A Therapist's Guide to Mental Health Startups

Welcome to haley's guide to mental health startups. 

*This post was written in the Summer of 2022 and has not been updated. It is up for a limited time and will be removed shortly.*

If you're not familiar with haley, we are a company focused on bringing mental health resources to the world in a mental health conscious environment. Our primary website is forhaley.com and allows mental health clinicians and entities to share user-generated content. Users like you can filter through content based on how they're feeling and different life events. Any organization in this document or organization like those in this document can create an account at forhaley.com.

This review is not meant to be overly clinical or a deep dive into finances or overly speculative. This is a report on over 30 companies meant to quickly be a single place for therapists or the general population to get their first questions answered about a company. Over time, we will dive deeper into companies. We collected this information through a variety of sources on the internet and company documents made available on the internet. Therefore, we cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information. Our information is only as recent as the date we reviewed the company. Therefore, the information may be outdated if there have been changes since early-mid July 2022. 

We do plan to add companies and update information overtime so keep this in your bookmarks.

This is the complete guide, individual companies can also be found on their respective posts.

Throughout this guide we'll cover the following: 

• What is the company? How much have they raised to date?
• What's their mission? 
• Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 
• What's the business model? How does this company make money? 
• What does one get for paying that price?
• Cancellation Policy 
• If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

We'll also address our review/opinion on their privacy policy, terms,  marketing practices and online reviews. This final section may address recent events. In this section, we often review where on an organization's website Facebook Pixel is installed. Is it the marketing website? A clinician directory? A client onboarding form? What level of information is Facebook Pixel possibly capturing to inform its advertising engine? 

Some information in this article is taken from company review sites, and job boards. In future updates we'll include therapy modalities and outcomes.

If you're a representative of a company and find any information to be inaccurate, please email us at hello@forhaley.com, and with proof, we will correct the information. 

Dots, a fintech company based in SF is building a better way to pay out therapists who are employed as 1099 contractors. Mental health companies can now payout 1099 therapists immediately after a session, via any rail (Venmo, Paypal, CashApp, Giftcards, ACH, etc). If you’re a mental health company that wants to learn more about Dots, visit https://dots.dev and mention “ForHaley” for a discounted rate on your first month of payouts. If you’re a therapist, you should always ask your employer when and how you’ll be paid. Dots and haley have a partnership that compensates haley for new business Dots earns through the partnership.

Companies in this Guide

Practice Administration

Practice administration companies do not provide the care or resources directly to patients. They support clinicians in their efforts. These could be practice growth companies, digital health, or similar companies serving mental health.

• Alma
• Advekit
• Blueprint Health
• Ease (fka DocSpace)
• Grow Therapy
• Headway
• Heard

Mental Wellness Offerings 

Mental wellness offerings do not legally provide therapy or medical care. They provide support or resources, even if it may be facilitated by a licensed clinician.

• Circles
• Coa
• haley 
• Happypillar
• Real
• Ours
• Sesh

Mental Health Services

Mental health service offerings are providing therapy and/or medication management services. Organizations in mental health services may offer direct-to-client and or EAP services.

• BetterHelp
• Center for Anxiety
• Cerebral
• Charlie Health
• Confidant Health
• Foresight Mental Health
• Little Otter
• Mindbloom
• Octave
• Open Mind Health
• SonderMind
• Talkspace
• Two Chairs

Multiple Offerings (EAPs, B2B Offerings, etc)

Organizations listed with multiple offerings are large organizations with a large portion of their value propositions being outside of just mental health services

• Headspace Health
• Lyra Health
• Modern Health
• Spring Health

Practice Administration

Alma (helloalma.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Alma is a platform to help therapists get the support they need going into private practice (or their existing practice). In their words, Alma is “a rewarding way to offer affordable, in-network care.”  Alma has raised $90.5 million to date. Update: In Q3 of 2022, Alma announced they raised $130 million at approximately an $800 million valuation.

What's their mission? 

Alma believes that when providers get the support they need, mental health care gets better for everyone. The support Alma provides is helping therapists with the autonomy of private practice. For clients, Alma says providers at Alma are committed to pillars of high-quality care. The pillars that they share are the client experience, learning and development, and diversity, equity & inclusion. Alma providers speak over 40 languages! 

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Alma’s website lists one founder, Dr. Harry Ritter. Dr. Ritter is not only an MD but also a JD. He graduated from the University of Miami School of Medicine and NYU’s School of Law. His career started as a resident physician before moving to McKinsey for a brief stint and eventually onto Oscar Insurance. After more than 4 years at Oscar, Dr. Ritter started Alma. Not surprisingly, Oscar is one of Alma’s insurance partners.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

Alma costs $125 per month when billed monthly and $1,140 when billed annually - which saves you $360.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Alma membership includes several benefits to help fulfill its mission of helping providers in private practice. First, Alma claims to provide marketing support to grow your practice. If you get ads like I do, you’ve probably seen their “Find a Therapist” advertisements on social media. They put significant resources and $ into paid ads, branding, and SEO. In addition to marketing support, they help with insurance and provide payback rates above what you could get on your own, thanks to their direct partnerships with insurance companies. Alma guarantees payment within 2 weeks of claim submission. Lastly, Alma offers digital tools and community to foster connection. For digital tools, Alma offers everything from scheduling to invoices and payments, eligibility and claims, and teletherapy. The teletherapy is free access to HIPAA-compliant Zoom - which is a pretty decent perk and direct cost savings to you the therapist.

What is the cancellation policy? 

If you decide to leave Alma and were not already credentialed with some of their payers then you are no longer considered in-network with those insurance companies. However, your clients do stay with you.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

According to this Reddit thread, Alma therapists can expect about $80-$130 per session.

The Review 

An important note about joining Alma is ALL new members are required to join their insurance program and be credentialed with at least one of their payer partners, Aetna, Cigna, or Optum; however, in addition to insurance, they do support the cash pay side of your practice. You’re also required to be credentialed under Alma’s Tax ID, regardless of your individual credential status. Therapists must also be fully licensed to join the insurance program. Recently, Alma launched a community for their therapists where they can connect, share insights and expertise, and client referrals. 

Alma’s privacy practices are extremely vague. Under “Aggregated and Non-Personal Information” Alma states they can share data that doesn’t identify patients and that’s about all it says. When you move to secure.helloalma.com they are still using Facebook Pixel. According to an Alma representative, all site behavior being shared with platforms like Facebook is anonymized before being shared and zero client data is shared.

Advekit (advekit.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Advekit is a mental health platform that lets clinicians to continue to operate as cash-pay and automates the out-of-network reimbursement process. Advekit reimburses the client immediately so they don't have to wait for insurance and clinicians are guaranteed their normal rate. Advekit has raised a total of $6 million.

What's their mission? 

Advekit's mission is to help as many people as possible get the access to care that they deserve.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Advekit was founded by a therapist, Alison LaSov LMFT. Before founding and becoming CEO of Advekit, Alison worked as a therapist and a variety of organizations including Cedars Sinai and Providence Health. Alison did her undergrad at UCLA and Masters at Pepperdine. Alison's cofounder is Arielle Garellek. Arielle has a finance background working both at RSM US and at Marriott International.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

Advekit charges a small monthly fee of $30 month or $270 per year. Advekit also charges a transaction fee of approx 12% (according to a Reddit thread) for taking on the risk and absorbing credit card processing fees. According to the Advekit team, the fee can range from 6-12%.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Advekit guarantees the out-of-network reimbursement to both parties. Advekit even guarantees the clinician payment if a client's credit card gets declined.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Therapists can cancel anytime greater than 1 day ahead of their next billing cycle.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Since Advekit is technically the one paying therapists, providers are 1099 with Advekit.

The Review 

Advekit is offering a very needed solution. With the rise of out-of-network therapists, Advekit helps patients take advantage of benefits they may not know exist. Advekit being able to go to insurance companies representing a number of therapists and patients gives them larger negotiating power than an as individuals. The guarantee helps solve headaches that individual patients and therapists may experience handling superbills themselves.

Advekit does not collect much data and they only use data for billing and analytics purposes. However, we did find Facebook Pixel on the questionnaire for patients to match them with a therapist. Pixel appears to be only catching page views.

Blueprint (blueprint-health.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Blueprint is a mental health patient engagement platform. Blueprint helps clinicians run their practices with more evidence-based care while helping them reduce documentation and burnout. Blueprint has raised a total of $4.7 million dollars. 

What's their mission?

Blueprint's mission is to help increase the quality of care by empowering clinicians with access to tools that help them with measurement-based care. 

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Blueprint was founded by Danny Freed. Before founding Blueprint Danny was a product designer at Trunk Club which was acquired by Nordstrom. He was also the co-founder of Companion, an app to help anyone feel safe as they traveled alone. 

Blueprint's Head of Clinical Ops is Dr. Russell DuBois has a Ph.D. in Psychology and according to his LinkedIn team was on the clinical team at Hasbro Children's Hospital and a Research Fellow at Mass Gen/Harvard Med. 

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

Blueprints is a software subscription for clinicians and practices. Basic is $39/month, Professional is $59/month and enterprise is quoted.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Blueprints helps clinicians with automating clinical assessments to clients, more than 40 digital worksheets and diary cards, in-app clinical decision support, and live customer support. The additional tiers allow for more provider benchmarking, aggregation of data, MBC insurance claims, and more. The custom enterprise solution is for practices looking for EHR integrations and more support.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Blueprint requires at least a one-year subscription. The subscription auto-renews and requires two months' notice if you wish to cancel/not renew.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

N/A

The Review 

Blueprint is a great platform to help clinicians gather additional data during and in-between sessions to help measure outcomes. The array of clinical assessments and activities for clients can be automated so clinicians aren't spending additional administrative time. 

Practices should note that Blueprint de-identifies data and owns that data and may use and share it in accordance with the law.

Ease fka DocSpace (easepractice.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Ease brands itself as a clinician entrepreneurship company that helps empower clinicians with everything they need to go into private practice.  Ease also brands itself as a financial technology company, likely meaning that its business model relies on revenues from the payment processing part of what they do. Ease raised a seed round of $1.2 million in August of 2021 and received $100,000 in non-dilutive funding from Google in July of 2022.

What's their mission? 

