Abstract
Venture creation programs are built upon the logic of learning to be an entrepreneur through doing what entrepreneurs do: starting and managing ventures, thus experiencing a whole range of emotions related to an entrepreneurial career. This also involves the “dark sides” of entrepreneurship, such as the stress related to uncertainty and personal risk. Thus, this study investigates how students in venture creation programs experience and manage stress related to their start-up activities. It is based on semi-structured interviews with 12 participants, which are analyzed according to the principles of thematic analysis. Our findings show that stress is experienced both as a motivating force and as harmful when it becomes overwhelming and prolonged, leading to physical and mental health issues. Furthermore, the students employ a wide range of coping strategies to navigate these challenges. While the educational culture supports motivation and fulfillment, it also hinders effective stress management by enforcing norms of hard work and little rest, making it difficult for students to prioritize healthy coping strategies. The study has implications for educators as they can foster an educational culture that balances high-performance expectations with effective stress management, equipping students with the resilience needed to succeed as future entrepreneurs.
Introduction
The essence of venture creation programs is to combine academic coursework with venture creation and development (Lackéus & Williams Middleton, 2015; Politis et al., 2025). The core pedagogical idea is that students should experience what it is like to be a “real-life” entrepreneur by starting their own ventures (Lackéus & Williams Middleton, 2015; Smith et al., 2022), thus, learning to be an entrepreneur through entrepreneurship, rather than merely learning about or for entrepreneurship (Kakouris & Liargovas, 2021). This implies that students learn how to be entrepreneurs by doing entrepreneurial activities and reflecting on their learning, which aligns with Dewey’s (1938) educational theory, often referred to as learning-by-doing (e.g., Kakouris & Morselli, 2020; Larsen, 2026). Students collaborate with stakeholders outside the university and gain ownership of their work and venture (Rasmussen & Sørheim, 2006). Gradually, they become professional entrepreneurs rather than merely simulating the entrepreneurial experience (Aadland & Aaboen, 2020).
However, since entrepreneurship is inherently stressful due to the pressure, risk, and uncertainty involved in starting and running a business (Rauch et al., 2018), students in venture creation programs are likely to face this as they start and manage their ventures. Research highlights that stress can impact entrepreneurs’ well-being, leading to disengagement and lower job satisfaction (Kibler et al., 2019), and that stress resilience is essential for entrepreneurial success (Rauch & Frese, 2007; White & Gupta, 2020). Thus, understanding how students face and handle stressful experiences when creating and managing their ventures is important to educate resilient future entrepreneurs. In this study, we focus on first- and second-year students enrolled in a master-level venture creation program in a Nordic country. As they are engaged in real venture development, their exposure to pressure, uncertainty and responsibility makes it particularly salient to understand how stress is experienced and managed.
Scholars have looked into the role of critical incidents and emotions in action-oriented entrepreneurship education, and research shows that learning through entrepreneurship contributes to emotional stress for students (González-López et al., 2019). While the stress emanating from emotionally charged and risk-laden experiences is important for entrepreneurial learning (Pittaway & Cope, 2007), and development of entrepreneurial competences (Lackéus, 2014), negative emotions from critical incidents can also undermine students’ confidence and self-efficacy, thereby hindering entrepreneurial learning (Elmes, 2019; Lund Dean & Jolly, 2012). On the positive side, critical incidents can act as triggers for higher-level learning by interrupting assumptions and prompting deep critical reflection (Cope, 2003). For instance, learning from failure is conceptualized as an emotionally charged and interpretative process through which entrepreneurs can reconstruct meaning over time, gradually transforming adverse experiences into valuable learning (Cope, 2011). However, negative emotions related to negative experiences can also increase the risk of withdrawal from entrepreneurship (Andringa et al., 2016; Crosina et al., 2024).
Thus, entrepreneurship students should be helped to develop coping strategies for managing the negative emotions arising from negative experiences such as failure experiences, so that they become opportunities for learning rather than barriers to it (Shepherd, 2004). In other words, when following a pedagogical logic that provokes emotional exposure, educators should also equip students with the skills and knowledge necessary to cope with the negative emotions that often accompany such experiences (Dobson et al., 2021).
While research has focused on the potential emotional strain related to specific entrepreneurship activities, no studies have specifically explored the overall experience of stress among students in venture creation programs and how they cope with it. Thus, to better understand how students can be supported in managing the stress of learning entrepreneurship through real entrepreneurial experiences, this study explores how stress is experienced and managed by students in a venture creation program. A qualitative study based on interviews with 12 student entrepreneurs has been carried out, guided by the research question: How do entrepreneurship students in venture creation programs experience and manage stress arising from their start-up activities?
Drawing primarily on the cognitive perspective on stress, this study contributes theoretically by highlighting how stress and coping leads to development or physical and mental harm. Practically, it offers insights for educators on designing pedagogical interventions that both expose students to authentic entrepreneurial challenges and support their ability to manage stress that can be provoked by it, and for policymakers on creating curricula and support systems that foster resilience and sustained engagement in entrepreneurship.
Literature Review
Entrepreneurship education relies heavily on the ideal of experiential learning (Hägg & Kurczewska, 2022), in that it aims to closely mirror entrepreneurial practice by making students’ active involvement the basis of their learning (Neck & Corbett, 2018). A key idea is that students learn by discovering, through firsthand experience, what works and what does not. This typically occurs through an inquiry-based, dialectic process between acting and reflecting upon one’s actions (Dewey, 1938), a process that is often emotionally charged (Cope, 2005; Guedes Gondim & Mutti, 2011). Venture creation programs are a particularly immersive form of education, as students learn by creating and running ventures over longer periods of time (Lackéus & Williams Middleton, 2015; Ollila & Williams-Middleton, 2011). In these programs, the venture creation process is the main tool for learning, with both successes and failures serving as important starting points for reflection and the development of entrepreneurial competencies (Dobson et al., 2021). Experiential learning is here used as an umbrella term to capture the overall principles of learning through the combination of “hands-on” experience and reflection. It incorporates both Dewey’s (1938) learning-by-doing principles and Kolb’s (2014) experiential learning model, although these theories have crucial differences (e.g., Kakouris & Morselli, 2020; Miettinen, 2000). The epistemology of venture creation programs aligns particularly with Dewey’s (1938) emphasis on authentic experience. At the same time, the venture creation program literature often draws on the experiential learning approaches informed by Kolb’s (2014) cyclical model of learning (Politis et al., 2025). This is also a much-cited model in related scholarly fields such as management research (Kayes, 2002).
