Doing well and being well are not the same.
Outward success tells us little about someone's internal experience. Purpose, vitality and the capacity to enjoy life matter alongside visible achievement.
THE THINKING & THE RESEARCH
What if we developed founders as deliberately as we develop their businesses?
We invest in strategy, skills, systems and growth. But the person making the decisions, carrying the pressure and shaping the culture remains central to everything that follows. I believe their inner foundations deserve the same rigour as the business around them.
OUR POINT OF VIEW
Human development and organisational development belong in the same conversation.
Modern businesses need modern people solutions. We know too much about human functioning, positive psychology and the conditions for flourishing to treat development as a series of isolated training events.
Training can build knowledge. Development must build capacity.
Skills matter. So do the state, beliefs, energy and psychological resources people bring into the moments when those skills are needed. That is why Inner Fitness develops Body, Awareness, State and Execution together.
Context determines what people can sustain.
Even powerful individual development can be constrained by workload, culture, relationships and organisational design. Organisational Fitness explores how to create the conditions in which people can thrive and perform over time.
RESEARCH INFORMED. PRACTICE LED.
Stronger humans. Healthier organisations. Sustainable performance.
BASE brings together applied positive psychology, coaching psychology, performance science and Positive Organisational Scholarship. These fields offer valuable insights into motivation, wellbeing, human strengths, behaviour change and the organisational conditions that support people to flourish. My proposed doctoral research will build on this foundation by exploring the relationship between founder development and organisational outcomes.
Explore Organisational Fitness ↗OUR RESEARCH LENS
One question. Three levels of change.
01 / THE HUMAN
How do we build the capacity to meet what life and work ask of us?
We examine regulation, awareness, psychological resources and behaviour, drawing on positive psychology, coaching psychology and performance science.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Growth changes the demands on the human leading it.
As a business grows, the founder is asked to make more complex decisions, lead more people and hold more uncertainty. Yet support is often weighted towards what the business must do next: the pitch, the plan, the funding, the strategy.
Those things matter. So does the human being expected to make them work. The question driving Return to BASE is whether strengthening the foundations of human performance can help leaders grow with their businesses, rather than becoming the constraint on them.
My focus is the connection between the person and the business: how energy, psychological resources, self-awareness and behaviour shape leadership in practice, and how organisations create the conditions for those qualities to be sustained. This is the starting point for my proposed doctoral research.
FROM MY MSC RESEARCH
Three ideas that shaped my point of view.
My postgraduate dissertation explored positive psychology interventions that might help middle-aged adults move beyond languishing and foster purpose, vitality and joy in life and career. It sharpened the questions I now bring to founder performance.
Performance needs foundations.
Motivation, psychological flexibility, self-belief, recovery and a sense of agency offer useful lenses for understanding how people sustain meaningful action.
Insight needs somewhere to go.
An inspiring conversation can open thinking. The deeper opportunity is helping people practise and apply new responses in everyday life, within environments that support change.
These insights shape how BASE brings research into real-world development. The proposed doctoral work will explore their application to founders and organisations more closely.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE THINKING
Grounded in positive psychology. Built for the realities of business.
Positive psychology studies what helps people function well, including motivation, meaning, strengths, wellbeing and psychological resources. Positive Organisational Scholarship extends that perspective to the practices, relationships and environments that help people and organisations flourish. Together with coaching psychology and performance science, these fields inform our approach to Inner Fitness and Organisational Fitness.
This matters in founder life, where business demands can outpace personal capacity. In Balderton Capital's 2023 survey of 230 founders, 83% reported that working more hours brought diminishing returns beyond a point. Our approach connects established knowledge about people with the practical demands of leadership, growth and organisational life; the business impact of the full BASE approach remains a subject for future research.
PROPOSED DOCTORAL RESEARCH
The inner world of founders. The results in the real world.
I'm actively seeking a PhD supervisor and the right research partners to help develop, challenge and test this thinking. The proposed study will explore human foundations, sustained behaviour change and organisational outcomes over time, with a particular research interest in women founders.
What strengthens a founder?
Which psychological, physical and behavioural foundations help founders navigate pressure, develop as leaders and sustain performance?
Does a stronger inner world relate to stronger business outcomes?
Can changes in founder capacity be associated with decision quality, team dynamics, retention, execution or other meaningful measures of business progress?
Can AI support change that lasts?
Could responsible AI reflection and support between human coaching sessions improve practice, follow-through and learning? For whom, and under what safeguards?
What could founder support do differently?
How does a joined-up, human-first approach compare with conventional business advice, one-off training or stand-alone coaching, and how might funds improve what they offer?
This is proposed doctoral research. The final study design, partnerships and ethical approvals will be established through the academic process.
A PARTICULAR RESEARCH INTEREST
Women founders. Different pressures, stronger questions.
Return to BASE supports founders of every gender. The proposed doctoral research will place particular attention on women founders, whose experiences may be shaped by the interaction of growth expectations, funding environments, leadership identity, care responsibilities and the support available to them.
I want to understand variation, rather than assume all women founders experience the same challenges. Working with the right partners could help identify what genuinely strengthens founders and what organisations can do to create better conditions around them.
AN OPEN INVITATION
Help shape a different future for founder support.
I'm looking for an academic supervisor and a forward-thinking research partner: a VC fund, accelerator, founder community or organisation already investing in the people behind business growth, especially women founders.
FOR ACADEMIC SUPERVISORS
Help advance the evidence on founder development.
I'm seeking supervision and collaboration to refine the hypotheses, research design, measurements and ethical approach for a potential PhD.
FOR FUNDS & FOUNDER ORGANISATIONS
A chance to build evidence together.
Explore contributing to research design, facilitating voluntary participation and learning what effective, evidence-informed founder support could look like.
Participation and any future use of founder or company data would be subject to appropriate agreements, informed consent, confidentiality, safeguards and research ethics approval. Individual coaching disclosures would never become investor reporting.
RESPONSIBLE INNOVATION
Human support first. Technology where it helps.
Responsible AI may complement human coaching by supporting reflection and practice between sessions. I am interested in researching when that support is useful, where its limits lie and how to protect consent, privacy and the value of human relationships.
The BASE Snapshot is an introductory self-reflection experience, not a validated psychological measure, diagnosis or prediction of business success.
Take the BASE Snapshot