[NEWS] Startups Weekly: The opportunities & challenges for mental health tech – Loganspace

Hi there and welcome support to Startups Weekly, a weekend e-newsletter that dives into the week’s great startups and endeavor capital files. Earlier than I soar into at the fresh time’s topic, let’s attach up a little bit. Final week, I wrote about Zoom and Superhuman’sPR disasters. Earlier than that, I vital thesubstantial uptick in VC spending in 2019.

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Now let’s talk about mental health startups. VCs will seemingly be confident in the skill of teletherapy, but struggling companies in the residence list one other myth.

Nine months in the past Foundationlauncheda net net net page and app for guided conversations by ability of chat or video with pseudo-therapists or folks trained in learn-backed approaches but who lack the identical certifications as a counseling or clinical psychologist. I wrote amythnoting that the firm, led by used Uber VP Andrew Chapin, had raised a $3.75 million spherical from Bedrock, Wave Capital and Lightspeed Venture Companions.

But final month, things took a flip for the more serious. Foundation quietly shut down its net net net page and app, its co-founder and chief science officer, Lindsay Trent, a used learn psychologist at Stanford, exited and a fine chunk of eight-person crew went out the door.

Foundation became one in every of many startups to bag pleasure from VCs’ increasing appetite for progressive companies in the mental health sector. Because the stigma connected to looking out for mental health make stronger has dwindled and abilities traits comprise allowed for personalized mental health tools and practices, more entrepreneurs comprise entered the residence. Foundation, no topic getting plenty of the substances wanted for startup success, couldn’t attain success with its impart-to-person technique to treatment.

When requested why the Foundation app and net net net page were no longer filled with life, Chapin acknowledged the firm is in the formula of “shifting industrial gadgets.” He declined to originate additional critical positive aspects. Lightspeed declined to comment. Wave Capital and Bedrock didn’t answer to requests for comment.

Foundation, which didn’t affirm to treat diagnosable prerequisites hold bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, charged $35 per Forty five-minute phone call with its paraprofessionals. Its use of unlicensed therapists sparked anxiousness in the mental health provider neighborhood. Harley Treatment founder Sheri Jacobson, an permitted counselor and psychotherapist, vital flaws with the provider: “For me, replacing expert therapists and all of their lived abilities and empathy with telepsychiatry administered by newbie advisers could maybe maybe furthermore very neatly be potentially unhealthy,” Jacobson acknowledged in an announcement. “Would you let a learner driver navigate an oil tanker?”

What could maybe maybe maybe depart irascible?

“Because Foundation works with paraprofessionals — folks trained in learn-backed approaches but who don’t comprise the identical certifications as a counseling or clinical psychologist — it’s a noteworthy more cost effective different to paying for a therapist.”

— Christina Farr (@chrissyfarr)October 4, 2018

Consumer mental health startups continue to attract capital from internal most market investors. Situation of labor mental health providerUnmind, Blackthorn Therapeutics(a neurobehavioral health firm the usage of machine finding out to carry out personalized medicine for mental health) andTalkspace(a leader in the online counseling residence) comprise all closed funding rounds in 2019.

Whether Foundation will receive its footing is TBD. What’s clear is VCs are nonetheless appealing to dole out tests as they experiment with the mental health residence, but if startups don’t open proving viable industrial gadgets and be taught to navigate the advanced adoption curve, we’ll see additional startups stop operations and mental health tech’s moment in the sun will conclude all too almost at the moment.

Now for a immediate respect at the conclude VC and startup files of the week:

Adam Neumann did what?

The eccentric co-founder and CEO of the global true estate co-working startup WeWork has reportedly cashed out of larger than $700 million from his firm sooner than its upcoming IPO. Essentially based on Axios, a majority of that capital came in the attach of loans whereas the final $300 million came from stock sales.The dimensions and timing of the payouts is odd, appealing in that founders usually wait until after a firm holds its public offering to liquidate their holdings. But even with the substantial sale, Neumann stays the one largest shareholder in WeWork.

Medallia soars

The client abilities management platform priced shares of its stock at $21 apiece Thursday, closing up Friday a whopping 76%. Money left on the table? I deem so, and I guess Invoice Gurley does too. The almost two-many years-outdated firm offered a total of 15.5 million shares in its IPO, elevating $326 million at a $2.5 billion valuation in the formula. Medallia’s $268 million in VC funding came from Sequoia Capital — which owned a roughly 40% pre-IPO stake — Saints Capital, TriplePoint Venture Roar and Grotmol Choices.

The stock became dramatically mispriced by an aged hand disbursed matching direction of that needs to leave. Right here is 2019 and all people clever is aware of there is a larger technique to match offer and ask. These are disasters.