The immersive pedagogical approach in venture creation programs (Politis et al., 2025) inevitably exposes students to the emotional “ups and downs” of entrepreneurship. Because entrepreneurship is inherently stressful, involving uncertainty and ambiguity (Rauch et al., 2018), students are likely to experience stress as they deal with new challenges. Stress and negative emotions are closely intertwined (McCraty & Tomasino, 2006). What is commonly referred to as feeling stressed often reflects the emotional responses that are triggered when a situation is perceived as threatening, such as anxiety, irritation, frustration, helplessness, or a sense of losing control (McCraty & Tomasino, 2006). Negative emotions contribute to heightened physiological stress responses in the body, which explains why prolonged negative emotional states are linked to reduced immune function and inflammation (Breivik et al., 1996).
Recent work points to the complex and sometimes unexpected role of emotions in entrepreneurial career development, emphasizing how individuals interpret emotionally demanding experiences when evaluating entrepreneurial pathways (Tampouri et al., 2025). Interestingly, negative emotions are linked to resilience when healthy coping strategies are used (Xiao et al., 2025). This is confirmed in a study of a venture creation program, where students who used reflection and sensemaking within specific methodological frameworks, facilitated by faculty, reduced negative emotions by reframing critical incidents into opportunities for learning (Crosina et al., 2024). This highlights the importance of coping when students face negative emotions and stress. Emotions can be helpful when addressed and reflected upon, as they may deepen learning and engagement (Bartunek & Ren, 2022; Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2012). Yet negative emotions can also block learning (Rowe & Fitness, 2018; Wright et al., 2018), sometimes leading to disengagement (Finch et al., 2015) or limiting development when difficult experiences undermine trust and psychological safety (Clancy & Vince, 2019; Dean et al., 2020).
Stress and Coping
Stress has been associated with a range of negative outcomes, such as sleep disturbances (Kollmann et al., 2019), depression (Siegrist, 2008), and reduced life satisfaction (Kibler et al., 2019; Kwan et al., 2012). Persistent stress may also increase the likelihood of entrepreneurial exit or failure, as sustained stress can wear down motivation (Andringa et al., 2016). However, stress is not necessarily harmful. Under certain conditions, it can enhance focus, performance, and resilience (Rudland et al., 2020). This positive outcome highlights how optimal levels of stress can support growth and induce a sense of meaning and fulfillment, which are aspects of eudaimonic well-being (Rudland et al., 2020; Straume, 2014).
The Cognitive Theory of Stress and Coping explains how individuals evaluate and respond to stressful situations (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The theory emphasizes two forms of appraisal: primary appraisal, where individuals assess the personal significance of an event, and secondary appraisal, where they evaluate their options for coping. Together, the primary and secondary appraisals determine whether a situation is perceived as harm, threat, or challenge. Harm appraisals are typically linked to sadness or anger, threat appraisals to anxiety or fear, while challenge appraisals are linked to excitement, eagerness, and confidence (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). When individuals feel that they have predictability and control over a situation, they are more likely to interpret a stressful situation as a challenge and a potential learning situation (Koolhaas et al., 2011), which has been found to enhance performance and yield positive short-term health benefits (Crum et al., 2017; Jamieson et al., 2018). In other words, appraising a stressful situation as a challenge is more likely to entail an overall positive experience of stress, which is, next, linked to the concept of “eustress,” which may enhance performance and productivity (Rudland et al., 2020). Folkman (1997) argues that meaning-making processes that help individuals interpret stressful situations as positive can enhance positive emotions. Such a positive, challenge-based appraisal can be linked to a positive “stress mindset,” which implies lower physiological stress responses and thus, increased well-being, when encountering stress (Crum et al., 2017).
When facing stress, individuals do, whether conscious or not, choose different coping strategies to manage or reduce it (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Coping is often divided into problem-focused and emotion-focused coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Problem-focused coping involves managing the stressor directly by, for instance, revising one’s goals, planning, taking action, and searching for help (Simarasl et al., 2024). Problem-focused coping is more likely to be used when individuals feel that they can change the situation (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004; Lapierre & Allen, 2006), but it may not be as helpful in uncontrollable situations (Carroll, 2020). Emotion-focused coping implies changing the emotional impact of stress, and is often used when stress must be endured. This includes strategies such as positive interpretation, reframing, distancing oneself from the situation, changing one’s focus of attention, and seeking social support (Carver et al., 1989; Holahan & Moos, 1987). A subset of emotion-focused coping is avoidance-focused coping (Holahan & Moos, 1987), which encompasses behaviors such as substance abuse, which can have negative long-term effects. Thus, the effectiveness of emotion-focused coping strategies depends largely on the specific strategy employed (Carver et al., 1989).
Research shows that most entrepreneurs employ a mix of problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies (Nikolaev et al., 2023). Over time, the well-being of entrepreneurs improves when problem-focused coping strategies, such as active problem-solving to reduce task build-up, are combined with emotion-focused coping strategies, such as seeking emotional support to mitigate the emotional toll of entrepreneurial challenges (Uy et al., 2013). Effective coping can not only mitigate immediate stress but also build long-term resilience, allowing entrepreneurs to leverage their experiences of adversity to enhance well-being and venture performance (Ahmed et al., 2022). Thus, students’ coping strategies play a central role in building resilience that benefits both their ventures and their long-term well-being.