Ease's mission is to increase the access and quality of care by helping more clinicians go into private practice.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

 Ease was founded by Dr. Mario Amaro, a US Navy veteran. Dr. Amaro was a Corpsman Second Class in the US Navy from 2003 to 2010. From the Navy, he went on to be a Patient Relations Liason with Davila before going to medical school at the Windsor School of Medicine in the Caribbean from 2014-2018. Dr. Amaro then started DocSpace, which is now Ease, in July of 2018.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

Ease is not clear on how much they cost on the fintech side of their offering. The areas of their website where they show price is under bookkeeping which costs $139/month or $1380/year and state licensing which costs $350 per state plus state fees.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Even though Ease claims on their homepage you can launch your private practice online in minutes, they currently offer a six-week boot camp to help providers go into private practice. Between setting up an LLC, insurance, your tech platforms, etc it’s no surprise that it takes a six-week boot camp. According to their site, this is still their beta and according to Dr. Amaro’s tweets, they should be out of beta this Summer.

Ease’s goal is to really power your private practice. They aid in marketing by providing you a website and a directory profile. Technically, you’re not getting your own website, you’re getting a custom page on their website. For example, your domain is practice.mydocspace.com/thenameofyourpractice. *Thanks to a response from their CEO, we do want to clarify that the previously mentioned website option is only for those who elected to not add a custom domain. Ease provides an embedded website edit and the sites get redirected to their own CNAME servers.* From an administrative standpoint, they provide a scheduling function. Financially, Ease helps practices collect payment with branded digital invoices and even provides clinicians with business credit cards. They even offer a telehealth platform to facilitate virtual visits. 

What is the cancellation policy? 

Currently, Ease does not share what its cancellation policy is. However, in their terms of use, Ease has the right to “withdraw the Ease application and/or website in its absolute sole discretion.” They also have the right to disable log-in credentials for any reason or no reason.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

N/A

The Review 

Ease is doing a great thing for therapists. They’re taking all the steps required to form a business and go into private practice and guiding therapists through that. They answer the unknowns and help make sure all your ducks are in a row. This type of model will surely help many clinicians go into private practice and they’ve formed a great community online of people who have sincerely appreciated the boot camp. Ease’s business model as a fintech company is reliant on being involved in the payments process. Directly in their terms of service, Ease states that “Users shall not circumvent Ease to schedule or pay for services outside of Ease.” Therefore providers are locked into doing all scheduling and payments via Ease.  We will note that Ease's patient self-scheduling capabilities are limited. Providers on Ease are also held to strict requirements when it comes to canceling appointments. “Should a provider cancel a scheduled service for any reason other adverse weather conditions or a force majeure event with less than twenty-four (24) hours notice, or two or more service appointments within a thirty (30) day period, may have their user account suspended or deactivated. While Ease does give a wide number of options for what qualified as Force Majeure they specifically call out that COVID doesn’t qualify. As we pointed out above, it’s unlikely Ease has built a payment processor, a scheduling tool, telehealth, and more all on their own. You can see this through their Stripe partnership. Ease Pay is more of a white labeled Stripe. Overall, Ease is a tremendous service helping providers go into private practice, but clinicians should be aware of all the partners Ease uses to complete their services.

Grow Therapy (growtherapy.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Grow Therapy is a mental health practice growth platform designed to help therapists with the administrative side of their practice so they can focus more of their energy on clients. Grow Therapy was founded in 2020 and has since raised over $16 million in funding. In Q3 of 2022, Grow announced they raised an additional $75 million.

What's their mission? 

Grow Therapy’s mission is to help independent providers thrive by enabling them to launch their own in-network practice.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

 Grow Therapy was started by Jake Cooper, Manoj Kanagaraj, and Alan Ni. Before founding Grow Therapy, Jake Cooper was a seasoned finance and investment professional in New York City working for organizations like Blackstone and Appolo Global management. Manoj Kanagaraj received his undergraduate degree from Duke and based on his LinkedIn, it appears he is on leave from his dual MD/MBA from Harvard to start Grow Therapy. Cofounder Alan Ni is CTO of Grow Therapy and was previously Product Manager at Stripe, HVF Labs, and Google.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

Grow Therapy earns money from the insurance companies so they don’t charge you.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Grow therapy offers a suite of tools and services to help providers kick off their practice. They help you get paneled for free with major payors in your state and guarantee any insurance claims you submit. They also work on marketing for you to help bring you new clients and provide the tools so they can schedule with you. They also provide a custom-built EHR platform and support telehealth. In addition to these services they provide a community of other clinicians to network with. All Grow Therapy providers can also get their own health care coverage with a special Grow Therapy discount.

Note: It does take 3-5 months for credentialing to complete before you can get going. All providers are 1099 with Grow Therapy and get paid by Grow Therapy. The major insurers they work with are Aetna, Oscar, BCBS, Humana, Cigna, and “more.”

What is the cancellation policy? 

Grow Therapy does not require any minimum commitments. Similar to other platforms in this space, providers will likely lose credentialing if they leave Grow Therapy.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Providers are 1099 with Grow Therapy as Grow Therapy pays the clinicians. Rates are dependent on what insurance and services are provided. Grow Therapy pays weekly via direct deposit. Outside of a discount on health insurance, therapists are contracted and thus receive no benefits. 

The Review 

Overall, Grow Therapy seems to be pretty straightforward for providers. Minus one poor review from a PMHNP most of the online reviews of Grow Therapy are overwhelmingly positive. Grow Therapy does use Facebook Pixel on the clinician directory portion of their website; however, it is only used to determine if they've landed on the page. Grow Therapy also told us they currently don't spend on social advertising. Update: In Q3 of 2022, it looks like they''ve started some minimal spend to attract clients and clinicians on social media. In their privacy practices, Grow Therapy may use and disclose health information to “tell you about health-related products and services.” Grow Therapy does not advertise based on any clinical information.

Headway (headway.co) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Headway is a mental health platform to help therapists get the support they need going into private practice. In their words, it’s your practice, “powered by Headway.” Headway is available for individual and group practices that accept insurance or don’t. There’s a big differentiator from Alma. You don’t have to accept insurance with Headway. Headway has raised more than $96 million dollars and was last valued at around $750 million dollars.

What's their mission? 

Headway is “rewiring the mental health industry for access, affordability, and quality.” Its mission is to make it easier for providers to accept insurance flexibility and in turn help clients find affordable care. 

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

 Headway was founded by Andrew Adams, Jake Sussman, Dan Ross, and Kevin Chan. Andrew Adams is the CEO of Headway. His background isn’t what you would expect for a mental health startup CEO. Andrew’s background includes being a Summer Associate at SoftBank, and then a Product Analyst at Spring inc. for 1 year before becoming CEO of Headway. While Spring was a marketplace, it was for mobile shopping. Jake Sussman has a similar background, working for Goldman Sachs and then 1stdibs before becoming a co-founder of Headway. Dan Ross was the founding Head of Operations but left in 2021 to join Benepass as Head of Strategy. Dan also did not have prior healthcare experience. Kevin Chan, the final founder of Headway was their original Head of Engineering but left the company at the start of 2022 to found a company of his own called Paperclip. Kevin’s a serial entrepreneur having founded previous startups outside of healthcare before Headway. 

If you’re curious how these four finance and entrepreneurial folks got the idea, Andrew writes about it in their Series A announcement. When he moved to NYC in 2015, he couldn’t find a therapist he could afford. Andrew states that Headway is solving this problem by building the first national network of therapists who accept insurance. 

Headway has limited clinicians on the team but they are currently hiring a Head of Clinical Strategy.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

 It’s free to join. Headway says they make money by getting paid by the insurance companies. As a clinician, you’re a 1099 contractor with Headway and get paid on the 15th and last day of a month.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Being a Headway contracted provider comes with a number of benefits. Thanks to their presence as a “national network” they can negotiate better rates with insurance than you might be able to on your own. They also handle all of the billing and administrative support so you can spend more time focusing on your clients. If you’re a therapist who struggles with getting paid by insurance, here’s the big kicker. They guarantee payment twice a month and say “No more rejected claims or delayed payments.”

For patients, Headway has a directory of all their clinicians so they do the patient recruitment as well. 

What is the cancellation policy? 

If you decide to leave Headway, you are no longer a part of their national network and it would appear you would lose your in-network status with insurance companies.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Providers are 1099 with Headway as Headway pays the clinicians. Rates are dependent on what insurance and service are provided. According to this Reddit thread, rates are typically $80-$120. If you scroll down a bit, someone actually posted a chart of the payouts.

The Review 

Similar to Grow Therapy, clinicians looking into Headway should get a good understanding of what they can expect to be paid from Headway. Therapists should very clearly understand what they can expect to earn from Headway before joining.  

Headway’s privacy practices state they can share patient health information without authorization for the use of research - research that Headway or other researchers may use. This information is non-identifying according to their site. However, the vagueness of the statement does not dictate the types of research being done or what type of data is used.

Heard (joinheard.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Heard is a software-enabled company that helps therapists with their finances, more specifically bookkeeping, taxes, and payroll. Heard states they can save you 60 hours per year in financial record keeping, which means you can use that extra hour or so per week finishing your notes or making money in sessions. Heard raised a $10 million Series A in May of 2022 and a $1.3 million seed round in March 2021.

What's their mission? 

While Heard’s mission states to help therapists spend more time actually being therapists, they post a large amount of content educating therapists on financial topics in the hopes to prevent clinicians from being taken advantage of when it comes to finances. 

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Heard was co-founded by Andrew Riesen CEO and Victoria Li CTO. Andrew’s experience previous to Heard at PwC includes working with emerging businesses and startups in the tax space. Andrew’s LinkedIn lists him as a co-founder of another company TaxVerse which was acquired in 2019. Cofounder Victoria Li is also well versed in startups, working at Fitbit, Lantern, and Wefunder before founding Heard.

Heard does not appear to have high-ranking clinicians on the team. However, they do have multiple Clinical Psychologists listed as advisors.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

Thankfully, Heard is actually pretty straightforward when it comes to its pricing model. Heard costs $149 per month when billed monthly and $1,341 when billed annually - which saves you $447.

What does one get for paying that price? 

