“One thing the founder did that a reasonable person would call hard.” That is how the criteria page of Entrepreneur Awards defines the third of its three tests, the standout achievement. The program’s home page adds that the achievement should be told in detail.
Entrepreneur Awards, which describes itself as an independent award for founders, leaves the word “hard” to a reasonable reader. According to the program, every entry is read against three criteria and receives a decision within five business days, and entries for 2026 are open. Whether leaving “hard” undefined is a loophole or a deliberate design depends on how hard the baseline already is.
At its heart, Entrepreneur Awards rewards founders for what they have actually done. Its panel of founders and operators looks for originality, real traction, and one standout achievement, weighs all three equally, and reads each entry as the founder’s own account. No one is selected by default, which gives the recognition its weight. Each founder selected gets a dated and signed written record of the assessment, a document that turns a hard-won achievement into something a founder can cite with confidence.
When hardship is the norm, the test has to be specific
Founders say strain is common. Balderton Capital’s 2024 founder well-being survey of 128 founders and CEOs of venture-backed companies found that 70 percent agree burnout due to stress remains a significant problem in the startup ecosystem, and 91 percent had experienced some deterioration in their own personal well-being. Some respondents came from Balderton’s portfolio, and most from its wider networks, so the findings describe the founders who answered.
The strain reaches the work itself. In the same survey, 69 percent said stress had moderately or significantly hurt their work performance, and 42 percent said personal financial stress sometimes distracts them from running their business.
If most founders have had a difficult year, difficulty alone cannot be the test. The criteria page narrows it to three shapes: building through a setback, solving a problem under constraint, and delivering when the odds were against it.
Start with the setback. A founder who builds through one does so in conditions many peers find draining, and where caution is the easier choice. Balderton found that 23 percent of respondents said their personal financial situation had made them less likely to take business risks.
Constraint is the default condition, and it is tightest at the start. Among pre-seed and seed-stage founders and CEOs in the Balderton survey, 60 percent said they did not pay themselves enough to cover personal or family expenses, compared with 30 percent at Series A and 28 percent at Series B or later.
What a strong answer looks like
The program’s winner feature on Nimisha Nailor, founder of the British brand Kultra, shows how the panel applies the idea. According to the feature, the judges pointed to her decision to source goat whey from small Dutch farms, which constrains supply and raises cost, preferring reformulating an existing product. That detail is company-provided and reflects the program’s account. It has the shape the criterion asks for: one decision, with a cost attached.
An answer with that shape names an event, a constraint, and a result. A supplier that fell through and the weeks it took to replace it would qualify, as would a budget that was a fraction of a competitor’s and a launch that happened anyway. The criteria page asks for outcomes a founder can point to, and a number or a date carries more weight in that sentence than an adjective.
“We ask for one hard thing because a specific decision tells the panel more than a list of difficulties. When a founder sets out what happened, what it cost, and what they did next, the achievement is easy to see,” said Harry Neto, Head of Awards Management at Entrepreneur Awards.
A test that leaves room for judgment
The obvious challenge is subjectivity. One panelist’s hard is another’s routine, and each entry is the founder’s own account, so the panel is weighing claims it may not have seen firsthand. The program’s answer is procedural. According to the program, it reads every entry against the same published criteria in the same order, sets incomplete entries aside at screening, and has a panel of founders and operators score each entry independently before discussing it. Each decision comes with its reason, and winners receive a dated, signed written record of the assessment, which the program says sets out what was judged and why the entry was selected. The judgment remains a human one, and the process makes it explainable.
The three criteria carry equal weight, and each is read in the context of the founder’s stage and industry. An entry has four fields and three short questions, about five minutes by the program’s estimate, and most entries are not selected. Founders who are not selected may enter a later cycle. By the program’s own count, which is company-provided, it has presented 389+ awards.
As the program publishes more records, the pattern to watch is whether each “hard thing” stays a specific event with a cost, as in the Kultra example. A specific event makes for a real test of achievement, and that is what gives the recognition its value.