The Impact of Norms on Stress and Coping
According to social safety theory, stress and coping are deeply embedded in social relationships and environments (Slavich, 2020). This biologically based perspective suggests that the human brain is highly attuned to cues of rejection and social evaluation that may signal threats to social belonging. As a result, stress responses are strongly shaped by perceptions of social threat or safety (Slavich, 2020). Learning through new venture creation is, in this perspective, not purely an individual process but has important social and collective dimensions (Lockett et al., 2017; Pittaway & Cope, 2007). In venture creation programs, students’ learning is shaped not only by their own venturing but also by the activities and experiences of their peers (Haneberg & Aadland, 2020). Accordingly, the educational culture is an important factor in shaping how people respond to and cope with stress (Chun et al., 2006). An essential part of a culture is shared norms, beliefs, and values that act as implicit and explicit “rules” for behavior, thought, and reaction (Frese, 2015). Norms are mutual expectations of how one should behave and what one should mean in given situations and contexts (Sjøvold, 2006, p. 273). Actions that align with the norms in given cultures are reinforced through positive feedback from peers, making individuals likely to act in ways that make them feel valued and accepted in their cultural context (Hackman, 2002).
Taken together, exposing students in venture creation programs to experiential education principles inevitably triggers emotional responses, including stress, which in turn activate various coping strategies. These processes are shaped by students’ experience of stress and the coping resources available to them, both of which are related to norms in the educational culture. In the next section, we present the methodological approach used to examine how students experience and manage stress in venture creation programs.
Method
To explore how students in venture creation programs experience and manage stress related to their start-up activities, we decided to conduct an in-depth qualitative study of a single venture creation program context with multiple informants, using semi-structured interviews. Through exploration of participants’ individual experiences, one can derive rich and nuanced descriptions that can help understand a given phenomenon from an experiential point of view (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2010). By qualitative inquiry, one can develop a deep understanding that can lay the foundation for theory development and further hypothesis testing in the future (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2010). This methodological approach was considered appropriate, as existing research has yet to address how venture creation students experience and manage stress.
Research Context
The research context of the study is a two-year master-level venture creation program at a Nordic university. The Nordic education ideal is commonly described as being grounded in democratic ideals promoting participation and low power distance between students and educators (Schild et al., 2026). Accordingly, teaching is ideally organized around dialogical practices, positioning students as active contributors to knowledge rather than passive recipients. In the program in question, around 40 students are enrolled in each cohort, coming from a wide range of disciplines, with an equal distribution of men and women. The students start their own ventures as part of the program. In the first semester they work with various venture ideas, assessing their potential to become viable start-ups, before they choose an idea to pursue in the form of actual start-ups at the end of the first semester. The ventures are used as examples in the courses, and students share their experiences in and between classes with their peers and faculty. During the program, several of the ventures develop into viable companies, and approximately fifty percent of the students continue working on their venture after graduation. For confidentiality reasons, the program itself is not described in more detail.
Overview of the Participants by Pseudonyms and Their Study Year
Each participant was interviewed once, and the interviews were carried out by the end of their first and third semesters, respectively. While the former were, at the time of the interview, in the final process of choosing start-up ideas and teams, the latter were involved in emerging or established start-up companies. Thus, all the participants were involved in start-up-related entrepreneurial activities as a part of their studies.
The first author interviewed the students, and the interviews lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. A semi-structured interview guide (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2010) was used as a starting point for the interviews, inspired by the phenomenological interview, in which the aim is to explore the lived experience of a phenomenon (van Manen, 2007). Rather than asking for opinions regarding a specific topic, one asks about concrete situations that describe the experience of a given phenomenon, which in this case was stress. Instead of developing a long list of questions to be answered, we therefore focused on exploring a few topics more freely (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2010), asking open-ended follow up questions such as: “Can you tell me more about this experience?” or “Can you describe a concrete situation where you had this feeling?”. This form of interview requires an attentive presence, showing active listening skills (Rogers & Farson, 1957/2015) to detect what the participant is saying and follow-up with relevant questions (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2010).
The questions were open, encouraging elaboration rather than short answers, as they were aimed at generating vivid descriptions of the experience of stress related to the students’ start-up activities during their studies. One example of a question is: “What does the word stress mean to you?” Another example is: “Have you noticed any specific thoughts, feelings or behavior that help you manage stress in an efficient way? Please elaborate!” The interviews were transcribed verbatim, resulting in 135,333 words of transcribed text (275 pages), and analyzed according to the principles of thematic analysis suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006).
Data Analysis
We analyzed the data inspired by the thematic analysis suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006). In their later writings, they have adjusted the label of their procedure to reflexive thematic analysis, emphasizing the researcher’s reflexive engagement in the analysis process and the transparency in analytical choices (Braun & Clarke, 2019).
We began by immersing ourselves in the data, familiarizing ourselves with the entire dataset by reading and re-reading it (Braun & Clarke, 2006). This process started with the first author transcribing all the interviews, taking notes on first impressions and reflections regarding possible themes and patterns. It continued by both authors reading through the entire dataset, followed by a discussion of our independent ideas, comparing and adjusting them, and jointly formulating a strategy for the next analysis phase.
The following step involved open coding, in terms of a data-driven generation of initial codes (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Here, we systematically worked through each interview, sentence by sentence, and assigned codes to each data segment, aimed at condensing (Malterud, 2012) the text while staying close to the experience expressed in the excerpts. This process resulted in 71 initial codes.
Three Examples of the Inductive Coding Pathway From Data Excerpts via Initial Codes to Preliminary Themes
We then reviewed, defined, and named the themes, consolidating overlapping themes and arranging others hierarchically where appropriate, in an iterative process aligning with what Braun and Clarke (2006) describe as reviewing themes and defining and naming themes. We followed Patton’s (1990) dual criteria of internal homogeneity and external heterogeneity, making sure that the themes were sufficiently distinct from one another but that the codes within each theme were sufficiently similar.
