.

No portion of the purchase price is tax-deductible. The Kabila Founder Mental Health Fund does not receive any payment for referrals, clicks, or product promotion.

What we do

We provide free mental therapy for startup founders in our ecosystem as follows:

• US-based founders only
• Four free mental therapy sessions for one founder via BetterHelp
• Or they can use their own therapist and we’ll reimburse them up to $300

Let's make it happen, together!

Working together, we can shatter the silence around mental health in startups.

A $150 donation pays for two virtual mental therapy sessions.

Please be a donor today! 

Thank you. 

Questions? 

Contact us via email at james at joinkabila dot com.