Tag: therapy

Posted on

Unmind raises $47M for a platform to provide mental health support in your workplace

Mental health has been put into the spotlight in a big way in recent times. For many of us, our lives and lifestyles have changed massively in the last year, and alongside that, we’re collectively facing pandemic-fueled mortality on a global scale in a way that hasn’t existed for generations, a perfect storm of sorts that has inevitably had an impact on our state of mind and our moods.

Today a startup that has built a platform to help people think about and respond to this situation is announcing a big round of growth funding, specifically to help address all of this and how it plays out in one of the more stress-inducing aspects of our life — our workplaces.

Unmind — a London startup that has built a mental health app for the workplace — has raised $47 million, a Series B that it will be using to continue investing in its research and development and also to expand its business reach. The funding is being led by EQT Ventures –- a very active investor at the moment in UK growth rounds — with participation also from Sapphire Ventures and previous backers Project A, Felix Capital, and True.

The core of Unmind’s service is an app built around a set of questions to help employees explore their own states of mental health, which could include depression, anxiety, insomnia, and a host of other manifestations. It provides advice and content to begin addressing the results of that — exercises, advice, podcasts, links for further reading, and links to seeing further help from professionals (not more machine interfaces, but humans). It also provides a service to the employers, sharing anonymized data from the app with them so that they, too, can consider how better to respond to their employees’ needs.

The app has seen some notable traction especially in the last year, a time when the conversation about mental health has become much more commonplace and critical, given the environment we’ve been living in.

Unmind does not disclose user numbers, nor how they have grown, but it tells me that uptake and adoption of its app ranges from 15% to over 60% of an organization’s workforce (this varies by size, and the emphasis that the organization itself puts on using the app, among other things). It said that of those employees who are using Unmind, 88% have said they experience an improvement in mental wellbeing, work, or relationships, while 92% report higher confidence, awareness, and understanding of mental health.

The company also said that revenues grew by more than 3x in the last 12 months. Meanwhile, its customers include major retailers like John Lewis and M&S, high street bank TSB, Uber, Samsung, Virgin Media, British Airways and Asos — a list of companies that have strong degrees of customer service around them, have been greatly impacted by the lockdowns, and you can imagine must have a lot of people working in them pretty stressed out as a result of being on the front lines of interfacing with a stressed-out wider population of consumers.

The company was co-founded by Dr Nick Taylor, who previously had been a clinical psychologist and worked for years in mental health care (and before that was a classically-trained singer), who said he came up with the idea after feeling like he was seeing too many people only for the first time at a stage when their issues were already very advanced.

“I kept encountering the same frustration time and again: I wish I’d met this person six months ago,” Taylor said in an interview.

As with all kinds of preventative healthcare, it’s always better to identify and work on issues before they grow big and more urgent, and so he set out to think about how one might approach the concept of a preventative check-up and check-in for mental health.

The workplace is not a bad place to base that effort. Not only is it often a source of stress for people, but it’s a regular place for them to be every day so creating a way of assessing mental health through that implicitly creates a kind of routine to the effort. It also potentially means a closer connection to the employer to work on issues more collectively when and if they emerge, in a way that the employer might not do (or ever discover) through other means.

The connection between work and mental health is a longstanding one but has perhaps been proven out more than ever before in the last year.

“I didn’t know what would happen with mental health during Covid,” Taylor recalled. “I actually wondered if it would be demoted,” given all of the other conflicting priorities. “But the prevalence of mental illness has escalated. It’s out of control. And in the workplace, it’s a leading cause of absenteeism and turnover.” And given how full-on everything has become, including likely more hours spent working since now it all has merged with our home lives, we all know (and may well be among) many people who are feeling incredibly burned out right now.

Taylor said that in fact quite the opposite has happened to his early skepticism: mental health has become front of mind, “and the shackles of stigma are falling away.”

This is part of what has really caught the eye of investors: technology that is not just effective, but very relevant to right now. “It is now universally recognized that our Mental Health is as important if not more important than our physical health – but has long been neglected. That is now changing rapidly,” said Alastair Mitchell, a partner at EQT Ventures. “As a result there has been a massive rise in the popularity of consumer mental health apps which is now being matched by surging demand from employers and employees for the same in the workplace. Unmind is the leading mental health app for the enterprise and we are so excited to work with Dr Nick and the team to support their scaling globally.” EQT is also a strategic investor, not just a financial one: it’s rolling out Unmind across its own workplace and its many portfolio companies.

Unmind, it should be noted, is not the only company that has identified this “opportunity,” if you could call it that. They include other startups like SF-based Ginger — which has also built a platform that partners with employers, but also healthcare providers and other stakeholders, to help people identify and manage their state of mind. Ginger has been well-capitalised over the years. Others in the same space include Welbot in New York, Spill also out of London and a host of others providing different aspects of mental wellness like Calm and Headspace, the meditation apps.

I’m inclined to think that, given the size of the problem and that mental health should not be a bunfight but something that takes a village to address, the key will be in how each company approaches its remit, and how people respond to it, and whether what people do ultimately use results in better bridges for employees to getting the help and peace they need, whether it’s from the app or a professional.