As a result of this process, we ended up with the three main themes and six sub-themes that constitute the findings of the study (see Figure 1). Below, we present the themes and sub-themes, illustrating each with participant quotes that exemplify the underlying patterns (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The three themes and six sub-themes that represent the findings of the study
Findings
The findings of the study consist of three main themes and six sub-themes that are presented in this section. Together, they respond to the research question: How do entrepreneurship students in venture creation programs experience and manage stress arising from their start-up activities?
Theme 1: A Dual Experience of Stress
Stress emerged as a dual experience among all participants. While the stress associated with working hard fostered a sense of purpose, commitment, and engagement, making the students more efficient and propelling them towards high performance, they also reached a tipping point where stress became negative. This shift occurred when they lacked the necessary resources and strategies to effectively cope with the stress they experienced. In the following, this duality is described in terms of the two sub-themes: motivational stress and a negative stress spiral.
Sub-Theme 1a: Motivational Stress
This theme reflects how students embrace the stress that is an integral part of the learning process. The experience of stress induces a feeling of being motivated and energized, which manifests as a continuous drive to take on new challenges and responsibilities. In describing his experience of stress, Ryan emphasizes a sense of purpose and fulfillment that is also linked to a feeling of having chosen the right career path: “I think you should put things into perspective, and that helps me. So … try to find joy in being an entrepreneur, even though it’s challenging. If you don’t find joy in it, maybe you shouldn’t do it. And it’s like, if I wanted to, I could just go away to Bali and work in a bar (laughs). But I don’t think that’s what brings me joy. I think what brings me joy is being an entrepreneur. And that’s why I’m an entrepreneur.”
By maintaining focus on his intrinsic motivation for being an entrepreneur, Ryan can navigate the stress of being a student entrepreneur due to a sense of clarity and purpose. In a similar vein, Seth describes how a sense of purpose and fulfillment is evoked by the student culture, which makes it worthwhile to work hard and experience high levels of stress: “There is no doubt there’s a lot of stress and a lot of work. But I have never been in an environment like this, where you can show up early and stay there until late at night without feeling like you’re doing something you’ll never use again. It feels like you’re doing the work for yourself and for the others [classmates]. I have a genuine joy in getting up, going to school, and working hard.”
Seth can embrace the stress because it is linked to a feeling that all the hard work is worth it: It is an investment in himself and his future. Stress is perceived as an important driver of getting things done, and Michael turns this perspective upside down in the following quote, highlighting that the absence of stress can lead to a decline in motivation and energy: “You might become a bit lazier and a bit more sluggish, honestly. Simply because you don’t have that pressure on you.”
This sub-theme illustrates that students perceive stress as a motivator for taking action, which gives a sense of purpose and fulfillment. The next sub-theme illustrates what happens when stress becomes overwhelming.
Sub-Theme 1b: A Negative Stress Spiral
Just as stress is often experienced as a motivating force, it can also tip over into becoming overwhelming, often leading to a negative spiral. Faced with the constant pressure of entrepreneurial tasks piling up, students describe moments when they no longer feel capable of managing their situation. In these instances, stress leaves them feeling depleted, unable to relax, and without the chance to “recharge their batteries.” Carl tells: “You drain the battery the whole time, always. By the end it’s like, you recharge a bit, and then you cannot handle that much stress, and then you recharge a little, and then you cannot handle that much stress, and then there’s just a huge struggle that sits there mentally (…) and the only possible way to resolve it is to actually relax. But you don’t have the time to relax yet. You can relax in two weeks.”
Louise describes an intensive period of working in teams during a feasibility study, where constant mental activity made it hard to unwind at the end of the day and during the night: “I just got home from school and I'm still a bit tense after a whole day full of activities. Then I lie down in bed and think, okay, now I need to at least get some rest so I can get seven hours of sleep. That way, I’ll be able to have an efficient day tomorrow. But then I end up spinning around in my head anyway because I have so many ideas I want to implement, and I need to remember them. So, I end up lying there on my phone, writing down everything that comes to mind. Like, “Oh, I mustn’t forget to bring that thing,” and “I need to talk to that person about this and ask if he can fix it for me.” And then, suddenly, the hours pass, and I don’t get time to sleep, or it takes so long, and then I wake up the next day with just five hours of sleep and have a 14-hour intensive workday ahead.”
This quote shows how the mental load of the work pressure made stress tip over into being negative as it led Louise into a condition where she became unable to relax and regain energy for the next day. Instead, she was kept awake by rumination, which made her even less capable of enduring the pressure of the next day because she did not get enough sleep.
A pervading tendency in the data is that negative stress due to high workload and the lack of capacity to handle it makes the students deprioritize the things that they know are good and important for them, such as physical exercise, healthy nutrition, contact with their social network outside the educational environment, rest, and sleep. The negative stress they experience leads them into a vicious cycle of neglecting and ignoring symptoms, as they continue working without adjusting their strategies. This leads, next, to a decrease in their physical and mental health, which again makes it harder to effectively cope with more stress. The symptoms the students share are both physical and psychological, ranging from “light” to more severe symptoms. On the more severe end of the scale, Michael tells, for instance, about a period when stress led to depression: “What can I say? High stress levels in the body, which in turn led to severe depression.”
Nora shares how a stressful period entailed the first migraine attack of her life: “I actually had my first migraine attack this fall. I got some issues with my vision. I didn’t know what it was, but my uncle once had a detached retina, so that was the first thing that crossed my mind.”
Mia tells about a situation where she experienced panic attacks, followed by a feeling of embarrassment: “I was very embarrassed because I had been so stressed and had cried. I had panic attacks and so on. So I was very caught up in my own head.”
According to Louise, emotional breakdowns due to stress are quite common for the students in her class: “At least half of [the class] have experienced a breakdown.”