When you connect Heard to your bank, credit cards, and PM software they help recognize business transactions, identify tax-deductible expenses and generate financial reports. When it comes to taxes, they help prepare not only your business return but your personal return too. They also help estimate your quarterly taxes and even meet with you quarterly.

On the business side of things, they’ll even help you go into business with handling business formation paper working, setting up your EIN, being your registered agent, and more. If you have employees (even yourself) it looks like they partner with Gusto to help with payroll services.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Heard states you can cancel anytime. According to their website canceling means “Your subscription will continue until the end of your billing cycle.” So if you decide to cancel 2 months into a 12-month contract, you still have access to Heard for all 12 months since you paid for 12 months. This is a pretty standard cancellation policy.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

N/A

The Review 

It’s important you spend your time doing due diligence on all your accounting and taxes. At the end of the day, it is your tax return. On the bottom of the Heard website, you’ll see a disclaimer that they “do not provide legal or financial services or advice. We provide self-help tools for your convenience.” 

When you get down to it, finances are a huge time suck for many businesses, including those in healthcare, and Heard hopes to save you at least an hour per week.

Mental Wellness Offerings

Circles (circlesup.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Circles is a mental health platform that creates support groups of people going through very similar life events together. Each support group is led by a trained mental health professional, social workers, psychologists, and therapists. To date, they have raised more than $24 million dollars.

What's their mission? 

Circles wants to make care affordable and accessible to everyone. With a unique approach to the idea of creating community, they strongly believe that connecting, listening, and sharing the same pain and issues with others can be therapeutic. A key feeling of being in a Circle is never being alone.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Irad Eichler and Dan Landa are the founders of Circles. Irad has a deep background in social media and content marketing. Being based in Israel, Irad founded a company called Wheeldo which helps businesses analyze and convert on their traffic. Irad is also the founder of Shekulo Tov which is a non-profit organization that was founded in 2004 and specializes in providing occupational rehabilitation services for people with disabilities. Dan Landa is the co-founder and CMO and has a background heavily focused in tech and climate. Before Circles, Dan worked as CMO at ClimaCell and as country manager for Israel at Google. 

The team does not have a clinician on the executive team; however, they do have a clinical psychologist as an advisor.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

For users, Circles ($79/month) is relatively cheap compared to therapy; however, higher priced than some of the other group or content-focused platforms. The higher price does meet you with a slightly higher value. Circles spends the time to connect with you individuals going through life events and pains similar to you.

What does one get for paying that price? 

After signing up, Circles matches you with a support group for 12 weeks; however, their site says many people stay for longer than 12 weeks. Your matched with up to 9 other individuals going through the same life events as you and your circle is facilitated by a mental health professional. Your circle meets once a week for 60 minutes. Additionally, chat conversations are available 24/7 with your subscription.

Based on the numbers on their website, one facilitator is responsible for about 5 circles. (580 groups and 120 facilitators.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Users can cancel their membership anytime and are not locked into long-term contracts.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

We're unclear how clinicians are paid for leading sessions but it appears clinicians are 1099. Applying to be a facilitator is in a different section of the site than their "Careers" page. This likely means clinicians are paid per session they facilitate or per hour they're involved with Circles.

The Review 

Circles is doing something we all wish was easier, finding people like us to connect with. There’s no doubt community is vitally important and finding community with those who may understand our struggles can feel therapeutic. We give credit to Circles for being very straightforward in that they do use Facebook Pixel. This does mean you’re sending Facebook the answers to all your questions when signing up. Using Facebook Pixel Helper we can actually see Pixel is being used to track events throughout the onboarding process. Unfortunately, some of these events are based on your answers to onboarding questions, like "What brings you to seek support?".With Circles being available internationally, their privacy policy also states that your data may be stored outside of your “jurisdiction” which in many cases can be translated to outside of your country or province.

Coa (joincoa.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Coa is building your gym for mental health to help you create a proactive routine and increase self-awareness, resilience, mindfulness, and more. They do this by providing classes which are playlists of videos on different topics in mental health. When you’re ready, they’ll also match you with a therapist for $190 to $250 per session. On their site, you can see a number of classes ranging from emotionally fit leadership to navigating a job change series.

What's their mission? 

Your emotional fitness is as important as your physical fitness. Coa believes firmly in working on your mental health before you’ve waited, well a bit too long. Their approach is providing online, therapist-led learning experiences to help you on your emotional fitness journey.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Coa’s founder and CEO is Alexa Meyer. After getting frustrated with the lack of options Alexa wondered why there wasn’t a gym for mental health. A place to work on emotional fitness and be as community-based on physical fitness. As they say on their site Alexa wants to take her product and startup background to change how the work thinks about emotional wellbeing. Alexa has a very impressive marketing background and holds a Bachelor’s in Consumer Behavior, and Cognitive Psychology from Western University.

Coa’s other founder is Dr. Emily Anhalt. Dr. Anhalt is not only a clinical psychologist but has also been an adjunct professor at Notre Dame de Namur University.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

The primary use case of Coa costs $49 per month. Therapy pricing starts at $190 per month and goes up to $250 per month.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Unlimited access to live, therapist-led classes. On-demand content is often structured as playlists on different topics and weekly emotional push-ups and Q&As.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Users can cancel their membership anytime and are not locked into long-term contracts. Coa also offers a refund guarantee if you’ve attended three classes and realized it’s not for you.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Coa hires clinicians on a full or part-time based to be Emotional Fitness Instructors. Clinicians that are a part of Coa's network also have the opportunity to run Q&As, live webinars, and similar events. To employed fitness instructors, Coa offers healthcare benefits, PTO, mental health days, holidays, and a "competitive salary."

The Review 

Coa is providing a service that meets a key problem - they are trying to meet users before their emotional fitness goes too downhill. At a price of $49 per month, they’re offering access to a lot of high-quality, highly structured content and live classes with therapists. A key differentiator for Coa is the transition from subscriber to a therapist. At the time of writing this, it’s unavailable on their website; however, their understanding of moving from content to the need to speak with a therapist goes to show the clinical involvement they have on their team. Coa’s privacy policy does a good job outlining the opportunity for an individual to request to restrict their information being collected or by turning off cookies in their browser. However, there is a very clear distinction between being on joincoa.com and app.joincoa.com. When logged in and in app.joincoa.com, they are still using Facebook Pixel which has been set up to track specific events. Coa is using Facebook to track things like have you viewed the Therapy Matching Intro, what on-demand topics you’ve clicked on, if you’ve looked at the classes. While this information is great for Coa to understand how users are interacting with the site, it also means Facebook can see how users are interacting when logged into a mental health platform and use it as they wish.

haley (forhaley.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

haley is a mental health-conscious media company focused on connecting the world to mental health resources. forhaley.com allows clinicians and mental health-related entities to share user-generated content addressing mental health topics. Users can filter through content based on how they're feeling and different life events. haley also creates content (like this report) to share industry knowledge and empower individual clinicians.

haley has not raised any external funding to date.

What's their mission? 

haley's mission is to eliminate any barrier to finding a mental health resource that could help you. It's haley's mission to be the first step in a mental health journey.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

haley was founded by Nick Neral and Michael Stark. Prior to founding haley, Nick worked in telehealth and digital health consulting. Nick has vast experience working with mental health care organizations, FQHCs, and health systems on digital health. Prior to leading technology for Haley, Michael worked in software doing innovation for pharma, and working in cybersecurity.

Nick and Michael are not clinicians; however, the third member of their team is Judy Fernandez DSW, LCSW. Judy Fernandez currently operates a private practice and has previously been a director at a large nonprofit.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

haley provides for-profit entities a place to create B2B and D2C content to join the mental health conscious community, get in front of potential clients and partners, and build thought leadership. While individual clinicians and nonprofits can create free accounts, for profit businesses pay a small annual subscription.

What does one get for paying that price? 

A profile to share more about your organization, practice, its offerings, and more. Profiles can be discovered through content marketing or in the search.

What is the cancellation policy? 

End users looking for content do not need an account. Therapists do not sign a long-term contract and their profiles are free. Paid organizational profiles are annual contracts that require a notice to not renew.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Not applicable. Therapists can sell content on haley and list themselves as available for consulting or speaking events though.

The Review 

Access is of course one of the key issues in mental health. haley was founded based on two events in Nick's life. First, going to his campus counseling center, waiting six weeks for an intake, and then was told he could get medicine the same week but couldn't start therapy for two months. Nick was so upset with the process he never saw another clinician and received zero follow-up. Therefore, they had no clue if Nick took the meds or how he was doing. The other event was seeing his fiance come out of a work meeting in tears while she was in between appointments. haley is focused on connecting the world with resources while they're in between appointments, on a waitlist, or too hesitant to commit to care. 

haley has never and will never sell data. haley does not use Facebook Pixel. Like nearly every site on the internet, haley does use Google Analytics.

Happypillar (happypillar.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Happypillar is an app designed to help parents with play therapy. Happypillar is an app that uses machine learning to help parents understand how to do play therapy with their children through interactive training. HappyPillar is in very early stages and is currently crowdfunding on WeFunder and has raised just under $412,000 as of August 4, 2022 and is currently raising their seed round. 

What's their mission? 

Happypillar’s mission is to help parents find more accessible and affordable ways to engage in play therapy techniques with their children. In their words, “to bring the knowledge and expertise of licensed child therapists to parents via the power of language machine learning.”

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Happypillar was started by Sam Gardner after she felt like she was failing as a parent with her four-year-old. After getting professional mental health help, Sam realized she had the technical expertise to bring this to more parents at a cheaper cost. Sam is a founding member of Parenthood Ventures and has a career in customer success at Rasa and Sauce Labs. Rasa was an infrastructure for conversational AI and Sauce Lab helps enterprises ensure their apps and sites work on the various apps and browsers. Sam brought on cofounders Mady Mantha and founding engineer Ben Quachtran. Mady has an extensive career working in machine learning at Rasa, Sirius, and has advised Fortune 10 companies on machine learning initiatives. Ben is a former Disney and Rasa engineer. While Happypillar doesn’t currently have clinicians on its team, its clinical advisory board is made of impressive psychologists Jane Simpson Gray, Marian Lewin LMHC, and Chloe Picot-Jacobs LCSW. Happypillar is currently contracting with clinicians to design the app and program, and will bring them on full time once funding is complete.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

Happypillar is still in beta and allows first testers to use the platform at no cost. According to Happypillar’s WeFunder, they plan to sell the app for $20/month in annual bundles.