“We have a responsibility to connect with our mental health in the same way that we do when it comes to healthcare,” Taylor said, likening the effort to how it takes a number of skill sets sometimes to work on the complexities of a health issue. “Great healthcare integrates across a number of systems.”

Posted on

ifeel, another well-being platform that blends self-care tools with 1-2-1 therapy, scores $6.6M

If the pandemic has been good for anything it’s been good for the therapy business and for startups targeting mental health, with VCs kept very busy signing checks. To wit, here’s another one: Madrid-based ifeel has bagged €5.5 million (~$6.6M) in Series A funding, led by Nauta Capital.

The startup was founded back in 2017 — initially as a consumer-focused therapy platform — but last year it pivoted to a hybrid business model, tapping into demand from businesses to offer staff emotional support during the public health crisis. So it’s available both to individuals via monthly subscription or as part of employer’s or insurance provider’s cover

It says that pandemic pivot has resulted in 1,000% growth in its b2b business.

Companies it’s signed up to offer its platform to their staff include AXA Partners, Glovo and Gympass.

“We have a total of 400K users on the platform (b2c and b2b),” says co-founder Amir Kaplan. “We have 100,000 eligible covered who have access to ifeel as a benefit (through our insurance and wellness partners or direct with ifeel).

“The 100K grew 10x from September 2020 and is the largest trend we are experiencing these days. Employees of 100 companies use ifeel on a weekly basis.”

ifeel’s platform delivers both live therapy sessions with licensed psychologists but also provides users with self-care tool such as daily mood trackers, recommended exercises and activities to expand the support available.

“By combining self-care and guided therapies, ifeel maximises engagement and retention of its users — with 90% reporting improved emotional and mental well-being after using ifeel,” it claims.

The startup is using AI technology in the self-care portion of its platform — to recommend “the most relevant” content or exercise to its users, per Kaplan. But he also says it’s looking at using the tech to assist the therapist practice by developing dedicated tools inside the platform.

ifeel has an international founding team, hailing from three countries (Israel, Italy and Mexico), and says its main markets so far are Spain, France, Brazil and Mexico. While its b2b and insurance network coverage extends to 20 countries and four languages (English, Spanish, French and Portuguese).

With so much competition in the mental health tools space — from mindfulness apps, to internet-delivered CBT programs, to therapy platforms — how does ifeel see itself standing out?

Kaplan suggests it has an advantage of being “global from day one”, and also flags a “strong technology integration focus” which he says has allowed it to plug into insurance companies and wellness players — to become a “main service provider”.

“Very early we partnered with global leading companies and we support them in many countries (compared to specific country players like in Germany and UK,” he tells TechCrunch. “The platform approach is different from ‘online therapy’ companies or ‘mindfulness apps’.

“We want our users to manage their emotional well being on our platform no matter the need. In this way we create millions of engagement events that are customized to the user’s needs and allow users over time to use different parts of our platform in different life situations.”

Mental health startups are raising spirits and venture capital

Headway raises $70M at a $750M valuation to help connect therapists with people and insurance schemes

Mental wellness platform Lyra Health is raising up to $175M at a $2.25B valuation

MindLabs raises £1.4 million for its new platform, a ‘Peloton for mental health’

Singapore-based mental health app Intellect reaches one million users, closes seed funding

Moka.care is a European mental healthcare solution for employees

Posted on

Headway raises $70M at a $750M valuation to help connect therapists with people and insurance schemes

Mental health, and how it is getting addressed, has been one of the major leitmotifs of the past year of pandemic living. Covid-19 not only has led to a lot of people getting ill or worse; it has increased isolation, economic uncertainty, and led to a lot of other kinds of disappointments, and that all has had a knock-on effect on our collective and individual state of mind.

Today a startup called Headway, which has been working on building a better way for people to attend to themselves — by way of a three-sided marketplace of sorts, by helping a person to find and afford a therapist via a free-to-use portal, by making it possible for those therapists to accept a wider range of insurance plans, and by helping those insurance plans facilitate more therapy appointments for their patient networks — is announcing a major round of funding on the heels of strong growth.

The startup has raised $70 million, money that it will be using to continue expanding its platform with more partnerships, more hiring for its team (it wants to have 300 people this year) and opening up in new regions, aiming to be nationwide this year in the U.S.. This round, a Series B, has a number of big names attached to it: it is being led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Thrive, GV and Accel also participating. (The latter three are repeat investors: Thrive and GV led its Series A, while Accel led its seed.) This Series B is coming in at a $750 million valuation.

The rapid pace of funding, the backers, and that valuation all underscore the timeliness of the concept, and also the traction that Headway is getting for its approach.

When we last covered Headway — it raised $26 million just last November, six months ago — it said it had registered some 1,800 therapists on its platform in the New York metro area, where it is based. Now that number is up to over 3,000 with its network now covering not just NYC, but also New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Virginia, Washington, Illinois and Colorado. It has over 2,000 patients joining the platform each month and has so far helped facilitate 300,000 appointments, with a current average of 30,000 appointments each month. Revenues have in the last year, menawhile, grown nine-fold.

