Fortitude Foundation
Building businesses that give back. Fortitude Corporation is proud to support entrepreneurs when they need it most.
Publishing with Purpose
Fortitude Corporation is a purpose-driven business. Profits from our operating companies go to support the work of the Fortitude Foundation, which helps entrepreneurs in crisis get back on their feet.
This is not a corporate social responsibility programme. It is not a philanthropy add-on designed to burnish a brand. It is a core part of why Fortitude Corporation exists and how we operate.
Why This Matters
Building a business is one of the most demanding things a person can do. It requires years of sustained effort, personal sacrifice, and emotional resilience. When things go well, the rewards can be extraordinary. But when things go wrong — and in business, things inevitably go wrong — the consequences can be devastating.
Business failure does not just affect balance sheets and bank accounts. It affects mental health, relationships, identity, and self-worth. Founders who have poured everything into a venture — their time, their savings, their reputation, their sense of purpose — can find themselves profoundly isolated when that venture fails. The networks they built often disappear. The confidence they relied on evaporates. And the support systems that exist for most other life crises — redundancy, bereavement, illness — simply do not exist for entrepreneurs.
The statistics are sobering. The majority of startups fail. Many established businesses eventually face existential crisis. Yet there is almost no infrastructure — no equivalent of a redundancy package, no structured support network, no peer community — to help the people behind those businesses navigate the aftermath. Society celebrates entrepreneurship when it succeeds but largely ignores it when it fails. Founders are expected to dust themselves off, learn from the experience, and move on. The reality is far more complex and far more painful than that narrative suggests.
This is the gap that Fortitude Foundation was created to fill.
What Fortitude Foundation Does
Fortitude Foundation provides practical, peer-led support for entrepreneurs who are experiencing business failure or crisis. It is not a mental health charity, though it recognises the profound emotional toll that business failure takes. It is an action-focused organisation where founders who have survived business failure help those who are currently experiencing it.
The Foundation operates on a simple principle: the people best placed to help a founder in crisis are other founders who have been through the same experience. Not therapists. Not advisors. Not well-meaning friends who have never built a business. Other founders — people who understand the specific, particular, often indescribable experience of watching something you built fall apart.
Fortitude Foundation connects founders in crisis with experienced peers who can offer practical guidance, emotional solidarity, and the simple but powerful reassurance that survival is possible.
Founders don't quit — they slowly disappear instead. And the Foundation exists to make sure they don't have to.
Peer connection.
Matching founders in crisis with experienced peers who have navigated similar challenges — providing one-to-one support that is practical, empathetic, and grounded in shared experience.
Practical resources.
Providing access to the practical tools, information, and guidance that founders need during and after business failure — from navigating insolvency processes to rebuilding professional identity and re-entering the market.
Community.
Building a community of founders who understand that business failure is not the end of the story — it is a chapter in a longer journey. A community where vulnerability is strength, where experience is valued, and where no one has to face their darkest professional moment alone.
Awareness.
Raising awareness of the mental health and wellbeing challenges that entrepreneurs face, particularly during business failure, and advocating for better support structures within the broader business ecosystem.
How Fortitude Corporation Supports the Foundation
Fortitude Corporation channels profits from its operating businesses — including its publishing, technology, and consulting activities — to fund the ongoing work of Fortitude Foundation. The relationship between the Corporation and the Foundation is intentional and structural. It is built into the way we operate, not bolted on as an afterthought.
The people behind Fortitude Corporation have lived the experience of business failure. They know what it feels like. They know how isolating it can be. They know the specific weight of watching something you spent years building collapse — and the silence that follows when the calls stop coming and the calendar empties. And they are committed to ensuring that no entrepreneur has to go through it alone.
We believe that the same resilience that defines great businesses should extend to the people who build them. That the entrepreneurial ecosystem should support its participants not just in success, but in failure. And that a business which generates profit has an obligation to direct some of that profit toward the people and communities that need it most.
This is not charity in the traditional sense. It is solidarity between people who understand what it means to build, to risk, and to lose — and who believe that the ability to start again should never depend on whether you have the resources and support to survive the fall.
The Wider Problem
The challenges facing entrepreneurs in crisis are not isolated personal struggles. They reflect a systemic gap in how our society supports the people who take the greatest risks in pursuit of economic growth and innovation.
Governments and policymakers celebrate entrepreneurship. They create incentive programmes, tax reliefs, and innovation grants designed to encourage people to start businesses. Universities teach entrepreneurship. Media glorifies founders. The entire ecosystem is designed to get people to take the leap.
But when the landing goes wrong — and statistically, it goes wrong more often than it goes right — the support evaporates. There is no safety net for a founder whose business has failed. There is no structured process for navigating the aftermath. There is no community of peers who understand what you are going through and can help you find a path forward.
The result is a hidden population of founders who are struggling in silence — dealing with debt, shame, isolation, and a profound loss of identity, with almost no support beyond whatever personal resources they happen to have. Some recover quickly. Many do not. Some never start another business, despite having the talent and experience that the economy badly needs. And some face consequences that extend far beyond their professional lives — damaged relationships, deteriorating mental health, and in the most extreme cases, genuine crisis.
Fortitude Foundation exists because this is unacceptable. If we are going to encourage people to take entrepreneurial risk, we have a collective obligation to support them when that risk materialises. Not with platitudes about resilience and learning from failure. With practical, peer-led support that meets founders where they are and helps them find a way through.
A Note on Profit and Purpose
Some people are surprised to learn that a holding company channels its profits to a charitable foundation. We understand the surprise — it is not conventional.
But we believe it is right. The people behind Fortitude Corporation have personal experience of business failure and its consequences. They have seen first-hand how the absence of support can turn a difficult professional experience into a personal crisis. And they have concluded that using the profits from successful business activities to prevent that outcome for others is not just a moral choice — it is the most meaningful use of those profits.
We do not view Fortitude Foundation as separate from our commercial activities. We view it as their natural extension. Building businesses that generate profit is valuable. Using that profit to support the people who need it most is what makes it meaningful.
This is what we mean when we say Fortitude Corporation is purpose-driven. It is not a slogan. It is how we allocate capital.
Learn More
To learn more about Fortitude Foundation's work, or to access support, visit the Foundation website.
If you are a founder experiencing business failure or crisis, Fortitude Foundation is here for you. You are not alone.
If you are an entrepreneur who has survived business failure and would like to support others going through it, the Foundation welcomes your involvement. The most powerful thing you can offer someone in crisis is your own experience — and the proof that there is a path through.
If you represent a business, organisation, or institution that would like to support the Foundation's work — through funding, partnership, or awareness — please get in touch through the Foundation's website.