Founder Burnout

54% burned out last year.
73% are hiding it.

Founder burnout isn't a willpower problem. It's a systems problem. Your calendar doesn't know your body is breaking down. Body Agent does — and it intervenes before you crash.

The data on founder burnout

54%

of founders experienced burnout in the past year.

Sifted / CEREVITY, 2025

73%

of those founders are hiding it from their teams, investors, and families.

Sifted / CEREVITY, 2025

19 hrs

awake and you're cognitively equivalent to legally drunk (0.05% BAC).

Williamson & Feyer, Occupational & Environmental Medicine

Shadow burnout

Most founders don't recognize burnout until they're deep in it. The body shows the signs weeks before the mind admits them.

HRV, recovery trends, and sleep quality are early warning signals

The pattern nobody catches

Recovery drops from 72% to 45% over three weeks. Sleep quality degrades. HRV trends down. You don't notice because you're still shipping.

By the time you feel burned out, your body has been signaling for weeks. Body Agent watches those signals and intervenes — protecting mornings, lightening schedules, and alerting you to the trend before it becomes a crisis.

How Body Agent protects against burnout

Recovery trend monitoring

Body Agent tracks your recovery over weeks. When it detects a sustained downtrend — not a single bad night, but a pattern — it flags it proactively.

Autonomous calendar protection

Low recovery morning? The agent creates holds, reschedules meetings, and protects your cognitive peak hours. Before you even check your phone.

Meeting reschedule via Gmail

On low recovery days, the agent emails attendees via Gmail with Calendly links to rebook. No awkward messages to send yourself.

Recovery-revenue correlation

See exactly how burnout affects your revenue. Weeks with recovery below 50%: how much did revenue drop? The data makes the case for rest.

A low recovery morning, handled

Recovery 31% — third straight day below 50%. The agent intervenes.

Your calendarBefore
7:00
8:00
Investor call
9:00
Team standup
10:00
Design review
11:00
12:00
Lunch with advisor
1:00
2:00
Hiring sync
With Body AgentRecovery 31%
7:00
Recovery hold
8:00
Recovery hold
9:00
Walk + sunlight
10:00
Meditation
11:00
Investor callmoved
12:00
Lunch with advisor
1:00
Team standupmoved
2:00
Hiring sync

What a burnout intervention looks like

Recovery alert
Recovery 31%. Sleep 5.2h. HRV 19ms — well below your baseline.
This is your third straight day below 50% recovery. Your 7-day avg has dropped from 68% to 41%.
Morning protected. Asked to reschedule: "Investor call" (8:00am) — emailed partner@vc.com "Team standup" (9:00am) — emailed team@startup.co "Design review" (10:00am) — emailed design@studio.co
keep the investor call, move the rest
Investor call stays at 8:00. Standup moved to 1:00, design review moved to 2:00. Walk at 9:00, meditation at 10:00.

Protect the founder, protect the company.

The founders who perform best are the ones who recover best. Let the agent catch the warning signs early.