The approach that Headway is taking — creating not just a vertical search portal for therapists, but building a back-end system to help those therapists grow their business by making it easier for them to accept insurance coverage — comes directly out of the experiences faced by one of the startup’s co-founders.

Andrew Adams, the CEO of Headway, told me last year he came up with the idea after he moved to New York from California several years ago to take a job. In seeking a therapist, he found most unwilling to accept his insurance plan as payment, making getting therapy unaffordable.

This is a very typical problem, he said. Some 70% of therapists do not accept insurance today because it’s too complicated for them to integrate, since about 85% of all therapists happen to be solo practitioners. So something that should be accessible to everyone becomes something typically only used by those who can afford it, or have entered into social care programs that might provide it. But that leaves a massive gap in the middle.

“This is the defining problem in the space,” he said at the time. “Health insurance is built around a medical world dominated by billers and admins, but therapists are small practitioners and don’t have the bandwidth to handle that, so they don’t. So we thought if we could make it easier for them to, they would, and they have.”

And indeed, if you are needing to see a therapist, the very last thing you need or want to be doing is spending your time trying to work out the economics of doing so: you need to be focused on finding someone who you feel you can talk to; someone who can help you.

The problem is a huge one. In the U.S. alone it’s estimated that there are some 82 million people who have treatable health conditions. Headway was founded on the premise that most of them currently do not seek that treatment because of cost or accessibility.

A lot of therapy has traditionally been about seeing people in person — and arguably the fact that we’ve had so much reduced contact with people has contributed to mental health issues this past year — but in the event, Headway has definitely adapted to the current climate.

The company says that some 89% of its appointments at the moment are being carried out remotely. This is down from 97% at the peak of the pandemic in the U.S., and has been slowly starting to taper off, the company said. Some of the increased volume, meanwhile, is a direct result of therapists working remotely: they can fit more people in to a daily schedule as a result.

In terms of insurers, the company currently works with Aetna, Cigna, United Healthcare, Oscar and Oxford and says the list will be growing. On interesting detail is that Headway has not only built out a bigger funnel for these insurers in terms of the practitioners that they work with and individuals who can subsequently use insurance to pay for therapy, but conversely has served to be a conduit for those insurance groups in bringing more patients through to those therapists, who are now a part of their networks, by way of Headway’s platform.

Headway says that using its system can help a patient get an appointment within 5 days, versus the the 30-day average you typically face when using an insurance directory.

It’s the kind of scale and “software eating the world” efficiency that has attracted Andreessen Horowitz to backing companies before, with the added detail of this being particular relevant to the time we are living in.

“By getting the mental health provider community on the same page with insurance companies for the first time, Headway unlocks affordable mental healthcare for millions of Americans,” said Scott Kupor, managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “We’re incredibly excited to work alongside the Headway team.” Kupor is also joining Headway’s board with this round.

Cherry Miao, a former Partner at Accel and Headway’s lead seed investor, is also joining as Head of Finance & Data.

“I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the world’s most influential startups, and know that being part of Headway’s meaningful mission, robust business model, and incredibly talented team is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she said. “I’m thrilled to be helping rebuild America’s mental healthcare system for access and affordability.”

Posted on

“People are in the fights of their lives ” with alcohol use disorders, and Monument wants to help

Over 14.4 million adults over the age of 18 in the United States exhibited some kind of alcohol use disorder and only about 7.9 percent of those people received treatment. Alcohol-related deaths kill roughly 88,000 people in the U.S. — making it the third leading preventable cause of death in the country. And alcohol-related illnesses cost the U.S. $249 billion.

For Monument founder Mike Russell, those numbers aren’t just statistics, but a window into his own life. The co-founder of Monument, a tele-health service that provides access to prescription medication and therapies to combat alcohol use disorders started the business after seeking treatment himself.

As Russell laid out in a Medium post announcing his company’s launch earlier this year, Monument was formed from the realization that Russell had about the availability of alternative treatment options which weren’t receiving the same attention as the rehab clinics and referrals to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that represent the most common treatment options in the U.S.

Russell, a former nightlife promoter, used to be a professional drinker (the club promotion business demanded it) and even after he left the nightlife world to become an entrepreneur, he remained a binge drinker. That behavior carried through his first failed startup, VenueTap, to his second, more successful foray into the world of tech business creation with MyClean, an on-demand cleaning marketplace.

By the time his third, and most successful startup, Paintzen was acquired Russell said he recognized two things — the first was that his drinking was, in fact, a problem, and the second was that there were alternatives to AA and rehab that he could explore.

Those twin realizations led him to launch Monument, with $7.5 million in seed financing from the same group of investors that had backed him in Paintzen. Those investors, including Collaborative Fund, Lehrer Hippeau Ventures, Red Sea Ventures, Datapoint Capital, Corigin Ventures, and NextView Capital all bought into a thesis that’s captured the attention (and capital) of venture capitalists on both coasts — that treatments for drug and alcohol dependence are investable businesses. 

