The Entrepreneur
Trust Index
Entrepreneurs depend on an ecosystem of experts. They trust remarkably few of them.
“The entrepreneur pays everyone first—and is often the last person anyone truly stands beside.”
THE LONELY ENTREPRENEURExpertise is common.
Aligned interests are rare.
Distrust grows when the advisor gets paid regardless of whether the entrepreneur gets a result.
Trust, ranked.
Why trust breaks.
They get paid.
You get promises.
Most professional relationships compensate activity, hours or access—not entrepreneurial outcomes.
They advise.
You carry the risk.
The entrepreneur lives with every recommendation long after the advisor leaves the room.
They know a function.
You need the whole.
Specialists optimize their slice. The founder must connect money, customers, people and survival.
This is an index,
not a single survey.
There is no authoritative national poll asking entrepreneurs to rate every advisor on one identical trust scale. So we did not pretend there was.
The index combines direct trust measures with financing outcomes, satisfaction measures and relationship-breakdown data. Every figure is labeled by evidence type. Where no comparable national statistic exists, we mark the score as a directional index estimate.
What the percentage means: a normalized trust signal—not a claim that exactly that percentage of all entrepreneurs trusts or distrusts the category.