To manage the ongoing pressure they face, the students engage in various coping strategies, presented in the following section.
Theme 2: Navigating Stress
The analysis revealed that students navigate stress by using a range of strategies, including task management, seeking support, perspective shift, and escaping stress. These strategies are captured in sub-themes 2a, 2b, 2c, and 2d, which are presented in the following.
Sub-Theme 2a: Task Management
The students describe how they approach their workload to reduce the stress it generates. One way of managing the stress is simply to get the work done by spending all the time that it takes to do it, even though it means that they make long workdays, often 10–12 hours, their “default mode.” As elaborated on by Terrence: “I mean, we’re talking ten to twelve hours a day, at least, you know. Of course, there's more during the feasibility studies, but you really notice it.”
Others take a more structured approach. Nora compares her time- and task planning to the card game “solitaire,” where one sorts cards into a specific pattern. She tells about how she actively organizes her work to reduce stress: “I often try to figure out how to avoid stress. (…) I’m constantly trying to think like this: Okay, I need to do this then and that then. And this and that. And then everything will be fine.”
What these two strategies share, despite their differences, is the deliberate effort to work on and break down tasks to make them more manageable. Rather than being overwhelmed by their workload, both students describe conscious efforts to regain control, either through endurance or structure.
Sub-Theme 2b: Seeking Support
Reaching out for help when feeling stressed is a common strategy among the students. A recurring theme across the interviews is the low threshold they experience in the educational environment to ask both fellow students and faculty for assistance. Rather than feeling that they have to figure out everything on their own, the students experience that asking for help is normalized and expected. According to Lucas: “Everyone helps everyone, so to speak. Sharing … a sharing culture. If I need help with something, I just write in the (name of communication channel) channel that I need help with it. Then there are probably at least five responses that come in within the first hour.”
The assistance of fellow students or faculty helps the students prevent the feeling that entrepreneurial tasks are piling up while spending unnecessary energy trying to solve a single issue. Ryan’s experience extends this pattern beyond the immediate educational environment, illustrating how students also seek guidance from external sources when needed. Feeling stressed about the phone calls he needed to make to set up investor meetings, he turned to an experienced person working at a local incubator. The advice he received was simple but reorienting: “Then he says, start with the investor you are least interested in. Start having meetings with them, so you are very prepared to meet the investor you really want.”
The concrete piece of advice gave Ryan a foothold, a place to start that made the broader task feel less daunting and more within reach.
Whether drawing on peers, faculty, or external mentors, students demonstrate a shared tendency to manage stress by actively seeking guidance rather than struggling alone.
Sub-Theme 2c: Perspective Shift
When stress builds up, some students respond by actively reframing how they perceive and relate to their situation, reducing its power over them.
Seth tells about a situation where he recognized ruminating thoughts as a stress response and deliberately chose to change his way of approaching it by what he metaphorically refers to as “switching train tracks”: “I imagine I’m on a bus or a train. If you stay on that train, it keeps going on the same track. Or if you’re on the same bus, it follows the same bus route. Then you just need to get off and take a different bus. That way, you move forward in a way.”
What is notable about Seth’s approach is its active quality. He does not wait for the rumination to pass on its own, nor does he try to suppress it. Instead, he describes an intentional choice to disengage from an unproductive thought pattern and focus on a new one.
Louise describes another deliberate technique, which is not about redirecting thought, but about expanding her perspective. She tells about a simple yet powerful technique that has helped her gain new perspectives on the relative importance of her problems: “I’ve watched a video on YouTube that just zooms out from one person, and then you see the entire universe. (…) It films you, and then it just zooms out from the city, the country, and then the whole world. And then you realize how insanely small you are. And then I’m like … This really doesn’t mean that much. It’s fine. I’ll solve it. And then I get a bit more of that attitude towards it.”
In different ways, both Seth and Louise illustrate how consciously shifting one’s perspective can reduce the emotional intensity of stress and restore a sense of agency. While Seth redirects his thinking, Louise zooms outwards, which allows her to perceive her stressful experience from a different angle.
Sub-Theme 2d: Escaping From Stress
Escaping from stress is a strategy that several of the students engage in, representing an opposite approach to actively reframing the experience of stress or seeking help. Escaping strategies involve temporarily withdrawing from stress altogether. This “escape” can take both mental and physical forms, ranging from substance use and distraction, to physically removing oneself from the environments associated with pressure.
Several students talk about heavy drinking as a deliberate way of temporarily ignoring and forgetting the pressure that causes stress, such as when Michael goes “all out”: “So, when you’re going to blow off steam and drink alcohol, I go all out. And I think that’s a stress reaction.”
In this case, the heavy drinking serves more purposes than merely being a social activity: It becomes a deliberate strategy to disengage from mental burdens related to stress. Another example of how student entrepreneurs deliberately escape the stress is procrastination, which is ignoring the amount of things to do and postponing taking action. Gabrielle notices that her ability to concentrate decreases when stress becomes overwhelming. She turns to what she calls “brain-dead activities,” such as scrolling through YouTube or Instagram, when she feels overwhelmed by the weight of her entrepreneurial tasks: “A feeling that now, in the context of stress, there is so much that I don’t even know where to start. And when I don’t know where to start, there’s nothing I can do, because it’s too much anyway. So I end up doing nothing. This often results in me going on YouTube, or starting to watch a series, or doing something that just occupies my mind. But it doesn’t actually lead to getting the things I should be doing done.”
Another example of escaping from stress is simply the act of withdrawing from the physical space associated with the stress. Louise shares how she seeks her parents’ place for rest and recovery: “It is definitely something that lingers in the walls, and that is stress. And no matter where (the study program) moves, I think stress will linger in the walls (…) So the only place I’ve been able to relax is actually at my mom’s and dad’s house. Because there, I’ve definitely – and I’ve reflected a lot on this – I think it’s because stress is also tied to physical places. So (the study program) is a stressful place for me, and I think my apartment has become a stressful place for me too.”