And while private equity investors are also financing networks of rehabilitation facilities as part of their push into healthcare — venture investors believe that the remote delivery of healthcare services can provide meaningful results without the same expenses that operating a network of locations can incur. It’s not the place, so much as the treatments that are available and the people offering them.

Unlike Tempest, another New York-based startup with venture backing focused on curbing alcohol abuse, Monument is working to connect people with therapists, using the platform as a gateway. Tempest’s approach is built around giving a host of tools as part of a subscription service to get people to stop drinking.

Startup says ‘Sober is the new black’

Funding for Monument closed in December 2019 and by January, Russell had penned his blog post and the company began creating its community of users looking for information about ways to overcome their disorders and connecting would-be patients with therapists and physicians who could prescribe medication to treat their conditions or offer cognitive behavioral therapy to try and do the same.

There are four facets of the Monument business.

There’s the free-to-access community of people looking for information and support around their decision to stop drinking and there’s also free group therapy sessions available for community members feeling increased urges to use substances because of added pressure from quarantine restrictions. This is similar to the kinds of therapy sessions that companies like Ro, Hims and others are bringing to market in the time of COVID-19. For community members who want to take the next step with their treatment, Monument there’s the one-time fee to see a doctor who can prescribe medication to suppress the need or desire to drink; and finally, Monument offers two tiers of therapy services for those who want either bi-weekly or weekly sessions.

“We connect members to physicians that understand the medication options or they could opt not to take medication,” said Russell. “[Members are] connected to a licensed therapist that focus specifically on co-morbidities.”

The medication only plan costs $19. A bi-weekly consultation with a therapist and an initial consultation for a prescription costs $149 per month and a medication management plus a weekly therapy sessions costs $249 per month.

So far, Monument has around 700 people on its network and expects to see more members come on board for the free community membership as it launches in California today.

“The treatement plans were available through New York, New Jersey, and Florida for our beta,” says Russell. “For launch it will be those three states plus California and Connecticut.”

While telemedicine providers are able to operate in all fifty states without licenses — thanks to changes in regulations made as a result of the pressures that have been put on the healthcare system from the COVID-19 outbreak — mental health providers still need to be licensed in the states where they operate. “We’re still required to build a supply of physicians, clinicians and therapists that are licensed in each state,” said Russell.

To get the new company off the ground, Russell turned to his co-founder at MyClean and Paintzen, Justin Geller and added Amit Klein, a data scientist as the company’s co-founder and chief product officer.

“The crux of this is data,” says Russell, of the importance of Klein’s role in the company. “As members go into treatment — we’re understanding health outcomes… Someone goes into a plan. Their diagnosis. We understand age, gender, drinking patterns, and then we can see if the treatment that they’re on is working or not.”

And Russell stresses that the company won’t use anonymized data or sell of its insights to third parties.

“It’s a binary outcome,” Russell said of the company’s decision to monitor the process. “We can track success… over time as we treat we build a data set and eventually it becomes personalized.”

The timing for Monument couldn’t be more critical, says Russell, given the increased stressors that the social response to COVID-19 is putting on people’s mental health.

“People are in the fights of their lives with their struggles with alcohol,” right now, Russell said. 

Posted on

“People are in the fights of their lives ” with alcohol use disorders, and Monument wants to help

Over 14.4 million adults over the age of 18 in the United States exhibited some kind of alcohol use disorder and only about 7.9 percent of those people received treatment. Alcohol-related deaths kill roughly 88,000 people in the U.S. — making it the third leading preventable cause of death in the country. And alcohol-related illnesses cost the U.S. $249 billion.

For Monument founder Mike Russell, those numbers aren’t just statistics, but a window into his own life. The co-founder of Monument, a tele-health service that provides access to prescription medication and therapies to combat alcohol use disorders started the business after seeking treatment himself.

As Russell laid out in a Medium post announcing his company’s launch earlier this year, Monument was formed from the realization that Russell had about the availability of alternative treatment options which weren’t receiving the same attention as the rehab clinics and referrals to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that represent the most common treatment options in the U.S.

Russell, a former nightlife promoter, used to be a professional drinker (the club promotion business demanded it) and even after he left the nightlife world to become an entrepreneur, he remained a binge drinker. That behavior carried through his first failed startup, VenueTap, to his second, more successful foray into the world of tech business creation with MyClean, an on-demand cleaning marketplace.

By the time his third, and most successful startup, Paintzen was acquired Russell said he recognized two things — the first was that his drinking was, in fact, a problem, and the second was that there were alternatives to AA and rehab that he could explore.

Those twin realizations led him to launch Monument, with $7.5 million in seed financing from the same group of investors that had backed him in Paintzen. Those investors, including Collaborative Fund, Lehrer Hippeau Ventures, Red Sea Ventures, Datapoint Capital, Corigin Ventures, and NextView Capital all bought into a thesis that’s captured the attention (and capital) of venture capitalists on both coasts — that treatments for drug and alcohol dependence are investable businesses. 

