Help Me Support Neurodiverse Entrepreneurs
Hello considerate readers, I need your help.
First, Some Background
Those close to me know I have a deep affection for supporting entrepreneurs, particularly those who find themselves underresourced and facing immense societal or economic challenges in pursuit of their dream. Many, many people fall into this category. Much of my adult life’s work over the past 20+ years has focused on this theme in one way or another wherever possible.
Enter neurodiversity.
My first real encounter with neurodiversity and entrepreneurship happened around 10 years ago when I belonged to the Life Labs team at United Cerebral Palsy in Washington, DC. Through this initiative, we aimed to pioneer innovative approaches of supporting entrepreneurs from an inclusive pan-disability perspective, including those identifying as neurodiverse. Few were doing this at the time. The experience was one of the most eye-opening and impactful moments of my career and life.
Fast forward to 2020, where I found myself facing a much closer encounter with neurodiversity through my own diagnosis that would have far-reaching implications on my personal and professional life. Less than one year later, the significance would grow with my son’s neurodiverse diagnosis.
Following my diagnosis, a long process began of piecing together countless moments going back over 35 years in an attempt to decode a narrative that finally made sense to me, fixing the craters caused by repeated loss and trauma. That arduous process of reconciliation is ongoing.
Neurodiversity & Entrepreneurship
Today, if you’ve intersected with entrepreneurs, education, or a variety of other ‘human-centered’ fields, you’ve likely encountered the topic of neurodiversity. It’s not uncommon to see articles frequently promoting how employers can “harness the power of neurodiversity” in the workplace or advocating for the inclusion of neurodiversity in diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives.
As early as 2017, Harvard Business Review published an extensive and well-written piece titled “Neurodiversity as a Competitive Advantage,” albeit with a focus on workforce talent than on the relevance of entrepreneurship. Still, it was insightful. Current estimates put the adult population with ADHD at 5%, those with dyslexia at 15%, and Asperger’s at over 2%, although the vast majority of the neurodiverse population goes undiagnosed (roughly 85% by most estimates!).
When it comes to entrepreneurs, the percentage of those with neurodiverse traits skyrockets compared to the general population: 29% with ADHD and 35% with dyslexia. Again, the vast majority goes undiagnosed, so those numbers are highly conservative.
The point being: it’s no secret there’s a huge correlation between neurodiversity (in its many forms) to the path of entrepreneurship.
Challenges Persist
In March 2024, Philip Salter, founder and CEO of The Entrepreneurs Network, published an insightful article on Forbes discussing how neurodiverse entrepreneurs are flourishing despite facing an onslaught of discrimination.
As a repeat entrepreneur, I can relate.
Life as a neurodiverse person is no walk in the park. It’s fraught with overwhelming challenges from social anxiety and inescapable bouts of depression to struggles with executive function essential to daily life. And each person with neurodiverse traits has their own unique experience, some relatable by others, some not so relatable.
The saying goes, “if you’ve met one neurodiverse person, you’ve met one neurodiverse person.” Same goes for any type of disability. Each lived experience is unique to that person and their identity.
To those of us with neurodiversity, it’s usually apparent when someone truly doesn’t understand the experience when they casually share that their “scattered ADHD brain” is status quo in today’s busy, tech-saturated life. I’ve even had people tell me directly they don’t believe ADHD exists because the symptoms are so relatively common and universally shared. Nothing could be more dehumanizing and invalidating than hearing that statement.
Now, add the path of entrepreneurship to your life’s journey, and the demands compound exponentially. While many aspects of entrepreneurship might feel more natural to the neurodiverse, they come with additional challenges. For every article emphasizing neurodiversity as “a superpower” and a strong match for pursuing a life in entrepreneurship, I want to give the author a peak behind the curtain to show them what it’s really like. The toll of neurodiversity for many people can seem crushing and insurmountable most times.
Across the wide spectrum of my career as a founder, mentor, advisor, investor, consultant, program director, and many more functions, I’ve encountered thousands of entrepreneurs from all geographies, socioeconomic backgrounds, identities and abilities. Working with entrepreneurs has been a safe-haven for me, a tribe where I feel most welcome and understood. Working with entrepreneurs is also where I’ve been the most engaged and fulfilled in the value I feel I’m able to provide in someone’s life.
The depth of fulfillment and friendships I’ve received through entrepreneurship went into hyperdrive following my neurodiverse diagnosis in 2020. It didn’t take me long to begin self-disclosing my own neurodiverse challenges in life and entrepreneurship due to the safety I felt surrounded by fellow dreamers and doers. As if turning on a light switch, countless entrepreneurs began confiding in me about their own struggles.
To the thousands who have intersected with my life’s journey over more than 20 years, I owe a debt of gratitude and thanks.
For Neurodiverse, By Neurodiverse
If you’ve read this far, thank you. 🙏 This is where you come in.
I’ve spent considerable time studying the nuances of neurodiversity and entrepreneurship in an effort to learn more about myself and improve how I operate. To my surprise (or not), I have found few practical resources on neurodiversity specifically targeted at entrepreneurs. Most articles don’t offer constructive advice or revelatory insight, but recycle the same message largely aimed at the benefits to employers. And, yet, I know from lived experience there are tactics, tools, and strategies that can offer immeasurable benefit to others when freely shared.
Neurodiverse entrepreneurs deserve more.
I’ve set out on a mission to build a resource hub for neurodiverse entrepreneurs covering every topic possible on entrepreneurship, specifically written for a neurodiverse mind.
Ultimately, my vision is to offer content in a wide variety of digestable formats to suit different ways of learning. There would be no “best practices,” but many shared practices available for easy discovery by entrepreneurs at virtually any stage of their journey.
Some examples of content would include:
- Achieving Founder-Business Model Fit
- Ideation Frameworks
- Productivity & Executive Function
- Cultivating Self-Efficacy
- Building & Leveraging Social Capital
- Achieving Self-Leadership
- Building a Mental Model Toolkit
- and many more topics
Included in this hub will be a directory of online resources from mentoring to funding to diverse support communities, where entrepreneurs can find any assistance they’re looking for. The hub would be updated regularly with resources provided by the broader neurodiverse community.
How You Can Help
The reality is that I can’t do this alone, nor should I. Any hub of such resources needs to be driven by a community of diverse perspectives. While a resource or recommendation may work for one individual, it may not work for another individual. The spirit of the hub is to enable discovery and growth through sharing versus prescriptive solutions.
There are many ways you can help this hub get off the ground.
- Amplify: repost this article, comment for visibility, send it to a friend or organization who may be interested
- Contribute: provide a resource that might be essential to the hub (article, website, course, video, newsletter, coach, program, etc)
- Recommend: offer feedback on what topics should be included
- Subscribe: stay current by subscribing to email updates 👇🏼
- Partner: reach out if you have another creative idea on how to help
Subscribe to The Neurodiverse Entrepreneur
I hope this post and plea for help resonates with many of you, whether or not you are neurodiverse. I welcome any messages (private or public), of support, resources, partnership, ideas or help of any kind.
In gratitude,
Josef Scarantino