Overall, these escaping strategies make the students “forget” – for a little while – the stress they need to endure. While they differ in form, all the quotes reflect the need for a space, whether mental or physical, where the demands of the program cannot easily follow.
These examples illustrate how students navigate stress, from constructive strategies like perspective shifts and seeking social support, to more avoidant behaviors such as heavy drinking or procrastination. Even though the students apply several coping strategies, they explain that they wish they could rest more, as well as keep up with a healthy workout routine. The main reason that they do not do more of what they know is good for them is that students feel bound by the norms of the educational culture, a topic addressed in theme 3 below.
Theme 3: Coping Shaped by the Educational Culture
The students describe their participation in a venture creation program as an intensely rewarding and positive experience. They depict an educational culture characterized by performance, hard work, purpose, and meaning, where they are surrounded by peers who are dedicated, energetic, motivated, ambitious, and high-achieving, which positively affects their own motivation. It is described as a supportive culture where it is easy to ask for and get help, particularly in resolving entrepreneurship-related issues. Gabrielle refers to it as: “a healthy performance culture, kind of, where one pushes each other, while at the same time, supporting each other, and cheering each other on.”
However, this “go-getter” culture, a term used by Ryan, inevitably provokes stress because the students inspire and pressure each other to go “all in,” do their very best, and perform on a high level. The participants describe an expectation from both co-students and staff to work hard, and the students inspire and pressure each other and themselves to a “default mode” of long workdays and little breaks over long periods of time. The total weight of their entrepreneurial tasks creates a generally high workload and gives a feeling that one could, and should, always do more. In this sense norms in the educational culture seem to influence the coping strategies the students engage in, in a negative way. For instance, students report that their desire to meet others’ expectations of being hard-working, coupled with the fear of negative evaluation, leads them to skip physical exercise, such that they exercise much less than they would like to. Particularly for several of the first-year students, it seems difficult to challenge the norm of spending, so to speak, all one’s awake hours at “school.” Lucas tells: “I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t work hard. It’s important for me to show other classmates that I am there for us, that I can work hard (…) There is pressure from the second-year students: they are at school so much. When we see that they are there, and they say, “Are you going home already?” then you don’t go home. And when you see that your peers don't go home, then you don't go home either. Because you don’t want to be the first one to go home.”
Nora explains that positive stress, arising from being busy, is collectively regarded as a positive aspect of their culture. Although she appreciates the positive aspects of this culture, she experiences that this “positivity” can become “toxic” when it prevents people from sharing how they really feel about being stressed: “And sometimes here, I think it can become a bit like… Call it toxic positivity in a way. If you understand. That if you just step outside this building, you realize how insanely much you’re doing here. It’s almost like a madhouse. You end up getting totally environment damaged. You just keep going and going all the time, and you’re never allowed to say that it’s too much.”
Additionally, she experiences, like in Lucas’ account above, that norms in the culture can prevent her from coping in ways that could have been good for her. During an intensive period, where students test business ideas by conducting a feasibility study, she tells that: “It was mentioned that if people need a workout break in the middle of the day, that's fine. But it’s not, kind of.”
This indicates that, even though it is explicitly communicated that one should be allowed to take a break to exercise, the opposite message is simultaneously communicated, whether verbally or non-verbally: “it’s kind of not” ok to do that. Summed up, this theme shows how the norms of the educational culture might hinder students in applying strategies that they know would help them manage stress.
Discussion
This study provides a deeper understanding of how entrepreneurship students navigate the stress linked to developing and launching their own ventures as part of a venture creation program. Our findings reveal that students experience stress as a powerful motivator, yet they struggle when it escalates into a negative cycle that they feel unable to handle. To manage these challenges, they draw on several strategies, including task management, seeking support, perspective shift and escaping from stress. Notably, norms in the educational culture both fuel their stress and limit their coping options, highlighting how strongly students’ coping is shaped by the norms in the educational context. In the following, these findings are discussed in relation to theory and previous research.
“Tipping Points” and Differences in Coping Efforts
The study shows that the students experience a dual effect of stress. On the one hand, positive stress experiences are associated with feelings of purpose, meaning, and growth. On the other hand, stress becomes negative when students feel that they lack sufficient resources to meet demands, which, if prolonged, has impacts such as physical and mental health issues.
The positive experience of stress reported by the students relates to the concept of eustress, which is a constructive form of stress that helps individuals stay sharp, focused, and productive (Rudland et al., 2020). When engaging in action-oriented learning, this kind of stress might be important to get things done and is reflected in the student’s way of appreciating a hectic learning environment. Our findings suggest that meaning plays a central role in shaping how stress is experienced: The students associate stress with positive feelings when it is connected to an experience of meaningfulness (e.g., being an entrepreneur). When stress is appraised as a normal and even valuable part of engaging, meaningful work, it can catalyze growth rather than harm (Crum et al., 2017; Jamieson et al., 2018). Such a “stress mindset” has been shown to foster positive outcomes when facing stressful situations, including lower physiological stress responses and improved well-being (Crum et al., 2017). Thus, meaning-making may serve as a protective factor against stress-related negative outcomes.
Folkman (1997) argues that meaning-making processes can generate positive emotions even under negative stress experiences and pressure. These emotions may buffer some of the harmful effects of stress and sustain motivation and engagement. This finding is also in accordance with Crosina and colleagues’ (2024) research, which shows how small wins, minor achievements, or moments of progress, among students in a venture creation program, foster positive emotions that counterbalance negative responses to challenging events. Without such moments, heightened negative arousal may hinder learning (Rowe & Fitness, 2018). Based on this, educators might facilitate processes that help students transform stressful experiences into meaningful learning, for instance, by encouraging and facilitating reflection that focuses on describing small wins (Crosina et al., 2024).