And while private equity investors are also financing networks of rehabilitation facilities as part of their push into healthcare — venture investors believe that the remote delivery of healthcare services can provide meaningful results without the same expenses that operating a network of locations can incur. It’s not the place, so much as the treatments that are available and the people offering them.

Unlike Tempest, another New York-based startup with venture backing focused on curbing alcohol abuse, Monument is working to connect people with therapists, using the platform as a gateway. Tempest’s approach is built around giving a host of tools as part of a subscription service to get people to stop drinking.

Startup says ‘Sober is the new black’

Funding for Monument closed in December 2019 and by January, Russell had penned his blog post and the company began creating its community of users looking for information about ways to overcome their disorders and connecting would-be patients with therapists and physicians who could prescribe medication to treat their conditions or offer cognitive behavioral therapy to try and do the same.

There are four facets of the Monument business.

There’s the free-to-access community of people looking for information and support around their decision to stop drinking and there’s also free group therapy sessions available for community members feeling increased urges to use substances because of added pressure from quarantine restrictions. This is similar to the kinds of therapy sessions that companies like Ro, Hims and others are bringing to market in the time of COVID-19. For community members who want to take the next step with their treatment, Monument there’s the one-time fee to see a doctor who can prescribe medication to suppress the need or desire to drink; and finally, Monument offers two tiers of therapy services for those who want either bi-weekly or weekly sessions.

“We connect members to physicians that understand the medication options or they could opt not to take medication,” said Russell. “[Members are] connected to a licensed therapist that focus specifically on co-morbidities.”

The medication only plan costs $19. A bi-weekly consultation with a therapist and an initial consultation for a prescription costs $149 per month and a medication management plus a weekly therapy sessions costs $249 per month.

So far, Monument has around 700 people on its network and expects to see more members come on board for the free community membership as it launches in California today.

“The treatement plans were available through New York, New Jersey, and Florida for our beta,” says Russell. “For launch it will be those three states plus California and Connecticut.”

While telemedicine providers are able to operate in all fifty states without licenses — thanks to changes in regulations made as a result of the pressures that have been put on the healthcare system from the COVID-19 outbreak — mental health providers still need to be licensed in the states where they operate. “We’re still required to build a supply of physicians, clinicians and therapists that are licensed in each state,” said Russell.

To get the new company off the ground, Russell turned to his co-founder at MyClean and Paintzen, Justin Geller and added Amit Klein, a data scientist as the company’s co-founder and chief product officer.

“The crux of this is data,” says Russell, of the importance of Klein’s role in the company. “As members go into treatment — we’re understanding health outcomes… Someone goes into a plan. Their diagnosis. We understand age, gender, drinking patterns, and then we can see if the treatment that they’re on is working or not.”

And Russell stresses that the company won’t use anonymized data or sell of its insights to third parties.

“It’s a binary outcome,” Russell said of the company’s decision to monitor the process. “We can track success… over time as we treat we build a data set and eventually it becomes personalized.”

The timing for Monument couldn’t be more critical, says Russell, given the increased stressors that the social response to COVID-19 is putting on people’s mental health.

“People are in the fights of their lives with their struggles with alcohol,” right now, Russell said. 

Posted on

Los Angeles-based Frame launches mental health gateway for a pandemic-stricken generation

The story behind Frame, the startup aiming to be the nation’s gateway into the world of therapy and mental wellness, seems like a tailor-made story of American entrepreneurial success.

Its co-founders, Kendall Bird and Sage Grazer, ran their first business in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles years ago, selling out their entire inventory of lemonade to a captive audience of eager parents.

Years later, after Grazer graduated from Columbia and embarked on a career as a therapist, and Bird, a longtime proponent of therapy since her teens, had moved on to a job at the LA-based social media giant, Snap, the two reunited.

Frame was born from their shared belief that therapy was a tool that could be harnessed by every American for self-improvement and self-care, and that providing a window into the breadth of problems that therapy could address would be a way to popularize the process.

Frame aims to do both. Like SonderMind, another startup which raised a pile of cash recently, the company offers services matching therapists with patients on the front-end and providing a billing and telemedicine solution for mental health practitioners on the back-end.

But it also has another component — a recorded “workshop” between a therapist and a patient or a tutorial to illustrate the kinds of services that a patient could receive from therapy or explain what different conditions may be. These discussions and lessons — which the company emphasizes are not therapy sessions — are meant to frame how potential customers could view the types of things they could talk about with their therapists.

“The workshops for us are a way for a larger audience to open up their minds and understand the different topics that they can cover,” says Bird.

Scene from a Frame workshop.

The goal is to give a millennial audience a window into how therapy works in an effort to popularize and de-stigmatize the process.

If there’s one thing that Bird knows, it’s how to reach a millennial audience. The former Snap product marketing executive was with the company through its public offering and now serves as one of a small cohort of former Snap employees that are beginning to launch their own companies — building on the success, and wealth that Snap’s public offering afforded them.

