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In the world · Entrepreneurship · 26 February 2026

GEM 2025/2026: fear of failure and those who try again

GEM 2025/2026 shows fear of failure holds back 2 in 5 adults, but those who have already closed a business tend to try again. What this teaches.

bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2025/2026 global report, released on February 26, 2026, shows that fear of failure remains one of the biggest brakes on entrepreneurship worldwide: in most of the 53 economies surveyed, at least two in five adults who see a good opportunity give it up out of fear. The same report brings the finding that changes the conversation: those who have already closed a business are more likely to intend to start another than those who have never tried.

What happened

GEM is the world's largest ongoing study of entrepreneurship and is in its 27th year. The 2025/2026 edition, titled From Uncertainty to Opportunity, surveyed more than 160,000 people and was presented at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, in Mexico.

In Brazil, the survey is conducted by Anegepe together with Sebrae (the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service). In 2025, there were 2,350 interviews carried out between June and August. The Brazilian figures, presented by Sebrae in March 2026, show three things at once:

  • 31.6% of adults are involved in some entrepreneurial activity, a slight drop attributed to a tighter labor market;
  • "owning one's own business" rose from 34% to 40% and became Brazilians' second-biggest dream, behind only owning a home;
  • 42.5 million people do not yet run a business but want to open one within three years.

Fear remains high in Brazil. In the previous GEM cycle, the Brazilian executive report recorded that 51.8% of adults say fear of failure would stop them from starting a business, down from 54.6% the year before, but still more than half.

Why it matters

Together, the numbers sketch a country that dreams more than it risks. The desire to start a business grew precisely in a year when fewer people did so. The space between the dream and the decision has a name: fear of failure.

The global finding about people who have already closed a business reverses the usual reading of failure. Instead of a mark that pushes people away, exiting a business appears as experience that brings them closer to the next attempt. GEM itself recommends that governments and markets treat closure as learning and economic renewal, not as stigma. For Brazil, where closing a company still weighs like personal shame, the recommendation is direct.

In Bairo's view

For Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez, the GEM finding confirms what his life taught him before any survey: every no is the ground of a yes. In the story he tells, there were several attempts that did not work out, a salon, a technology idea that arrived too early, a partnership he was pushed out of, an investment that did not hold up with fifty people depending on him, before the seventh attempt stood on its own.

In his reading, those who have already closed a business come back with better odds because they come back with an inventory: they know whom not to build with, how much cash they need and what kind of no deserves to be heard. That is the logic of the Seventh Attempt Method, which he organized into seven steps with practical exercises. The method does not remove fear, and Bairo promises neither results nor money with it. It proposes walking with fear at a size you can carry: test small, with a deadline and a loss limit.

For Bairo, the number that matters most in GEM is not the percentage of people who are afraid. It is the percentage of those who try again. His trajectory is told in The founder.

Where this meets the ecosystem

The fronts Bairo founded each start from a no he heard. CEASA Bank, an agribusiness financial platform, was born after banks refused to integrate the solution he had built. CLAIN, an orchestrator of AI agents, was designed so that those who most need guidance do not depend on paying dearly for it. The proposal is for a niche agent to help small entrepreneurs organize their idea, test the market and see the risk before spending, with the decision always in a person's hands.

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