The emotional and financial cost of founding a startup: lessons from Anthros

Executive overview

Most founders expect the startup journey to be hard, but few anticipate losing everything — company, marriage, home, and cars — in the same month. Steve Dufresne, co-founder of Anthros, did. This conversation covers his road from bankrupt wheelchair entrepreneur to building a science-backed office chair company, alongside a deep dive into why sitting beats standing desks for most knowledge workers.

The real enemy isn't sitting — it's sitting badly, and the fix is a chair that acts as a postural orthotic.

What Anthros actually is

• Designed for disabled populations first — the most demanding sitters — giving the team 70+ years of collective expertise in seating science.
• FDA-registered as a sitting orthotic: clinically shown to change posture over time, not just feel comfortable.
• Beat all leading office chairs in an independent seating engineering lab test on comfort measures.
• Named from the Greek root anthro (human) — built for any human body, not a specific worker archetype.
• Core promise: the softest cushion on the market, with adjustable dual-back support that nudges posture without a wearable strap.

Sitting vs. standing: what the science actually shows

• "Sitting is the new smoking" is misleading — the evidence points more at standing as the greater spinal load.
• Gravity forces every muscle to activate when standing; most people can only maintain proper form briefly before slouching on the desk.
• Standing incorrectly for eight hours reinforces dysfunction — it adds strength to bad patterns, not good ones.
• When a chair fully supports the body, muscles disengage and 100% of cognitive focus goes to the task.
• Recommended rhythm: sit an hour, stand 10–20 minutes, move, repeat — not prolonged standing sessions.
• The same principle applies to sleep posture; Dufresne notes sitting and sleeping habits are closely linked.

Steve's adversity story: from almost-billionaire-backed to homeless

• At 27, Steve invented a power wheelchair that could raise the seat 22 inches — inspired by his Uncle Bob, a wheelchair-using entrepreneur who ran a landscaping company.
• Raised nearly $2 million, had seven partners, was touring VA hospitals across the US.
• Found a billionaire investor through a handwritten letter; the man handed over a $25,000 check on a handshake with no paperwork.
• Days before contracts were signed for a full buyout, the investor died suddenly — January 2008, weeks before the financial crisis.
• Existing partners were mortgage bankers and builders; funding evaporated. Steve took the loss as managing director of the LLC.
• Business failure triggered divorce at the same time; assets were liquidated.
• The moped moment: drove both cars to auction, rode a moped home on Wisconsin country roads in January — best coat, snowmobile helmet, no goggles, crying the whole way — to a building containing six bags of clothes, two speakers, a gas grill, and his dog.
• Spent two years doing any job available: gutters, roofing, pressure washing, flooring.
• The seating company he'd bought components from (the Comfort Company) called two years later to offer a job. He said no — then pulled over two blocks away in a rage, realised he was still bitter.
• Two weeks later, friends and family convinced him to take it. He did, joined as a seating specialist, and eventually co-founded Anthros with Eric Murphy 15 years after they first met there.

The psychology of adversity and comparison

• At 29, you cannot hold a 47-year-old's perspective on setbacks — bitterness at that age is normal, not weakness.
• Comparing yourself to the single most successful person you know (not the average of your peers) is "the great mistake of everyone's life."
• Hunger and necessity cut through self-pity faster than any mindset framework: no job, no savings, no home forces action.
• The startup that "ruined his life" was the direct prerequisite for the expertise behind Anthros.
• A month of feeling like you're ahead of everyone followed by losing everything is uniquely destabilising — the contrast, not just the loss, is what breaks people.

Why sitting deserves more cultural conversation

• Gary spent 20 years accepting chronic back pain as fixed; three years of soft-tissue work with a trainer resolved it — then 18 months of pandemic sitting undid significant progress.
• The real culprit for many "bad back" sufferers is years of reinforced poor sitting posture, not a single injury event.
• Most people do not realise they are living with preventable pain — they adapt around it (e.g., only grabbing luggage from one side, avoiding certain airplane seats).
• The opportunity: products that act as "training wheels" for behaviours people struggle to sustain through willpower alone — posture correction, strength, sleep alignment.
• Anthros positions the chair as that training-wheels product: change posture passively through daily use rather than requiring conscious effort.