What does one get for paying that price? 

For that price, you get access to the complete app. The app trains parents on the skills of a play therapist and provide guidelines for language during 5-minute therapy sessions. The app uses its proprietary technology to analyze the play therapy session to identify personalized areas for improvement which should result in decreased tantrums and increased child self-esteem and more.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Happypillar has not released their cancellatoin policy but according to their WeFunder they hope users stick around for approximately 13-14 months based on an LTV of a client being $272 and the monthly price of $20. 

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

N/A

The Review 

Happypillar is an extremely strong technical team with clinical advisors. Their understanding of the importance of privacy is laid out in the first paragraphs of their privacy policy. Since the app is listening and analyzing conversations with a child, Happypillar outlines that they are only analyzing comments made by the parent, although the voice of both child and parent are recorded. The audio is converted to text and scrubbed of any identifying information according to HIPAA and Soc-2 standards. They state all PII is scrubbed before it reaches their servers.

Happypillar’s security notice is that they may notify you if the personal information in their possession may have been compromised and if notification is needed then they’ll do so as promptly as possible. These terms do not require them to contact you and do not lay out a specific time frame as often seen in business-to-business contracts.

Overall, Happypillar is using technology to help supplement play therapists and doing so at an affordable price. Even though they don’t have a clinician on the founding team, they have a strong clinical advisory board from the beginning and wouldn’t be surprised to see more clinical involvement after their fundraising round is complete.

Real (join-real.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Real is a mental wellness app that charges a monthly subscription for check-in tools, pathways, and “real talks.” Real is often advertised as self-guided therapy with tools created by mental health therapists and professionals. Real has raised more than $47 million dollars with their most recent round being $37 million in April of 2022.

What's their mission? 

Real’s mission puts the focus back on you and strengthens your relationship with yourself. Real wants you to better understand yourself and find spaces to connect with others and grow, and events to normalize and celebrate talking about mental health.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Real was started by Ariela Safira.While Ariela is not a clinician, her healthcare background is extensive compared to many founders in this space. From redesigning therapy clinics, researching in-patient programming, and researching and designing services to lower depression at IDEO. Before starting Real, Ariela was at Cityblock Health working in product and operations and pursuing her Master's in Clinical Psychology from Columbia. She left the pursuit of her Master's when she started Real.

Real's clinical leadership includes Rachel Hoffman who has extensive social work background. Rachel is Real's current Chief Clinical Officer. Real's Chief Medical Officer is also extremely impressive. Nina Vasan MD MBA  Dr. Vasan founded The Stanford Lab for Mental Health Innovation, and was an assistant professor and Chief Resident. She's served as an advisor to a number of companies.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

For users, Real ranges from $23.99/month when billed monthly and $13.75 per month when billde annually ($164.99 per year). Real is about the most affordable platform in this space until you start to compare it to wellness apps like Calm and Headspace. They also accept FSA and HSA cards.

What does one get for paying that price? 

After signing up, you get access to the Real app which seems to be a compilation of wellness programs created by therapists, access to therapist-led events, mental wellness tracking, and “tools” to explore your mental wellness. 

What is the cancellation policy? 

Users can cancel their membership anytime; however, users may be stuck in their 6 or 12-month contract depending on how they paid.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

N/A

The Review 

Real is one of the most content-focused platforms. With limited opportunities to interact with therapists live, their main value comes from the pre-made content you have access to. This is a tough space to be in when consumers are already interacting with free content across social media platforms. Can Real convince the everyday person of the difference in value with their content? It seems like not everyone is convinced with several comments requesting more immersion and engagement. 

When it comes to their privacy, Real uses Facebook pixel on both their marketing website and on their app.join-real.com platform onboarding process.  Pixel is set up to track how far in the checkout process and what length of subscription a user is going to get. Real's advertising often gives users the opportunity to get their first month for $8.99. Real advertises itself as "the mental health care you deserve."

OURS (withours.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

OURS is a modern premarital counseling platform that connects couples with "loveware" (content, etc.) designed by licensed therapists. Ours also connects couples with therapists during the 4-week premarital counseling program; however, Ours does not provide therapy.
In May, OURS announced its launch with $5 million in seed funding.

What's their mission? 
OURS was started to make couples counseling more accessible, destigmatized, and designed for couples today. OURS believes we should always invest in our relationships and couples counseling isn't just for being reactive. 

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Ours was co-founded by Jessica Holton, Elizabeth Earnshaw, and Adam Putterman. Before starting Ours, Jessica was heavily involved in the skincare space. She founded Blaze skincare which according to her LinkedIn focused on “making skincare more.” Jessica also founded Access Distributed which helped students find high-potential careers. Jessica also spent some time with Morgan Stanley and earned her MBA from Stanford. Elizabeth is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (and a Certified Gottman Therapist). Elizabeth has been practicing for a number of years and is also the Founder of The Rory Project which creates online trainings and courses on relationship skills. Elizabeth was a great match for this team due to the content portion of Ours’ offering. Adam Putterman the final cofounder has a heavy consulting background ranging from Deloitte to startups. His focus appears to be on product, user research, and brand.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

OURS charges couples $400 for the program.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Ours provides 4 weeks of 100% virtual premarital counseling. Two sessions are live with a therapist and 4 are with their “Loveware” and are content based.

What is the cancellation policy? 

The short nature of OURS makes people unlikely to cancel. The word refund is not found in their terms of service and they also do not have cancellation or termination terms, other than they can terminate your access to the site and services at any time for any reason.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

N/A

The Review 

It is so wonderful to see a mental health startup with an experienced therapist on the founding and executive team. Elizabeth has grown a great brand across multiple social media platforms. From what I can tell, the general consensus around Ours appears to be very positive. There are some concerns with their privacy policy and practices. In OURS terms of service, they very clearly state that they are not providing therapy. Thus their clinicians can see anyone in any state and they don’t technically have to follow HIPAA. OURS privacy policy states that they can share anonymized and de-identifide data, including questionnaires, surveys, sessions, and relationship data with third parties for research and development. Research and development isn’t uncommon; however, OURS makes no distinction as to what type of data can be used or shared with third parties for these purposes. Similarly, for product development purposes OURS uses HotJar to record how users interact with their services. Essentially HotJar provides what can be described as a recording of how a user navigates online sites and services. Ours also uses Facebook Pixel on their marketing website and during the signup process from our research, at the time of writing this. During the sign-up process, Pixel Helper shows Pixel is tracking "View Content" and is automatically collecting microdata.

Ours looks to be headed in a wonderful direction and is led by a clinician on the executive team; however, if you are worried about data, contact them to not track your usage. 

Sesh (seshgroups.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Sesh is a mental health platform that connects users with virtual support groups. The only sessions are led by licensed therapists - but it’s not therapy. The platform is very clear that sesh provides group support that is facilitated by a licensed therapist. Sesh raised $3.5 million at the end of 2020. Look out for them to fundraise again soon.

What's their mission? 

Sesh believes in the power of community and bringing that community support at an affordable price, which we’ll talk about in a bit. In their words, they don’t want users to do it alone. Sesh wants to bring science-backed and board-certified therapists to support groups in an accessible and affordable way.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Sesh’s founder is Vittoria Lecomte. Prior to founding Sesh towards the end of 2019, Vittoria spent her career in blockchain and finance. The company she was at before Sesh was called Blockchain, according to her LinkedIn. Blockchain was a VC-backed crypto wallet that received $70 million in funding and Vittoria was the product lead and Chief of Staff. Prior to Blockchain, Vittoria spent some time at Barclays, Georgetown, and Financial Technology Partners.

Sesh does have an LPC as a Clinical Network and Quality Assurance Manager. They also have an LPC as Clinical Programming Manager.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

For users, Sesh is rather cheap when compared to traditional therapy, but remember Sesh is very clear they do not provide group therapy, it’s group support led by therapists. The pricing is $30 per Sesh or $60 per month for unlimited “Sesh”ions.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Sesh provides multiple Seshions every day and they range in topic. Some cover current events, for example, “Reproductive Rights Are Human Rights” is a current weekly Sesh on Thursdays. Other Seshions include managing a variety of emotions, inner child healing, empowering your voice as an LGBTQ person, and more.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Users can cancel their membership anytime and are not locked into long-term contracts.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Therapists are 1099 and get paid based on the number of sign-ups for each session they facilitate. According to online sources, facilitating a 30-minute session starts at $40 and can go up based on the number of sign-ups. 60-minute sessions start a bit higher and again can go up based on the number of sign-ups.

The Review 

Sesh is providing something we’ve all missed during the pandemic, community. Community and relationships are vital to mental health. Due to Sesh calling their group sessions support and not therapy, they can get around state licensing laws. So when it comes to the state a clinician is licensed in, it really doesn’t matter. Sesh also claims to have almost zero relationships with facilitators. Directly in their policy, Sesh states “Facilitators" are independent providers who are neither our employees nor agents nor representatives.” In their terms of use, Sesh does a great job outlining the expected conduct during Seshions in order to keep a supportive environment. Sesh’s privacy policy is similar to most websites and they very clearly state they allow third parties, advertising networks, and service providers to collect information through cookies, web beacons, and other technologies. This is normal for marketing websites. For example, on both seshgroups.com and app.seshgroups.com Facebook Pixel is installed on their website. Sesh even lets you sign in with your Facebook account.

Mental Health Services

BetterHelp (betterhelp.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

BetterHelp is the largest direct-to-consumer mental health platform with over 25,000 therapists in their directory. BetterHelp offers a monthly subscription to chat with therapists via messaging, phone, or video. Over 2.5 million people have sought help through BetterHelp. BetterHelp was acquired by Teladoc in 2015 for $3.5 million in cash and a $1 million promissory note.

What's their mission? 

