Long Live the Underdog: Why Northeast Tennessee Founders Are Built to Win

FoundersForge has always rallied around the idea of the underdog founder—a person who, despite a lack of resources and facing incredible odds, can build amazing things from the ground up.

Our slogan has always been “support for the underdog founders,” but what actually qualifies founders as underdogs? Why do we spend so much of our time telling stories about those who have won under incredible circumstances, and why is keeping an underdog mindset pertinent to the founder journey?

Since the beginning of time, history has been obsessed with the underdog trope. We’ve listened to stories about David and Goliath, Odysseus, and King Arthur; we’ve cheered for Mike Tyson’s scrawniest opponents in the ring; and we’ve celebrated the rise of people over oppressive governments throughout history. One of the greatest showcases of underdogs every year is in the March Madness basketball tournament, where small D1 schools from obscure conferences no one has ever heard of face off against the best programs in basketball.

Unless the home team is playing, we pull for the underdog to ruin our brackets and spoil the chances of any dynasty team winning the chip.

When an underdog loses the game, it’s expected. When a dynasty team loses a game, it’s humiliating.

There is something so unexplainably sweet about celebrating a victory when you weren’t supposed to be there in the first place.

Have you ever thought about why we celebrate the underdog, though? Isn’t it just easier to pull for the people who have all the resources, the team that wins every matchup, or the company that has all of the big players on board?

It’s because we all understand the feeling of being overlooked and the painful sting of defeat.

We all know how it feels to prepare for something and never get the opportunity to prove ourselves. We understand what it’s like to be picked last in gym class or never given the opportunity to showcase the talents we built behind the scenes.

Naturally, we recognize others in the same circumstances, and when their name gets called to the big stage, we instinctually rally behind them because we know how it feels to be in the trenches. The essence of the human spirit lives in the underdog.

The same goes for founders building companies.

If you’ve ever started a business, you know that the odds are automatically stacked against you—regardless of your background, circumstances, or experience level. That’s just how business works.

In the high-growth space, a founder’s chances of getting traditional investment slip below 1%. Furthermore, The Wall Street Journal reports that, of the founders who actually go on to raise capital, 7/10 of them will ultimately fail. If you calculate the actual failure rate of startups, some sources claim that over a 5-year period 90% of startups will die.

Now, let’s factor in a founder’s environment, location, resources, mentorship, and access to programming. Historically, startup founders in Northeast TN were alienated from any collective startup hub or startup culture, and most innovators were forced to move away to build elsewhere. We often call this “brain drain” in the education world, but it certainly has affected the business climate for decades. Due to this, the calculated success rate of startups here is likely lower.

Right out of the gate, we identified Northeast TN and the surrounding regions as a place where underdog founders exist. If you look at the region from a historical lens, we’ve always thought of ourselves as self-reliant, rural, and excluded from the rest of the southeast, so much so that before Tennessee existed, we tried to create our own state made up of modern-day Washington, Carter, and 10 other East Tennessee counties, uniquely named the State of Franklin.

If you are building a business in Northeast TN or any other part of the rural surrounding region, you are an underdog.

Our mission at FoundersForge is simple: we provide the resources, mentorship, and connections for underdog founders to build successful businesses in Northeast TN. We do this through 1-on-1 coaching, our business bootcamp program (Avante), hosting startup events throughout the region, and building the Startup Mountain Summit, a place where founders can come together, learn, and connect with others on the same journey. We empower other organizations in the region to support underdog entrepreneurs, we connect capital-ready founders to investment opportunities and the Invest TN network, and we provide this freely to our community.

We feel like being an underdog is a natural part of building a business. Scrappy founders who are willing to do whatever it takes to win, despite their situation, are often the most successful. After 7 years in the ecosystem, we all agree that Northeast TN breeds this exact type of founder. There is no greater feeling than seeing local founders launch startups confidently and achieve success in a region that has been historically overlooked. It’s our job to help celebrate those wins and create an environment where more underdog founders can do the same.

Long live the underdog.