“There was no brand that was representing what it means to be a modern therapy goer and that’s why we started Frame,” says Bird. 

The company is launching today with around 12 videos of the pseudo-sessions with therapists and a small pilot matching program for the 100 therapists it counts on its roster of service providers.

Given that the company’s approach to its sessions straddles the line between therapy and entertainment, it was important to find therapists that would work well on camera for its workshops, said Bird.

“We really focused in on therapists that are really passionate about what they do and ones that felt more comfortable being on camera and adapting to this because it’s not therapy,” says Bird.  

Frame, which the two co-founders began building nearly a year ago, was hoping to have a bit more real estate to support its launch, but like other companies including Real, Silver Health, the European startup, Mindler, and even the sexual health focused startups like Hims, the company accelerated its launch in an effort to respond to the mental health needs stemming from the COVID-19 epidemic.

Much of this is predicated on virtual non-therapy sessions that Hims and Hers are calling discussions and that Real calls “Group Salons” and “Group Events”.

For Frame, building its library of recorded non-sessions required pre-recording thirty to forty sessions with volunteers — many pulled from the Snap community, according to Bird.

And the Snap community has also rallied to back the company. Imran Khan, the former Snap executive, is a seed investor along with several others from the company.

Another backer is Founders Capital, the New York-based accelerator that’s backed by Johnson and Johnson and other corporations to find new startups that fit within strategic areas of interest.

“There are over 700,000 behavioral healthcare professionals in the United States, yet 80% of millennials with mental health concerns never expect to receive treatment,” wrote Frame seed investor and founder of Struck Capital, Adam Struck, in an email. “We see an opportunity for Frame to make therapy more approachable for the millions who could benefit from access to high-quality mental health resources, building a valuable business that helps create a healthier society.”

Posted on

Talkspace threatened to sue a security researcher over bug report

A security researcher said he was forced to take down a blog post describing an apparent bug in Talkspace’s website that gave him a year’s subscription for free, after the company rejected his findings and sent the researcher a legal threat.

John Jackson said he was able to sign up to Talkspace, a popular therapy app, as if he were an employee at one of the companies whose health insurance plans covers Talkspace’s services. Some of these sign-up links are found in Google search results, some of which aren’t advertised on the company’s website.

But Jackson said he found little to no evidence that the sign-up page verifies that a user is eligible for the free year-long subscription.

Jackson tested his theory by creating an account. A month later, the account is still active, he said.

Talkspace does not offer a way for security researchers to submit bugs. With help from TechCrunch, the researcher contacted Talkspace to warn of the potential bug, fearing that malicious hackers or users could be abusing the system and claiming free therapy. But the company rejected the claims, telling Jackson that it has “multiple internal processes in place to protect against abuses,” without providing specifics.

Within hours of Jackson publishing his findings on his blog — which TechCrunch has seen — Talkspace sent Jackson a cease and desist letter, accusing the researcher of defaming Talkspace “by broadcasting untruths” in his blog post.

“In no instance would Talkspace charge an enterprise partner or a health plan for services rendered to a user not deemed eligible by that partner,” said the letter, signed and sent by Talkspace general counsel John Reilly.

“This letter is formal notice to cease and desist, as well as immediately retract such statements with clarification to your blatant and damaging misstatements,” said the letter. “Failure to do so will result in further and immediate legal action.”

When reached, Talkspace would not say on the record what its anti-fraud mechanisms are, or if or how many fraudulent incidents it has discovered, only that the sign-up program is “designed in collaboration with each partner based upon their individual objectives,” said Gil Margolin, Talkspace’s chief technical officer.

We’ve published the cease and desist letter. The letter did not address the technical claims made by Jackson in his blog post.

When reached, Talkspace spokesperson JoAnna Di Tullio deferred comment to Reilly, who repeated the claims from his letter, that the company is “well aware of how we structure our employer relationships and secure eligibility for our services,” and described Jackson’s blog post as “pure defamation” and “utterly untrue.”

Jackson’s case is just the latest example of security researchers facing legal threats for their work. Months ago, aerospace security researcher Chris Kubecka said she was threatened by Boeing after finding a security issue on a plane. Two security researchers were also prosecuted last year amid claims they overstepped the limits of their penetration test at an Iowa courthouse. The case was later dropped.

Many companies nowadays embrace security researchers by offering bug reporting programs, which reward or pay researchers for finding security flaws and other bugs that could otherwise go unreported and exploited by malicious hackers.

Other companies, like Dropbox, Mozilla and Tesla, go further by offering “safe harbor” provisions by promising not to take legal action against researchers who act in good faith.

Got a tip? You can send tips securely over Signal and WhatsApp to +1 646-755–8849.

Posted on

Co-founder ‘couples therapy’ helps avoid company-killing pitfalls

Keegan Walden Contributor
Keegan Walden, Ph.D, is the Co-founder & COO of Torch, a leadership development software platform. He is also a psychologist with a B.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University.

My co-founder and I go to couples therapy.