BetterHelp’s mission is to meet the unmet need for mental healthcare. Many people don’t get mental healthcare due to cost, finding a matching therapist, time, stress, and stigma. BetterHelp wants to provide a convenient solution to access licensed therapists.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

BetterHelp was founded by Alon Matas, who from his LinkedIn, is the definition of a serial entrepreneur. With a number of ventures since his founding of BetterHelp, he’s been involved in numerous accelerators, advisory roles, and venture capital organizations since his founding of BetterHelp. Prior to founding BetterHelp in 2012, Alon founded MediaBoost, a SaaS platform to help online marketers optimize their campaigns. Alon eventually led MediaBoost to a sale of the company.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

BetterHelp costs users $60-$90 per month depending on the availability of therapists, preferences, and location. 

What does one get for paying that price? 

After signing up, BetterHelp claims to match most users with a therapist within 24 hours. Then, you have complete access to chat via message, phone, or video chat. 

What is the cancellation policy? 

Users can cancel their membership anytime and are not locked into long term contracts.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

All therapists on BetterHelp are 1099. They do not employ providers as W2. BetterHelp therapists are given a $650 health benefit stipend if they continuously work for BetterHelp 30 hours per week. They’re also given free access to BetterHelp services. According to an LA Times article, hourly pay depends on the number of hours a therapist works for BetterHelp. 

Hours

• 1-5 $30/hr
• 6-10 $35
• 11-15 $40
• 16-20 $45
• 21-25 $50
• 26-30 $55
• 30-35 $60
• 35+ $70

BetterHelp's founder said these numbers do not reflect potential bonuses for caseload incentives, group sessions, or monthly stipends. It's no secret though that many therapists online believe BetterHelp is one of the lowest paying platforms in mental health. 

The Review 

BetterHelp has literally served millions, bringing mental healthcare to many who may have never otherwise received care. However, Betterhelp has come under a lot of scrutiny for low clinician pay and data privacy. The ability to continually receive communication from a therapist via text has also raised questions about the practices of the company. Recently, the Senate has decided to investigate BetterHelp and Talkspace for how their client’s data may be seen by data miners and analytics companies that could use the data to target vulnerable populations. According to BetterHelp, they have never been paid by any third party for data about their members. They also state no information from sessions, journaling, or sessions with therapists is shared with third parties. On their marketing website, they do ask for your permission to use cookies and web beacons. However, Facebook Pixel does not appear to be used. 

Finally, BetterHelp has come under scrutiny for its marketing practices and for accepting extremely high client acquisition costs. According to the LA times, BetterHelp spent $7 million dollars to market on podcasts. They are also well known for being on most Google keywords for Adwords. Similar to Cerebral, BetterHelp frequently partners with influencers and other accounts to promote BetterHelp on Instagram.

Cerebral (cerebral.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Cerebral is an online direct-to-consumer therapy and medication management provider. Cerebral was started in 2019 and exploded thanks to incredible amounts of VC funding and celebrity endorsements like Simone Biles. Cerebral has investors like Softbank, Silver Lake, Access industries, and others. If you’ve heard of SoftBank before, they’ve invested in other companies that grew too fast…namely WeWork. 

Cerebral has raised more than $450 million dollars. Its last fundraising round came at the end of 2021. Cerebral raised $300 million at a $4.8 billion dollar valuatoin.

What's their mission? 

Cerebral’s mission is to increase access to online mental healthcare services and medication management.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Kyle Roberston founded Cerebral and was its CEO until he was kicked out by the Board in May of 2022. Kyle attended Wharton for his MBA education. During the pursuit of his MBA he founded StartU which covered the most promising startups founded by recent alumni of top universities. It seems Kyle wanted to join the list himself, leaving in December of 2018 to start Cerebral in January of 2019. Before his MBA, Kyle was a consultant at Accenture and a part of the National Economic Council at The White House

Today, Cerebral is led by Dr. David Mou. David was Cerebral's Chief Medical Officer from February 2021 until May 2022 when he took over as CEO.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

• Medication and Care Counseling - $99/month and $30 for the first month
• Medication and Therapy - $325/month and $139 for the first month
• Therapy - $259/month and $99 for the first month.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Depending on the membership you get access to weekly therapy video/phone sessions or chat at any time. Medication management plans include getting prescribed and monthly medication delivery. It is interesting that a person can just sign up for a medication plan before talking with anyone. Unless you click on the one call-to-action button for the therapy membership, all other generic call to actions to get started default to plan=medication in the url. According to their site, 82% of patients reported a reduction in anxiety.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Users can cancel their membership anytime and are not locked into long-term contracts.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Cerebral’s job applications actually say nothing about pay or benefits for associate therapists, at least as of July 10, 2022. Licensed therapists make $45 per 45-minute session. According to an Indeed review, full-time salary and benefits were taken away around August 2021.

The Review 

Cerebral is a company riddled with controversy and is currently being investigated by the DEA for its prescribing practices. Online conversations about Cerebral talk about the feeling of just filling roles with bodies to grow as fast as possible. With their incredible amount of funding at a multi-billion dollar valuation, it’s hard to imagine how many millions they’re spending on social media advertising. In addition to Cerebral posting ads themselves, there is a myriad of other accounts advertising on their behalf like finvsfin and zenmasterwellness. If you would like to see Cerebral's ads, Facebook now allows you to see ads of companies. Go to Cerebral's page and scroll down until you see the "Page Transparency" section and go to their ad library.

When it comes to marketing tools like Facebook Analytics, it’s obvious they have Pixel installed with the amount of retargeting they do. They also have Facebook Pixel installed on their site and continue to have Facebook Pixel installed after you select a Get Started option and even through account creation. Pixel appears to be collecting page views, microdata, and button clicks. Their marketing practices have come under fire for their imagery and messaging. They’re also the first company we’ve seen to financially incentivize referring your friend to mental healthcare services. They do this by applying a $10 credit to your account for up to 20 referrals. Cerebral's questionable marketing practices continue in their text-based marketing. If you give them permission and your phone number, every two to three days you'll get promotional offers with different words in all caps to get you to act TODAY or on these FINAL HOURS to get 70% off.

From LinkedIn posts from recently laid-off employees to social media comments the story with Cerebral is overworked and underpaid therapists, some upset clients, and some satisfied. With over 25,000 reviews they have an insane amount of reviews on the Apple app store. While the ratings are largely 5 stars if you flip to the most recent reviews many are 1 or 2 stars. Cerebral’s push for growth seems to have lowered the quality and satisfaction of care.

The new CEO, David Mou MD was their Chief Medical Officer from February 2021 to May 2022 before becoming CEO. When being investigated by the DEA for prescribing practices, making a clinician your CEO seems like a wise decision. However, Dr. Mou was the CMO during the time of questionable practices. We’ll see whether Cerebral takes the necessary steps to crack down on quality of care and whether or not the DEA finds anything in their investigation. Cerebral’s PR team is very careful to ensure that Dr. Mou doesn’t admit any wrongdoings in his public statements. 

Center for Anxiety (centerforanxiety.org) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

The Center for Anxiety is an all cash pay practice with W2 providers headquartered in New York; however, they hire and see patients in other states including, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin.

What's their mission? 

The Center For Anxiety’s mission is to put clients’ goals first while giving the best they can to their clinicians. They’ve seen more than 10,000 individuals have more than 50 clinicians on staff.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

The Center was started by David Rosmarin, Ph.D., ABPP. David is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and CFA’s founder. He earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from Bowling Green State and did his fellowship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Med. His work has been featured in quite a number of places, including Scientific America, Boston Globe, and more

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

The Center for Anxiety is an all-cash pay practice with rates that start at $200 and go up from there.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Depending on your needs, the CFA team may suggest one of several options ranging from individual therapy, group therapy, or an intensive outpatient program.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Not applicable to the Center For Anxiety.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

The Center for Anxiety is not your large tech company. This quickly growing clinician-led practice offers among the best benefits package we’ve seen in the industry. Medical benefits, paid maternity and paternity leave, a stipend for professional development, fully paid malpractice insurance, fitness and mental health benefits, and a 401K. Experienced clinicians can and do earn a salary above $100,000 at Center For Anxiety. New clinicians start out around $65,000 to $75,000.

Providers at Center For Anxiety are W2 providers, so you are truly employees. This does mean CFA handles all the administrative tasks for you, so you don’t have to worry about collecting payments or dealing with marketing, etc. Clinicians on the team are supposed to provide 24 hours of evidence-based therapy per week. This could be through individual sessions, IOP settings, or leading DBT skill groups. In order to work at CFA, clinicians must be licensed or license-eligible. The Center For Anxiety also focuses on recruiting clinicians with CBT and DBT training and experience.

The Review 

Between relocation assistance, medical benefits, high earning potential, and 24 hours of therapy work per week, the Center For Anxiety has certainly separated themselves when it comes to treatment of clinicians. Their ability to treat clinicians so well comes from their success in charging high rates in local markets. The Center For Anxiety offers reduced rates to patients who are being seen by clinicians still under supervision. The reduced rates are $200; however, patients can receive a reimbursement for their treatment depending on their out-of-network mental health benefits. 

The google reviews are 4.1 across 22 reviews. The reviews are a mixture of fantastic experiences, even traveling just to go there for treatment, to some qualms about the cost of the services at the organization. Across the reviews, no one mentions waiting long periods to be seen, so if you’re open to the structure of care they deem best for you, you might be able to get it quite quickly. 

Charlie Health (charliehealth.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Charlie Health is a virtual-IOP mental health organization founded in Montana in 2020. Charlie Health works with 12-28 year olds who need therapy more than once per week. If you're looking for a team full of clinicians, Charlie Health is it. Charlie Health has raised $850,000 in a promissory note according to SEC documents.

What's their mission? 

Charlie Health was founded to bring access to high-quality evidence-based care to youth and their families everywhere.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Charlie Health was founded by Carter Barnhart and Dr. Caroline Fenkel, DSW, LCSW. Before founding Charlie Health, Carter worked her way up to the C-suite at another prominent mental health organization, Newport. According to the Charlie Health website, Carter started working at Newport a couple years after being at Newport herself. Carter's experience with mental health has led her to a very purposeful career serving the space. Dr. Caroline Fenkel has held a variety of roles from board member, to the executive director, to therapist across several organizations in the past decade. 

