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Personal Consequences

Some of the entrepreneurs—mostly those who had mild burnout symptoms—mentioned being exhausted and tired at times, especially when working long hours. This could be due to the entrepreneurs’ strong personal commitment to their ventures where OVC makes them work

58 hard and long and increase their efforts, which may explain their stress reactions and burnout assessment score. Furthermore, regardless of the rewards received in return, high efforts and work immersion may become too overwhelming after a while, especially when coping such as recovery times were missing: “Well, roughly a year [we have been working near the limit], I would say. It is just that you have to get everything lined up. There are a some more annoying things that take time, not only for one project.” (R4)

“And it is really hard, because you lose that feeling. You always think if I work longer, stuff is getting done, but you don't even see, like you lose that feeling of “oh you are not productive anymore.” (R3)

Interestingly, the entrepreneurs in this sample had varying ideas of what work-life balance is. Despite a few exceptions, who do not work full-time on their ventures, the remaining entrepreneurs all spend considerable amounts of hours at their ventures at the expense of their private lives. “Right now [work-life balance] is not so good. At the moment I have basically two topics in my life. One is being an entrepreneur. And one is being a father. So but for me that can be a bit hard to still have the contact with all the friends, so the social life besides… [I] need to take an exam so I also have to study during the weekend to pass that exam. So yeah I am actually currently longing for July when the exam is done. And then it should be a little more relaxed” (R2)

[Stress affects personal life] because my personal life is strongly connected to my entrepreneurial life, my girlfriend is involved in the start-up and most people that work there, I know and are connected with the idea. (R7)

However, for some, this sacrifice is not as apparent to them as it is to their private environment. They are also content with this situation in this point in time: “Maybe for me, I have a different perspective than the outside world. The outside world would think he is always working. My wife for example, she thinks I am always working.” (R13)

“The most annoying thing as when friends and family come around to tell him stop working all the time.” (R6)

Whereas the other entrepreneurs make or want a clear distinction between their ventures and their private life. Those who currently achieve a good balance were mostly male entrepreneurs with no indication of burnout symptoms. However, some are still struggling to find a proper balance. “I want to work and I also want to have time off and think of something else, I have

many interest and hobbies and I knew exactly what I would like to do if I had more free time, but right now it's not possible.” (R9)

These findings could be related to the concept of OVC and some entrepreneurs’ strong ambition to move their ventures ahead. However, OVC makes it difficult for some entrepreneurs to switch off work completely. This appeared to be more true for those with mild burnout symptoms and female entrepreneurs, although some male entrepreneurs also mentioned that work problems stay in the back of your minds sometimes.

So far I work so much and was so focused until my private environment forced me to take time off.” (R12)

“I keep thinking about it, and yes sometimes it is hard to turn these thoughts off.” (R10)

Personal Performance

On the personal performance level, some entrepreneurs reported that stress does not affect them very much: “Actually it doesn't, I just get very focused. Maybe I have to take a minute and relax for a bit but then I can keep going for whatever is next.” (R6)

Some stress is even encouraging, “fun” or helps in situations such as pitching or negotiations: “When the meeting with the agricultural minister, it was very positive, it was also a big opportunity, so I went for it and did my utmost best in this situation “(R13)

“But the work is also fun, that is the good thing about it. It is like when you are in school, you like going if you are good at it and then it is fun.” (R4)

Nevertheless, if stress became too much and could not be translated into energy, common answers related to the negative effects of stress included “low creativity”, “more mistakes”, “forgetful”, or “low productivity”.

Venture -Related Consequences

On the venture level, most entrepreneurs expressed that they do not think that having negative stress affects their performance: “No, so far stress was never a concern.” (R6) Although their

personal performance may suffer for a moment, the entrepreneurs felt that they don’t let stress affect their business performance, at least not in the short term as they can effectively cope with it: “I also think I am good at handling it and knowing when I am really too stressed.” (R15)

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business performance. Because we don't make any money yet, so you don't have correlation yet.” (R2)

On the other hand, some entrepreneurs felt that maybe it does affect their performance when talking to customers: “And you are not at all in the mood for it and you are so stressed, then actually you shouldn’t do that. You won't achieve that people will buy it, because they can feel the stress.” (R3)

Also, some said that it may affect their processes: they are slower, take more time figuring things out, or while trying to solve a problem for one aspect of the business, another part is being neglected. “Right now we are experiencing stress maybe, because we are testing the product right now with customers, and they call with operational problems and you are starting to see that it interferes with product development, because now, we have to spend more time on the operational side.” (R1)

The author was able to identify some positive operational and financial performance metrics within the data, such as improvements of the product, increase in the team size, and expanding on their product and service offering.” But we need to talk more to the government, we want to grow more, like have a kitchen and cook the food and need more organization to that.” (R8)

However, negative impacts could not be assessed nor identified by the author apart from the statements provided by the entrepreneurs.