Furthermore, the study shows that students reach a tipping point where stress becomes overwhelming and self-reinforcing. The consequences range from relatively mild symptoms, such as difficulty relaxing and sleep disturbances, to more severe mental health challenges, such as panic attacks and depression. This is in accordance with research that shows the detrimental effects of stress on mental and physical health (Kibler et al., 2019; Kollmann et al., 2019; Siegrist, 2008). Such consequences directly undermine essential abilities required for entrepreneurial success, including sustained energy, motivation, cognitive sharpness, and effective decision-making (Rauch et al., 2018; Stephan, 2018). Notably, several students reported experiencing severe symptoms as early as in their first semester, suggesting that what might be perceived as “prolonged” stress in this context may occur over a relatively short period. This emphasizes how intense and emotional the entrepreneurial learning environment in venture creation programs can be, even at early stages. Stress can create a self-reinforcing cycle where initial stress responses lead to behaviors that further heighten stress (Feng et al., 2023). Therefore, it is important for students to develop self-awareness of their tipping points as a foundation for effective stress regulation.
The study shows that, in response to stress, the students use a variety of coping strategies, including spending time on and organizing entrepreneurial tasks, seeking support from peers and experts, shifting their perspective on the situation and escaping from stress through substance use, procrastination and physically removing oneself from locations associated with stress. Connecting this to the coping literature, the students use a mix of problem-focused (i.e., cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage the stressor) and emotion-focused strategies (i.e., regulating the emotional response to the stressor) (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Problem-focused strategies such as delegating tasks, prioritizing workloads, and planning, are applied to reduce demands and regain a sense of control. However, for some students, these strategies turn into excessive planning and rumination in the evenings and nights, which disrupts sleep and recovery. Emotion-focused strategies are also applied, such as perspective shifting, and seeking social support. Some students also report avoidance-focused coping strategies, a subset of emotion-focused strategies (Holahan & Moos, 1987), such as heavy drinking or procrastination, as temporary ways to escape overwhelming stress. Overall, problem-focused strategies such as working long hours seem more acknowledged in the educational culture, and several report that they do not feel that they can engage in restorative strategies as much as they want, including rest and exercise.
The variation in strategies suggests that while some coping strategies help students reduce the negative effects of stress, difficulties in coping effectively, for instance, through the use of avoidance strategies, tend to reinforce a negative stress spiral. This can be understood in light of the research finding by Moritz et al. (2016), showing that reducing maladaptive coping strategies, such as substance use or emotional suppression, has a greater impact on stress outcomes than increasing the use of healthy coping strategies. In accordance with the coping literature, our findings suggest that whether students apply problem-focused or emotion-focused coping may be less important than the degree to which the coping strategy fits the student’s situation and stress experience (Nikolaev et al., 2023; Uy et al., 2013). For instance, attempting to reduce the workload by working excessively may feel like addressing the problem directly, yet research suggests that mental recovery is a prerequisite for sustained cognitive performance (Sonnentag et al., 2017). Taking a break or exercising could therefore have been a more effective response, even though it does not address the task itself.
Similarly, while rumination may feel like productive problem-solving, it tends to perpetuate stress rather than alleviate it (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008). Educators can contribute to increasing students’ awareness about potential outcomes of different coping strategies and support them in choosing effective coping strategies and reducing the use of maladaptive ones. They can thereby stimulate students’ capacity to manage stress in ways that can enhance, rather than obstruct, learning. This is also highlighted by the finding showing that students’ capacity to use effective coping strategies is not only a consequence of individual effort, but it is also shaped by informal processes such as norms in the educational environment, as will be further addressed in the following section.
The Impact of Norms on Coping Strategies
Our findings highlight the crucial role of norms in shaping how students experience and cope with stress. A culture characterized by commitment, performance, and hard work contributes to high levels of stress, which students perceive as both positive and negative. On the one hand, such a culture fosters collaboration and practical support for handling entrepreneurial tasks, reinforcing the positive stress experience which enables students to remain engaged and motivated. On the other hand, strong norms of constant productivity and dedication make it difficult for students to prioritize activities that support their well-being, thereby limiting opportunities for effective coping.
Norms function as “unspoken rules” within a culture, guiding thoughts and behaviors like an “invisible hand” (Sjøvold, 2006, p. 275). Students describe how peer reactions under high pressure often reinforce the expectation to “keep going” rather than pausing and actively managing the stress. They also perceive a general expectation to spend long hours at “school” to signal commitment and ambition. While these norms can enhance the positive aspects of stress, such as feelings of purpose and meaning, they can simultaneously discourage students from integrating activities that support their health and resilience, such as physical exercise, proper nutrition, and social relationships outside the entrepreneurial environment. Importantly, norms can only exist and persist within the community that sustains them (Hackman, 2002). By not challenging these expectations, students themselves contribute to their maintenance. This self-reinforcing dynamic can lead to less constructive coping strategies, such as neglect of basic physiological, psychological, and social needs, which can ultimately weaken resilience and increase vulnerability to stress (Spector, 2002).
Following the pedagogical logic of venture creation programs (Smith et al., 2022), exposing students to the realities of entrepreneurship is crucial for building the endurance and competencies needed for entrepreneurial careers. As Ziemianski and Golik (2020) argue, students must confront the “dark sides” of entrepreneurship, including the stress that accompanies entrepreneurial work. However, while preserving the positive aspects of a “go-getter culture” that fosters motivation, it appears equally important to build educational cultures that encourage self-care and actively promote the importance of learning how to manage stress in a healthy way. Doing so may help students develop not only entrepreneurial competencies but also the long-term resilience required to sustain their well-being throughout their entrepreneurial journeys.
Contributions, Limitations, Implications, and Future Research
By examining how students experience and manage stress in venture creation programs, our research contributes to ongoing efforts to understand how coping processes can transform stressful experiences into valuable learning opportunities (Ahmed et al., 2022; Byrne & Shepherd, 2015; Shepherd, 2004). It makes a theoretical contribution by introducing and empirically grounding the notion of individual tipping points at which eustress becomes distress, and by showing how educational norms and culture shape the choice and effectiveness of coping strategies, thereby linking individual appraisal processes to the cultural and institutional context of entrepreneurship education. In so doing, this research advances both the stress and coping literature within entrepreneurship (Ahmed et al., 2022; Rauch et al., 2018; Stephan, 2018) and the scholarship on experiential learning in entrepreneurship education.
