Discuss the founding and early years of the Jamestown settlement. What factors made its early years extremely difficult? What factors led to its survival and growth?

The Jamestown settlement was first founded in 1607. From the very beginning, it faced significant challenges. To start off with, the settlers had no idea how to farm in this new land. Even the local Powhatans considered the land where Jamestown was built to be ill-suited for farming. It was too swampy, and it was prone to flooding. Mosquito-borne diseases were a constant problem. When the settlers first arrived, they were too late to plant crops for that year. To make matters worse, there was very little potable water available at the site of the colony, and the area was undergoing a severe drought. Nevertheless, the native peoples initially helped them by providing food and agricultural knowledge.
The original settlers never really did get the hang of farming. Many were from the upper classes of English society and were unaccustomed to the hard physical labor required to live in the wilderness of seventeenth-century Virginia. When the colony's investors in England started to demand results, the colonists had nothing to show them. This threatened to end the necessary lifeline the settlement had to the resources of England.
Things got worse when relations with their Native American neighbors soured. Fighting with the Paspahegh diverted a lot of resources and energy from the affairs of maintaining the settlement.
The worst disaster in the early years of the Jamestown colony occurred in 1609–1610. When resupply ships from England were prevented from arriving due to bad weather, much-needed supplies failed to reach the settlement. That winter about 80% of the colonists died of starvation, bringing Jamestown's population of 214 down to just 60.
After supply ships successfully arrived in 1610, the fortunes of the colony began to turn around. More settlers arrived and started farming land that had once belonged to the local Native Americans. By 1620, enough colonists had arrived to manage a self-sustaining colony of farmers.
https://www.nps.gov/jame/index.htm