Our partnership is not romantic — we’re both married to other people — yet as co-equal parents of a venture-backed startup, we live our professional lives under similar strain. Our “kids” don’t always get along. We don’t always set the right boundaries or model the right behavior. Problems in our company that I consider small agitate my co-founder, who doesn’t shy away from conflict if he thinks it will lead to a better outcome. I think he creates more unnecessary conflict, he thinks I avoid conflict and let problems escalate. We both have a point.

As with many romantic couples, the co-founder relationship is a forum in which old patterns reemerge disguised as basic questions.

Our patterns run through questions about our company. How should our product evolve? When should we raise our next fundraising round? Should we let our team work remotely? Each question is a litmus test revealing both our wisdom and our insecurities. Without high degrees of self-awareness on both our parts, the resulting conversation can devolve into a cold war. So, we go to co-founder therapy to stay aligned.

Here are three pitfalls that co-founder therapy has taught me to avoid:

  1. Being the good cop. My co-founder is an instinctive, emotional leader with a keen sense of strategic direction. When his instincts draw his attention to a growing problem in our company, he doesn’t wait for our executive team to wind its way toward resolution. He becomes animated and aggressive, confronting other leaders and provoking action. His bad cop approach can be beneficial — problems are not left to fester — but it also creates tensions that can linger and grow into other problems. I’m a natural good cop, the interpreter-in-chief, a go-between who helps the other execs understand my co-founder’s psychology. Therein lies the problem. I prefer to work with them, to help them see past his reactive exterior, to understand his underlying intentions and motivations. I have a harder time working with him. I dislike conflict and when my co-founder is upset I can let my conflict aversion prevent me from giving him hard feedback on the downside of his approach. Our therapist helped me realize that by not giving this feedback, I was failing to uphold my end of the co-founder bargain. Co-founders need to balance each other. When stress causes one founder to behave unwisely, it is the other’s responsibility to intervene.
Posted on

Understanding mental health in Silicon Valley, with professional coach and former investor Jerry Colonna

Extra Crunch offers members the opportunity to tune into conference calls led and moderated by the TechCrunch writers you read every day. TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos recently sat down with VC-turned-professional coach Jerry Colonna for a chat about founder mental health, his less than predictable career path and his new book Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up.

After years as a successful venture investor, Colonna found himself confronting his own personal struggles with mental health. As a result, Colonna shifted his focus towards coaching founders and executives through the tensions that exist between personal happiness, mental health and traditional leadership practices.

In his book and in his conversation with Connie, Jerry discusses how one’s previously developed standards of success can impact their ability to lead and realize fulfillment from their work. Jerry elaborates on why many Valley executives encounter mental health pressures as their careers evolve, and details advice he gives to his own clients to help them re-engage with themselves.

“First, to unpack that ambition itself, is not a negative. It’s just ambition. But when we don’t understand the context of that ambition, what is it that’s driving us forward? Is it fear? Or is it excitement and enthusiasm about what’s possible?

Generally, it’s about both, right? When our ambition is primarily unconsciously driven be our fear, the likelihood is high that we’re going to drive the people who work for us crazy. Because nothing that they do, is ever going to make the fear go away. No matter how successful our ambition makes us.

Because the underlying motivation is fear. I am looking to become safe by what I’m driving towards. Now, if we were to flip it and say the thing that is really driving the ambition, is dreaming of a world that is possible. “I can’t imagine how cool it would be if this company were X.” Well, I may still act in a way that’s driven, but I don’t necessarily have to drive the people around me crazy.

And so by understanding the complicated nature of that word ambition, we get to, as I say, dial up the positive aspect of it and release a little bit from the less healthy more negative aspects of it.”

Jerry and Connie dive deeper into how media coverage impacts founder psyches and how it has evolved amidst an increased awareness around mental health. The two also discuss how external pressures are changing for younger generations of founders, as well as how society as a whole can truly tackle widespread mental health issues.

For access to the full transcription and the call audio, and for the opportunity to participate in future conference calls, become a member of Extra Crunch. Learn more and try it for free. 

Connie Loizos: Jerry, it’s a pleasure to be talking to you. We’ve been talking for many, many years. I’m afraid to say how many years…

Jerry Colonna: It’ll reveal how old we are.

Loizos: I know exactly. But I do remember you starting Flatiron, with Fred Wilson, many, many years ago and then going on to JP Morgan and I know that many of the listeners on the phone right now probably have traced your story because you are one of those characters of great interest in Silicon Valley. Can you talk a little bit about how you decided to leave venture capital and become a full-time coach?

Posted on

Torch take $10M to teach empathy to executives

When everyone always tells you ‘yes’, you can become a monster. Leaders especially need honest feedback to grow. “If you look at rich people like Donald Trump and you neglect them, you get more Donald Trumps” says Torch co-founder and CEO Cameron Yarbrough about our gruff president. His app wants to make executive coaching (a polite word for therapy) part of even the busiest executive’s schedule. Torch conducts a 360 interview with a client and their employees to assess weaknesses, lays out improvement goals, and provides one-on-one video chat sessions with trained counselors.