Not listed on their site, but on LinkedIn, Charlie Health's Head of Strategy Justin Weiss is also presented as a cofounder. Justin worked as an analyst at a number of financial institutions prior to Charlie Health. He also previously cofounded ClearDigs for the real estate industry.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

Charlie Health works with major insurance plans, even including Medicaid.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Charlie Health's admissions team is available 24/7. After learning about the program, Charlie Health schedules a consultation to learn more about your nedes, discuss a personalized treatment plan, and assign a primary therapist who specializes in those needs. That therapist will be with you throughout your time with Charlie Health and you'll be connected with groups of peers going through similar challenges. Charlie Health's multi-prong approach means not only groups, but individual and family sessions as well

What is the cancellation policy? 

Not applicable to Charlie Health.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

According to Behavioral Health Business, about 60% of Charlie Health's employees are clinicians, and about 60% of the clinicians are employed with the rest being contracted. More than 90% of Charlie Health's workforce is remote, they offer $1,200 in annual wellness stipends and ongoing education and training opportunities. They also offer medical, dental, vision coverage, PTO, and 401(K) matching options.

Every clinician on the Charlie Health team spends a full week (40 hrs) with the clinical onboarding team before meeting with clients. According to a Glassdoor review, clinicians are expected to see 28 clients per week.

The Review 

Being founded in 2020 and already having 500 employees is explosive growth and according to employee reviews they seem to have done a pretty good job managing. The breadth of clinicians on the leadership team and across the company seems to speak volumes. In addition to who we've already mentioned, Charlie Health's Chief Compliance Officer is a clinician, they have two medical directors, and several programming directors are all clinicians. Many of the Glassdoor reviews simply put there are no cons they think of. Every once in a while someone mentions the expected struggle of working in a startup environment but it seems Carter is doing a great job leading this company and culture. On 29 Google reviews, Charlie Health has 4.6 stars, an extremely high rating for the mental health industry.  

Charlie Health's privacy policy also seems in good order. They do use Facebook Pixel on their website.

Confidant Health (confidanthealth.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Confidant Health is a virtual substance use and addiction mental health clinic that uses evidence-based care. Confidant Health was founded in 2019. Confidant went through What If Ventures' 8-week accelerator program earlier in 2022. Confidant plans to raise its first round of funding later this year.

What's their mission? 

In Confidant’s words, We’re here to help people establish the mindset, habits, and skills to thrive. We created a model that pairs incredible providers who deliver evidence-based interventions with digitized behavioral-health resources. Our approach maximizes the impact of high-quality care with minimum overhead and without traditional marketing techniques. We transfer the savings directly to our clients – making our care better, more affordable, and more convenient.”

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Confidant Health was founded by Jon Read and Sam Arsenault Wilson. Before co-founding Confidant, Jon founded Keet Health. Keet Health was originally something Jon built for himself while he was going through physical therapy for a motorcycle accident. Sam Arsenault Wilson is now Confidant's Chief Quality Officer. Before founding Confidant, Sam was VP of National Treatment Quality Initiatives at Shatterproof and built the ATLAS program to make a quality measurement system for addiction treatment programs.

Confidant's SVP of Clinical Operations Jill Fitzgerald is a LICSW and was formerly at EasterSeals NH in a similar role.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

Between insurance and Confidant's community payment model, you could pay as little as $1. While Confidant has recommendations for what you should pay, their community payment model is essentially pay what you can afford or pay extra to contribute to the community.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Confidant has built an app with resources and clinical providers. Yes, Confidant provides you the ability to connect with therapists, prescribers, and coaches, but they always have Alfie. Alfie is the chatbot they’ve developed that is designed to understand your needs. Confidant’s app of resources provides ongoing sessions and medication management you may need exercises, reading materials, videos, and more.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Confidant doesn’t require a subscription.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Confidant Health is so new we can not find existing reviews of pay. They also do not have a career section on their website. We expect more hiring news to come after their round of funding.

The Review 

The haley team hosted Confidant's cofounder Sam Arsenault Wilson on our podcast. You can listen here. One thing from our conversation was clear, the team is focused on the mission and is focused on value-based care. While they're yet to raise their first round of funding, they have a strong team. The fundraise will be an important part of Confidant's ability to expand further across the United States.

Confidant has an existing mobile app on the app stores and the reviews are very positive with many speaking to Confidant providing something new and helpful.

Confidant's app has a seal of HIPAA compliance powered by Accountable. Whether you're on the site or in the app, Confidant presents you with the same privacy policy. Their policy states they're permitted to hold and disclose information for purposes like business development, running competitions, and advertising and marketing.

Foresight Mental Health (foresightmentalhealth.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Foresight offers a variety of mental health services from therapy to psychiatry and a variety of "care-enhancing tools." Foresight was founded in 2018 and offers both in-person and virtual care offerings. Some of their strategy appears to be growth through acquiring practices. Foresight raised $1.5 million in seed money in 2019, including from mental health firm What If Ventures, and has since gone on to raise several more rounds. According to Pitchbook, their most recent round gave them $25 million in funding.

What's their mission? 

Foresight's mission is to not only increase access to mental healthcare but to make it more affordable. They're doing so not just through creating a network of practices and clinicians but through their digital platform.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Foresight was founded by Doug Hapeman and Matt Milford. Before and even while starting Foresight, Doug was at UC Berkeley pursuing a degree in electrical engineering and computer science. Doug worked on projects like enhancing geo-targeting in advertising using machine learning and on Genetic Foresight, the precursor to Foresight Mental Health. Matt left the pursuit of his degree in starting Foresight but worked on some fascinating projects in the early to mid-2010s. They include co leading an engineering team to send an experiment to the space station to engineering yeast to produce narwhal cheese.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

Foresight does accept a variety of insurances for care.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Foresight offers in person and virtual care. They currently list locations in 24 states across the country. They offer therapy, psychiatry, spravato (esketamine), and nutrition services.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Foresight doesn't require a subscription.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Foresight offers PTO, medical/dental/vision benefits, a peer support program, and a 401(K) match. They also provide CEU stipends, malpractice insurance, and license renewal stipends.

Depending on location, therapists can earn $40-$50 per hour and get paid for two hours of charting time per week.  Full-time therapists are required to do 30 hours of clinical work per week. Psychiatry roles do not state an hourly rate but a "competitive base salary"

The Review 

Foresight mental health has grown quickly across the country by taking a hybrid approach. One might aliken the approach more similar to Lifestance than to a Talkspace or several of the companies on this report. The hours required of therapists are a bit higher than some of the other organizations in the report; however, that may be expected considering many of the companies requiring full-time clinicians to work ~24 hours per week are higher cash pay rates. Many clinicians on Glassdoor leave reviews of the high caseloads leaving them to do more admin work than they're paid to do.

Unfortunately, it looks like Foresight has gone through two round of layoffs between April and July of 2022 totaling over 250 employees. The number of Glassdoor reviews in just the past month is way above any other mental health company. The employees are so speculative of the financial situation, many are sharing they had to cut Slack and force employees to use Google Chat. if you'd like to see some of the most recent reviews, here's a link to Glassdoor, filter by most recent.

While Foresight does use Facebook Pixel on their marketing website, they do NOT use it on their appointment request form. And yes, Google forms are covered under Google's BAA.

Little Otter (littleotterhealth.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Little Otter Health is one of the few mental health companies focused on pediatric mental health. They provide care for kids aged 0-14 that supports the entire family. Little Otter was founded in May of 2020 by a mom and daughter duo. They recently announced their Series A of $22 million dollars in January.

What's their mission? 

Little Otter was founded based on the idea that the child mental health crisis could only be solved by treating the whole family in an accessible and scalable way.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Little Otter was founded by Rebecca Egger and Dr. Helen Egger. Before becoming Co-founder and CEO, Rebecca Egger led product teams at Palantir and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Dr. Helen Egger is the co-founder and Chief Medical/Scientific Officer. Dr. Egger has an incredibly impressive background, earning her MD from Yale, working as a psychiatrist at Duke and NYU Langone, and even served as Chair of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

Little Otter is currently out of network but they suggest your insurance may cover up to 40%-70% of costs.

Initial Intake - $90

An initial child psychiatry evaluation is $500 for one hour.

• $200 per therapy session
• $680 for 4 sessions
• $1,920 for 12 therapy sessions 

What does one get for paying that price? 

The initial intake is a 30 minute welcome session with a care lead. “This includes a custom family mental health report with measurable insights and actionable feedback, texting, appointments with providers without a waitlist, and digital resources written by our experts.” Ongoing sessions are 45 minutes.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Users can subscribe to long term agreements. Individual sessions must be canceled greater than 24 hours out of the appointment. If you purchase a bundle and decide to not use all of the sessions, there are zero refunds.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Clinical Psychologist $90-$115K base plus $5K plus stock options (Medical and Dental benefits)

1099 Psychiatrist - $250/hr at 8-10 hours per week.

1099 PMHNP - $100-160/hr up to 8 hours

The Review 

Little Otter is a newer child mental health platform that seems to be doing quite well. They’re not a cheap service but they seem to pay their clinicians at a pretty good rate. It’s also great to see a mental health company led and cofounded by someone with such domain expertise. With how new Little Otter is, decent paying clinical roles and salaries up to $200,000 for engineers, the venture capital funding they received is possibly supporting a large number of roles at the company. With a goal to be in all 50 states by 2023, watch for Little Otter’s next fundraising round and future growth rates.

Their business model is slightly unfortunate. With discounts for buying bulk numbers of sessions, families are incentivized to purchase packages but then lose out if it’s not needed or not the right fit after a couple of sessions.

Little Otter uses Facebook Pixel both on their marketing website and during the account creation process on their app.littleotterhealth.com website. Pixel is tracking "Page View" and "Button Clicks".

Fair warning the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy available on the bottom of Little Otter’s site is not the same Terms of Use and Privacy Policy presented during the account creation process. Even more confusing is the fees outlined by Little Sloth are not the same fees presented by Little Otter on their website. When you receive medical or therapy services through the Little Otter app, you’re receiving services from Little Sloth Healthcare which is independent from Little Otter. 

Mindbloom (mindbloom.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Mindbloom is a mental health company adding psychedelics into care with the guidance of clinicians. Minbloom focuses on science-backed therapy and the implementation of psychedelics like ketamine to transform lives.

What's their mission? 