— Invoice Gurley (@bgurley)June 29, 2019

Uber come what could gadgets vary and inclusion targets

For the length of the next three years, Uber aims to lengthen the proportion of women folks at phases L5 and elevated (manager and above) to 35% and lengthen the proportion of underrepresented workers at phases L4 and elevated to 14%. Currently, Uber is 9.3% sunless and eight.3% Latinx in comparison to true 8.1% sunless and 6.1% Latinx final 365 days. Uber’s tech crew, nonetheless, is true 3.6% sunless, 4.4% Latinx and a couple of.7% multi-racial. Unsurprisingly, there’s little illustration of sunless and brown folks in leadership roles. While Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi commented that he’s proud the promotion charges for ladies folks comprise improved over the final couple of years, he added, “I’m in a position to’t but narrate the identical for promotions for folks of color.”

Email platforms and productiveness apps and subscription tools, oh my!

Startups centered on enhancing productiveness and email are unstoppable this 365 days. The most up-tp-date to close VC rounds are Substack and Thought. Andreessen Horowitz is having a guess that there’s nonetheless a substantial different in newsletters, leading a $15.3 million Sequence A in Substack. The firm, which contains true three workers working out of a lounge, says that newsletters on the platform comprise now accrued a total of fifty,000 paying subscribers (up from 25,000 in October) and that basically the most neatly-most standard Substack authors are already making hundreds of thousands of greenbacks per 365 days. As for Thought, The Recordsdata reported this week that it raised $10 million at an $800 million valuation. Thought is a portray-taking and job management app that hasn’t sought noteworthy VC funding and, as a consequence, VCs comprise been desperately knocking at its door.

Other valuable funding events of the week:

• India’s Oyo valued at $10B after founder buys support shares
• Automobile-sharing market Turo will get $250M at $1B valuation
• Banking startup N26 raises one other $170M at $3.5B valuation
• Patreon secures $60M Sequence D, targets global development and customization
• Commerce depart SaaS startup TravelPerk nabs $60M
• Esports firm 100 Thieves raises $35M Sequence B
• Serena Williams, Marc Cuban support Mahmee, a network for establish contemporary moms

The trouble with blitzscaling

Salvage prepared for … The Space

TechCrunch senior transportation reporter Kirsten Korosec has something big in the works. All of us here at TechCrunch are very angry to tell The Space, a recent TechCrunch e-newsletter all about mobility. A week, apart from to curating the finest transportation files, Kirsten will provide diagnosis, fashioned reporting and insider guidelines on the immediate-increasing trade. Signal inhereto bag The Space for your inbox starting in August.

~Extra Crunch~

While we’re nearly about unbelievable TechCrunch #tell material, it’s doubtlessly time for a reminder for all of you tojoin Extra Crunch. For a low establish, you are going to be ready to be taught more about the startups and endeavor capital ecosystem by arrangement of outlandish deep dives, Q&As, newsletters, resources and solutions and classic startup how-to guides. Right here are a couple of of my personal favourite EC posts from the past week:

• The Roblox EC-1, Fragment 1: The Origin Fable// How Roblox shunned the gaming graveyard and grew actual into a $2.5B firm by Sherwood Morrison.
• What seed-stage dilution tells us about altering investor expectations// A little-observed startup financing pattern has substantial implications for the manner VC companies comprise in suggestions companies elevating Sequence A and B rounds by Dale Chang.
• Which forms of startups are most recurrently a success?// One resolution: E-commerce, Chrome extensions, mobile apps, endeavor SaaS, SMB SaaS — in that affirm by Julian Shapiro.

#EquityPod

In the event you revel on this e-newsletter, produce sure to match out TechCrunch’s endeavor-centered podcast, Equity. On this week’s episode, on hand here, Equity co-host Alex Wilhelm and I debate Forbes’ most current next billion-dollar startups list.

Extra Crunch subscribers can be taught a transcript of every week’s episode every Saturday. Read final week’s episode here and be taught more about Extra Crunch here. Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and the total casts.

That’s all, folks.

Silicon Valley has many needs. One dream — the Hollywood version anyway — is for a down-and-out founder to open tinkering and coding of their proverbial garage, come what could constructing a product that is beloved by humans the arena over and turning actual into a startup billionaire in the formula. But by arrangement of that Silicon Valley dream of a pleasant residence from a decent return on exit, it’s getting narrower and much less widely disbursed. Blitzscaling is making reasonably a couple of folks reasonably a couple of wealth, but early workers? No longer so noteworthy.

Readmorefrom TechCrunch editor Danny Crichton.