“Essentially we’re trying to help that person develop the capacity to be a more loving human being in the workplace” Yarbrough explains. That’s crucial in the age of ‘hustle porn’ where everyone tries to pretend they’re working all the time and constantly ‘crushing it’. That can leave leaders facing challenges feeling alone and unworthy. Torch wants to provide a private place to reach out for a helping hand or shoulder to cry on.

Now Torch is ready to lead the way to better management for more companies, as it’s just raised  $10 million Series A round led by Norwest Ventures along with Initialized Capital, Y Combinator, and West Ventures. It already has 100 clients including Reddit and Atrium, but the new cash will fuel its go-to market strategy. Rather than trying to democratize access to coaching, Torch is doubling-down on teaching founders, C-suites, and other senior executives how to care…or not care too much.

“I came out of a tough family myself and I had to do a ton of therapy and a ton of meditation to emerge and be an effective leader myself” Yarbrough recalls. “Philosophically, I care about personal growth. It’s just true all the way down to birth for me. What I’m selling is authentic to who I am.”

Torch’s co-founders met when they were in grad school for counseling psychology degrees, practicing group therapy sessions together. Yarbrough went on to practice clinically and start Well Clinic in the Bay Area while Keegan Walden got his PhD. Yarbrough worked with married couples to resolve troubles, and “the next thing i know I was working with high profile startup founders, who like anybody have their fair share of conflicts.”

Torch co-founders (from left): Cameron Yarbrough and Keegan Walden

Coaching romantic partners to be upfront about expectations and kind during arguments translated seamlessly to keep co-founders from buckling under stress. Yarbrough outlines how “I was noticing that they were consistently having problems with 5 different things:

1. Communication – Surfacing problems early with kindness

2. Healthy workplace boundaries – Making sure people don’t step on each other’s toes

3. How to manage conflict in a healthy way – Staying calm and avoiding finger-pointing

4. How to be positively influential – Being motivational without being annoying or pushy

5. How to manage one’s ego, whether that’s insecurity or narcissism – Seeing the team’s win as the first priority

To address those, companies hire Torch to coach one or more of their executives. Torch conducts extensive 360 interviews with the exec, as well as their reports, employees, and peers. It seeks to score them on empathy, visionary thinking, communication, conflict, management and collaboration, Torch then structures goals and improvement timelines that it tracks with follow-up interviews the team and quantifiable metrics that can all be tracked by HR through a software dashboard.

To make progress on these fronts, execs do video chat sessions through Torch’s app with coaches trained in these skills. “These are all working people with by nature very tight schedules. They don’t have time to come in for a live session so we come to them in the form of video” Yarbough tells me. Rates vary from $500 per month to $1500 per month for a senior coach in the US, Europe, APAC, or EMEA with Torch scoring a significant margin. “We’re B2B only. We’re not focused on being the most affordable solution. We’re focused on being the most effective. And we find that there’s less price sensitivity for senior leaders where the cost of their underperformance is incredibly high to the organization.” Torch’s top source of churn is clients’ going out of business, not ceasing to want its services.

Here are two examples of how big-wigs get better with Torch. “Let’s say we have a client who really just wants to be liked all the time, so much so that they have a hard time getting things done. The feedback from the 360 would come back like ‘I find that Cameron is continually telling me what I want to hear but I don’t know what the expectations are of me and I need him to be more direct.'” Yarbrough explains. “The problem is those leaders will eventually fire those people who are failing, but they’ll say they had no idea they weren’t performing because he never told them.” Torch’s coaches can teach them to practice tough-love when necessary and be more transparent. Meanwhile, a boss who storms around the office and “is super direct and unkind” could be instructed on how to “develop more empathic attunement.”

Yarbrough specifically designed Torch’s software to not be too prescriptive and leave room for the relationship between the coach and client to unfold. And for privacy, coaches don’t record notes and HR only sees the performance goals and progress, not the content of the video chats. It wants execs to feel comfortable getting real without the worry their personal or trade secrets could leak. “And if someone is bringing in something about trauma or that’s super sensitive about their personal life, their coach will refer them out to psychotherapists” Yarbrough assures me.

Torch’s direct competition comes from boutique executive coaching firms around the world, while on the tech side BetterUp is trying to make coaching scale to every type of employee. But its biggest foe is the stubborn status quo of stiff upper lipping it.

The startup world has been plagued by too many tragic suicides, deep depression, and paralyzing burnout. It’s easy for founders to judge their own worth not by self-confidence or even the absolute value of their accomplishments, but by their status relative to yesterday. That means one blown deal, employee quitting, or product delay can make an executive feel awful. But if they turn to their peers or investors, it could hurt their partnership and fundraising prospects. To keep putting in the work, they need an emotional outlet.

“We ultimately have to create this great software that super-powers human beings. People are not robots yet. They will be someday, but not yet” Yarbrough concludes with a laugh. IQ alone doesn’t make people succeed. Torch can help them develop the EQ, or emotional intelligence quotient, they need to become a boss that’s looked up to.