Mindbloom is a mental health and wellness company not just focused on improving our mental health but helping us reach our full potential.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Mindbloom was founded by Dylan Beynon. Dylan is a serial entrepreneur and founded Mighty before Mindbloom. At Might, Dylan was Chief Growth Officer. Mighty helped injured people get a better deal from the justice system. Mighty was a software platform that helped the interested stakeholders manage heir legal cases. He also founded a platform that gave consumers insights on their political candidates.

We do not see a clinician as head of marketing, clinical ops ,etc. They do have a lead clinician who is Kristin Arden. Kristin was one of their first 10 employees and led the scaling of their clinical team.

What's the business model? How does this company make money? 

Mindbloom's business model is run on three month subscriptions. New clients are billed at a rate of $89 per week and are billed for 12 weeks. Returning clients can repurchase the three month package at a rate of $55 per week. The three month packages appear to be broken down into three payments based on online reviews. Ad hoc 1:1 sessions for 45 minutes can be purchased for $59.

What does one get for paying that price? 

New patients get 6 ketamine treatments, 1 Bloombox (which is trademarked btw), 2 psychiatric clinician consults, 3 guide sessions, unlimited group sessions, and unlimited messaging. Returning clients get 6 ketamine treatments, 1 psychiatric clinician consult, and still unlimited groups and messaging.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Mindbloom makes no mention of a cancellation policy or refund policy other than they can suspend your services at any time and you're free to stop using the services at any time. It does appear there is a refund if they deem you're not a fit for their services.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Full time employees are offered medical dental and vision insurance, malpractice insurance, and a flexible work schedule. Collaborating psychologists, coaches, and guides are offered hourly pay. According to one glassdoor review, the pay for guides is $21-$23 per hour. Not mentioned on clinical roles but offered on corporate roles is unlimited vacation, steeply discounted Mindbloom products, annual company retreats, design your own workday, and employer sponsored 401K. 

The Review 

Overall, Mindbloom seems to be getting off to a good start as a company. With how new psychedelics are and being a cash pay only practice, their growth hasn't been as explosive as others but that's not a bad thing when we compare it to some of the troubles of other startups. While some Glassdoor reviews say the pay could be better, most reviews are positive and count the biggest downside as being entirely remote work and some IT issues that normal startups might encounter. 

It's important to note that Mindbloom is very different than many other offerings on this list. You can see by what you're offered, it's not repetitive sessions with a therapist. Some online reviews talk about doing much of the work on your own. Some clients seem very happy with their guides while others report talking to different people. Because of psychedelics are a hot topic, Mindbloom is pretty easy to find reviews online. Google reviews has them at 3.7 stars at fifteen reviews and Trustpilot has them at 2.4 stars at seventeen reviews. One thing from reviews is clear, the integration of psychedelics has given many people hope that they otherwise didn't have. Between online forums and social media comments, people are very excited about what Mindbloom can be for the industry.

Mindbloom does use Facebook Pixel on their marketing website and on their onboarding questionnaire at welcome.mindbloom.com which asks users extremely sensitive information about how they've been doing over the past seven days. For example, "Over the past seven days, I've felt worthless" and you can respond Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often. The next two questions were structured the same way except if I've felt worthless, and depressed. The final question asked if I was already on medication. Pixel is tracking what questionnaire steps are completed and "Button Clicks." The medical group notes they won't sell your protected health information without your consent, so pay attention for consents which could ask for permission.

Octave (findoctave.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Octave is a mental health practice that offers in-person and virtual visits in California and New York. Octave offers therapy, group sessions, and workshops. With personalized plans, they state they see a 37% reduction in depression symptoms in 12 weeks. Octave has raised more than $31 million to date.

What's their mission? 

From their site, “Octave’s mission is to create a new standard for mental health care that’s both accessible to people and sustainable for providers. By redesigning how care is delivered and expanding options to make it more affordable, we can meet the growing need for mental health care and measurably improve more lives.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Octave was cofounded by Sandeep Acharya. Currently, he is the only founder listed on their site. Before founding Octave in January of 2018, Sandeep was the VP of Strategy at One Medical which was a VC backed national primary care group. Before that he focused his efforts on the finance and venture capital, working as Vice President at Bain Capital. The senior most clinical person at the company is Golee Abrishami Ph.D. She has a very impressive background working as a therapist and in managerial roles across Kaiser Permanente and the Center for Discovery. She is also on the board of the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals.

What's the business model? How does this company make money?  

• Individual and couples therapy in California starts at $205 per session.
• Individual and couples therapy in New York starts at $180 per session.
• Group therapy starts at $75 per session.
• California accepted insurance - Anthem Blue Cross of CA (some BCBS plans based outside CA) Aetna, Health Net, Managed Health Network Pans. 
• New York - Aetna, United Healthcare UMR plan for Mount Sinai

What does one get for paying that price? 

To get started with Octave, they ask you to complete a short questionnaire so they can pair you with one of their clinicians. Reminder, they’re only currently available in CA and NY. They see patients virtually or in two clinics in San Francisco and two clinics in New York. Currently, it looks like the clinics are closed due to COVID so all appointments are virtual. Based on their FAQs, some clients may be put on a waitlist. They do offer evening appointments but are closed on weekends. After completing the questionnaire, a care navigator will connect you with a clinician where your first few sessions are used to determine the clinician-client match

What is the cancellation policy? 

Octave clients who do cancel within 24 hours of the appointment are required to pay an out of pocket $100 cancellation fee.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Octave hires a mixture of full time and contracted therapists. According to glassdoor, clinician salaries can start at $70,000 and go well into six figures. Full-time therapists are required to see 25 patients per week. Full time employees get 15 vacation days in their first year and 20 days each year after that, plus 11 company holidays, sick and bereavement leave and parental leave. Additionally medical, dental, and vision insurance and free One Medical Memberships for employees and their families, stock options, 401(k) and work from home support.

The Review 

Octave is a growing practice, but not growing so fast that they’re stuck chasing KPIs.

Facebook Pixel is installed on their marketing website and on their my.findoctave.com onboarding screen where users are asked for personal information. Pixel appears to be tracking Page View, ViewContent, and Button Clicks.When it comes to PHI, Octave clearly states they will not use your data for marketing purposes and will not sell your data. According to reviews, Octave seems to have great therapists. However, it appears they’re still figuring out things when it comes to billing insurance.

Open Mind Health (openmindhealth.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Open Mind Health is a mental health practice that offers virtual visits. The practice accepts a number of insurances and offers cash pay services. Open Mind is clinician-founded, director to client and is moving into the B2B space. Currently, the operate in both the West (CA, WA, ID) and the East (SC). Open Mind also offers nutritionists treatment options.

They have not raised external funding but are currently looking for investors.

What's their mission? 

Open Mind's team works to get to the root cause of what's actually causing the pain and does not believe in band-aids or one size fits all solutions. Open Mind wants to create an individual and holistic plan informed by your life experiences.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Open Mind was founded by Dr. Craig Beach. Prior to founding Open Mind, Dr. Beach was the lead psychiatrist for the County of San Diego. He also worked for nearly a decade as a consultant to the Canadian Mental Health Association and as a forensic psychiatrist at two different Canadian organizations.

Open Mind's leadership team includes a number of other experienced mental health professionals.

What's the business model? How does this company make money?  

Open Mind accepts a number of insurances and offers cash pay visits at a rate of $125 per hour.

Accepted insurances include, Kaiser, United Healthcare, Optum, Aetna, UMR, Blue California, ComPsych, TriCare, Humana, Cigna.

What does one get for paying that price? 

To get started with Open Mind, you'll complete an assessment and book an introduction appointment with your provider. in the first session, you'll create a customized plan that could be a mixture of therapy, med mgmt, and nutrition. According to Open Mind's scheduling tool they do have same week availability.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Open Mind does not require subscriptions and does not have an FAQ for cancellation policy.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Open Mind's clinicians are 1099 and are paid $60-$85 per session. Open Mind has a very intentional recruiting focus on creating a team from diverse backgrounds and life experiences to optimize client-provider fit.

The Review 

Open Mind is a fast growing and clinician led practice. Their combination of affordable client offerings and decent pay relative to other startups makes them an attractive option. Open Mind has a very impressive array of clinicians for how large their team is. From psychiatrists to social workers, nutritionists, pain management specialists, and more. Open Mind is a great option if you're looking for a team truly capable of assessing a person as a whole.

Open Mind opened in March of 2021 and thus has minimal reviews.

Their terms of use and privacy policy are strictly in relation to their marketing website. Facebook Pixel is not installed on Open Mind Health's website.

SonderMind (sondermind.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Sondermind is a mental health company founded in 2015 by providing in-person and virtual therapy. Sondermind does accept many forms of insurance. SonderMind has raised more than $180 million dollars and last raised a round of $150 million in Summer of 2021.

What's their mission? 

Sondermind is on a mission to redesign behavioral healthcare by improving, access, utilization, and outcomes. They have six core values which are bucketworthiness, empathy, transparency, courage, ownership, and passion.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Sondermind was co-founded by Mark Frank and Sean Boyd. Mark Frank has a long career in healthcare and finance. Prior to founding SonderMind, Mark was a partner at an investment firm, co-founder of SafeImageMD which helped healthcare securely store and share medical imaging data, and founded Next Oncology and Term Scout. Mark was also a Captain in the US Army. Sean Boyd cofounded SonderMind alongside Mark but quickly went on to found Humanly in 2017. Sean was Sondermind’s first CEO. Sean was a counselor in the state of Colorado before eventually serving as Executive Director of the Colorado Counseling Association.

SonderMind's top mental health clinician is Chief Medical Officer and psychiatrist Douglas Newton. SonderMind's Director of Clinical strategy is Wendy Rasmussen PhD. who is a former Clinical Psychologist in the US Navy.

What's the business model? How does this company make money?  

SonderMind’s pricing depends for clients because they fortunately accept insurance. They’re also an EAP service so some employees may get a limited number of sessions for no cost.

What does one get for paying that price? 

SonderMind asks you some matching questions and then pairs you with a therapist in 24-48 hours. According to their site, many clients see improvements in as little as six sessions. SonderMind is also slightly unique this mental health startup space as they provide in-person services as well.

What is the cancellation policy? 