The study contributes to our understanding of students’ experience of stress by introducing the concept of individual “tipping points,” which could be further explored to understand how stress transitions from a motivating to a destructive force and how coping processes mediate or amplify this shift. Moreover, examining the interaction between norms in the educational culture, coping strategies, and learning outcomes could deepen our understanding of how norms and institutional structures shape the stress-learning relationship. By pursuing these avenues, future research can advance theoretical models of stress and coping in entrepreneurship education, clarifying how stress functions not only as a risk factor but also as a developmental mechanism in the entrepreneurial learning process.
The research contributes to theory development on potential challenges with negative emotions and stress related to experiential learning in venture creation programs. By showing how the experience of stress is shaped by coping strategies and norms in the educational culture, the study extends current understanding of stress as both an enhancer for motivation and fulfillment and a potential threat to well-being.
The study does, however, have several limitations. First, the qualitative design and the relatively small sample of 12 students limit the generalizability of the findings, which might be additionally influenced by a potential self-selection bias (Blackman, 2023). As the topic of the study is the experience of stress, a criterion for potential participants was to have experienced stress related to their start-up activities during the studies. Accordingly, the 12 participants in the study might have been the most stressed students of their cohorts, thus being representative neither of the actual student group, nor of the larger population of students in venture creation programs. However, qualitative research does not aim at generalized findings, but rather, in-depth understanding of a phenomenon (Winter, 2000).
Consequently, the findings cannot teach us anything about the amount, frequency, occurrence or prevalence of stress among students in venture creation programs, which are all recommendations for further research. On the other hand, the study shows that the experience of stress exists in this student group, that it is experienced as positive and negative, and that norms in the educational environment may limit the opportunity to cope with the stress in fruitful ways. The implications are transferable (Tracy, 2010) to similar educational contexts: they call educators to put stress on the agenda and facilitate an educational environment that both encourages the stress that is appraised as positive in encouraging learning, productivity and motivation, as well as helping students avoid detrimental outcomes of stress.
Furthermore, the context-specific nature of the study, situated within a Nordic venture creation program, may also limit its applicability to other cultural or institutional settings. Future research should therefore examine how stress and coping unfold across different educational contexts to distinguish universal processes from context-specific dynamics.
Although we specifically asked about stress experiences related to the start-up activities that the students engage in during their studies, the intensity of stress experienced by the participants may partly reflect their early stage in entrepreneurial development, rather than the venture creation context alone. Another limitation is that a theoretical focus on the cognitive perspective of stress might have limited our ability to explain and discuss more emotional and physiological aspects of the stress coping process that comes forth in the study. Future studies could explore this aspect by studying students’ responses to stress more “in situ,” by the use of, for instance, reflective diaries and physiological measures. Specifically, incorporating a somatic lens, which encompasses body-based awareness and experience, could help broaden our understanding of stress and coping beyond the cognitive perspective (Voudda & Kakouris, 2023).
This study does not explore potential gender differences in students’ experience of stress and their coping efforts. Future research could investigate whether and how gender, or other social categories, shape experience of stress, coping choices, and tipping points. Longitudinal research is needed to trace how stress responses and coping strategies evolve over time and how they influence entrepreneurial development and learning trajectories. In addition, future research could further investigate how meaning-making and stress mindsets (Crum et al., 2017) shape the appraisal of stress as a challenge or threat, and how they influence coping effectiveness among students in venture creation programs.
Despite these limitations, the study can stimulate theoretical discussions about the role of stress and coping in venture creation programs, while also raising practical awareness among educators and policymakers about the importance of stress management in program designs. This way educators can harness the energy, motivation and sense of meaning associated with positive stress, while also working to prevent students from tipping over into negative stress cycles.
Conclusion
This study offers new insights into how students in a master-level venture creation program experience and manage stress. In spite of its small sample size and its context-specific focus on a Nordic venture creation program, it provides important insights into the dual role of stress as both a motivational force and a potential risk to mental and physical health. By examining these dynamics, the research underscores the importance of addressing stress as a part of venture creation programs in particular and entrepreneurship education in general. The study provides a deeper understanding of how entrepreneurship students in venture creation programs navigate the emotional and psychological demands related to experiential learning (Crosina et al., 2024; Dobson et al., 2021; Pittaway & Cope, 2007).
Future research should extend this work through longitudinal and comparative designs that examine how stress-learning dynamics evolve over time and across cultural and institutional contexts, as well as how individual tipping points and coping strategies interact with program design. For educators and policymakers, the findings suggest that stress should not necessarily be avoided but deliberately addressed as a pedagogical resource. By making stress and coping explicit elements of entrepreneurship education, educators can support students in navigating the complexities of stress, transforming difficult moments into learning opportunities, thereby cultivating the resilience needed for sustainable entrepreneurial careers.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our gratitude to the participants in the study, and to Torgeir Aadland for internal review of the manuscript.
Ethical Considerations
This study received ethical approval from Sikt, the Norwegian research ethics committee (approval number: 703344, approval date: 09.11.2023).
Consent to Participate
All participants gave written consent prior to participation, and all participant information is anonymized.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
The interview data are not publicly available due to the risk of identification.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Technologies
The AI-program Microsoft Copilot has been used to assist the writing process in some parts of the manuscript. However, the final, submitted text is entirely the work of the authors.
Identifying Information
Any identifying information related to the authors and their institution, approval committees, etc. that might compromise anonymity has been left out of the submitted manuscript. All identifiable references to the actual venture creation program or the country of the research have been anonymized. There are no self-references in the manuscript.