AI Chatbot - Breath

The Welfare Act obliges companies to take measures regarding stress prevention among employees, which means that many resources are available to reduce stress among employees. For entrepreneurs, however, this offer, with the exception of personal coaching, is limited. However, recent research among 242 American entrepreneurs shows that 72% of the respondents report mental health complaints, which is significantly more than among a comparable group of employees (Freeman, Johnson, Staudenmaier, & Zisser, 2015). Moreover, discussing and tackling stress among entrepreneurs is a taboo subject. However, mental wellbeing is important for entrepreneurial success; as KPMG (2018) points out: "a high performance company cannot exist without high performance founders and leaders".

That is why a personal, anonymous chatbot to reduce stress and make entrepreneurs more resilient can be an important tool for this target group. Moreover, the market share of calming technologies has been growing in recent years (Birkner, 2018; Perez, 2017). This market responds to stress reduction in the general population, has been successful in Silicon Valley and is trickling down to Europe. The added value of this project is the creation of a kind of personal AA for entrepreneurs with stress via calming technology. The data generated by the app can also be used for other research purposes, such as encouraging a healthier lifestyle among entrepreneurs.

The target group in this project are micro-entrepreneurs. These are companies with a maximum of 10 employees, a balance sheet total of a maximum of €350,000 and a turnover of a maximum of €700,000 (EU, 2003/361/EC). In 2017, 908,079 companies in Belgium were micro-enterprises (FPS Economy, 2018). Furthermore, this project mainly targets those micro-entrepreneurs who work in isolation, who have made an important financial investment (either themselves or with external money) and who are open-minded to technology.