SonderMind is not a subscription service and thus their cancellation policy for appointments is at least 24 hours of notice.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

SonderMind therapists appear to be 1099 based on the fact there are zero minimum requirements for client volume. SonderMind does pay identical rates for in person vs virtual sessions. SonderMind therapists also get access to SonderMind’s suite of software tools. According to a therapist in Colorado on Indeed, thanks to their recent pay bump a therapist can make 6 figures seeing 22 clients per week. There are some qualms about technical frustrations but it appears to be a case-by-case basis and not a widespread issue.

The Review 

SonderMind appears to be branding themselves more as a hybrid practice than a strictly virtual mental health startup. The arrangements with therapists are more like BetterHelp or Talkspace (1099)  than a Lifestance (W2). According to reviews by therapists, many are very happy with the pay; however, some seem to have trouble getting referrals. The fact that the pay is the same for in-person or virtual sessions is great to see. They don’t force clinicians to work a higher number of hours to earn more than some other organizations. SonderMind doesn’t guarantee clinicians will actually be a match for clients. When it comes to privacy, SonderMind is providing therapy and they’re legally required to be HIPAA compliant. They very clearly state on their site that no virtual sessions are recorded. When it comes to tracking site usage, SonderMind does use Facebook Pixel both on its marketing website and even during the matchmaking survey questions. Facebook automatically detects each button selection during the process such as your location, why you’re seeking therapy, and more. They promise in their privacy to never sell your health information. Overall, SonderMind appears to have things pretty in order which could be a reason for their growing popularity among therapists. However, their app store reviews tell a different story. There are a number of disgruntled patients sharing stories of technical and billing frustrations. The app has a 2.1 rating out of 5 with a number of complaints about their customer support. 

Talkspace (talkspace.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Talkspace is a national network of W2 and 1099 mental health providers providing virtual mental health care. While Talkspace does have what’s referred to as a direct to consumer offering, their primary business is working with employers as an employee assistance program. In most EAPs, companies pay a small fee per employee to give employees access to wellness and other offerings. Talkspace raised just over $100 million in its lifetime before going public via SPAC in 2021. Going public helped Talkspace raise an additional $250 million in cash.

What's their mission? 

With much of the B2C market controlled by BetterHelp, Cerebral, and mental wellness apps, Talkspace has made the B2B move of increasing access to mental health resources by partnering with companies to provide Talkspace as an employee benefit.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Talkspace was founded by the married Oren and Roni Frank in 2012. Before Talkspace, Oren was Chief Creative Officer and writer in the marketing industry. Before Talkspace, Roni was a software developer. Oren went on to be CEO for a while Roni was Head of Clinical Services. Oren is now working on a stealth startup called &Daughters.

Talkspace's Chief Medical Officer is Varun Choudhary who has been an assistant professor at VCU and the National Behavioral Health CMO at Magellan Health.

What's the business model? How does this company make money?  

Talkspace provides services as an EAP which provides employees the benefits of access to Talkspace. Talkspace also offers services directly to consumers and depending on your needs costs $65 to $100 per week. You can currently get $100 with code SPACE on their website.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Talkspace asks you some matching questions and then pairs you with a therapist within 48 hours. Talkspace offers individual, couples, teens, and psychiatry appointments.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Talkspace does not require long-term contracts and you can cancel anytime.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

W2 Compensation is not listed but it does come with medical, dental, and vision plans. A 401K with 4% match, PTO and company paid holidays, free access to Talkspace and Lasting products.

1099 Compensation below

Talkspace has their pay listed directly on the site. 

• 30 minute session: $34.50
• 45 minute session: $50.93
• 60 minute session: $67.90

Monthly bonus for long term active clients on caseload for 60+ days

• 5 - $100
• 10 - $200
• 20 - $500
• 30 - $1,000
• 40 - $2,000
• 50 - $2,500
• 75 - $5,000

Messaging sessions, $24-$26.92 per session. 1099 therapists are not required to maintain a specific caseload. W2 therapists are required to maintain a caseload of at least 30 billable hours per week

The Review 

 Overall Talkspace has increased access to mental health through working with employers to provide a limited number of sessions at no cost to the employee. On the therapist front, multiple reports have come out that Talkspace greatly underpays therapists. They did recently raise compensation 20% for contracted therapists, the new numbers are represented above. Talkspace is currently valued at less than $280 million dollars after going public at a valuation 5 times that amount. In their most recent earnings, Talkspace did acknowledge their gross profit was down due to the higher cost of salaried therapists.

In the privacy policy, Talkspace does say they are both HIPAA and HITECH compliant. The important thing when reviewing mental health platforms that provide actual therapy is the difference between privacy policy and notice of privacy practices. Most often patients and therapists will want to review the notice of privacy practices to see what policies apply to the health information. The current Notice of Privacy Practices doesn’t bring up red flags. There are a couple questions like who is their Business Associates and what research is being conducted with the information; however, both of those are common in Notice of Privacy Practices. Note, a Notice of Privacy Practices, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Use are all legal documents so they will all say things like they must do things in accordance with law. These are not red flags. While Talkspace does have Facebook Pixel on their marketing website, it does NOT appear that Pixel is used once you initiate the sign-up or log-in process.

Two Chairs (twochairs.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Founded in 2016, Two Chairs is a modern psychotherapy practice for adults based on the west coast, currently serving clients in California and Washington. Two Chairs is a hybrid practice and offers both in-person and virtual services. Two Chairs is in-network with Kaiser North California and Washington.

What's their mission? 

Two Chairs is on a mission to expand access to exceptional health care.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Two Chairs was founded by Alex Katz. Alex named it Two Chairs to that to base it on the foundation of therapy, and the incredible importance of the relationship between client and therapist. Prior to founding Two Chairs, Alex was a deployment and enterprise lead at Palantir. Before Palantir, Alex was an analyst at Mckinsey.

What's the business model? How does this company make money?  

Outside of Kaiser as we mentioned above, Two Chairs is largely a cash pay practice. Your matching appointment is $179 and regular sessions are $205 for 50-minute biweekly sessions.

What does one get for paying that price? 

One of Two Chairs main value propositions is connecting you with the right therapist and if they can't then they refund your matching appointment. The matching appointment connects you with a licensed matchmaker to learn about your needs and goals for therapy. Your ongoing sessions can be virtual or in-person. They'll also help you switch therapists if needed at no cost.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Two Chairs will refund your matching appointment if a good match can't be made. 98% of the time they get it right on the first try.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Full-time therapists at Two Chairs are only required 25 hours of clinical work per week and they offer full-time, part-time, and fully remote roles. Two Chairs gives therapists the flexibility of setting their own hours between 8am and 7pm. Two Chairs offers PTO and a closed office from the Christmas holiday through the new year. 

Full time clinicians are offered medical, dental vision, PTO, learning stipend, annual company contributions to healthcare FSA, malpractice insurance, license renewal reimbursement, and paid parental leave. According to Glassdoor, clinicians can expect to earn approximately $90,000-$100,000 and it can go up from there. Clinical Psychologist roles report much higher salaries on Glassdoor.

The Review 

 Overall Two Chairs appears to be doing everything right on the outside. They've got great benefits and decent pay compared to other mental health companies. Their emphasis on the client-clinician match solves a big pain point. With so many people feeling like they're ghosted by therapists now, Two Chairs marketing they are matching you with a therapist and helping you understand out of network benefits goes a long way.

Also impressively, Two Chairs does not appear to have Facebook Pixel installed. Their website privacy policy is extremely bare. It says something about what they will do but nothing about what they won't do. Be on notice for consents as they state with your permission they can sell your information.

Multiple Offerings

Headspace Health (headspacehealth.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Headspace Health is the culmination of Headspace and Ginger merging in 2021 to form a $3 billion health company. While Headspace had grown to be a successful mindfulness and meditation app, Ginger was a growing on-demand mental health care company. Today the two companies operate under the Headspace Health umbrella. The Headspace app can still be used and purchased right from the app store, or it can come alongside Ginger in an EAP offering.

What's their mission? 

Headspace Health is on a mission to help us be kinder to our minds. Ginger's mission is to reinvent mental health by coupling data science and virtual delivery to provide immediate support to everyone.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Headspace was started by Andy Puddicombe and Rich Pierson. Andy had extensive with meditation, traveled to the Himalayas to study meditation, and was ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist Monk in Northern India. Andy met Rich at Andy's meditation clinic when rich was burnt out from his ad agency job. Ginger on the other hand was founded in an MIT Media Lab in 2011 by a team of entrepreneurs and data scientists. One cofounder is Karan Singh. Before founding Ginger Karan worked at Humedica and as a consultant at ZS Associates.

Today, the top clinician at Headspace Health is Dana Udall who is a licensed psychologist and PhD. Before Headspace, Dana had experience in a variety of roles across treatment centers, IOP programs, universities, and private practice.

What's the business model? How does this company make money?  

Headspace Health is offered as an EAP to companies. Headspace the app offers 14 days free before becoming $12.99 monthly or $69.99 for the year.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Headspace's app offers a huge library of meditation guides, to mindfulness content that may be helpful when trying to sleep, focus, or get on the move. Headspace does a number of collaborations with sports stars to brands like Star Wars. Ginger also offers care at a variety of levels from guides, to mental health coaches, therapists, and psychiatrists. Ginger also emphasizes their around-the-clock availability of mental health coaches. They state 76% of members have used Ginger outside of 9-5.

What is the cancellation policy? 

The EAP offering comes with your employer and may be lost if you leave your current employer. If you purchase the app directly you can cancel at any time but you may have prepaid for a year of access. You can not cancel for a refund in the middle of a billing cycle.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Ginger offers both contracted and full-time clinical roles. Ginger offers flexible time off, paid parental leave, and a monthly wellness stipend.

The Review 

Overall Headspace Health is probably one of the longer-running mental wellness companies that have continually found ways to grow, find new swim lanes, and continue to effectively operate. The Headspace and Ginger merger helped both companies continue their mission and Headspace Health formed a much stronger B2B offering. According to a number of Glassdoor reviews, Ginger has a very supportive culture. In fact, a therapist reported in April that the salary, benefits, and culture were great. The salaries reported to Glassdoor aren't quite as high as I expected for that comment. However, the contracted roles reported quite a high total pay. It looks like therapists can expect to earn $60,000-$100,000 depending on license, experience, and location. On the other hand, Headspace appears to be having a more difficult time adjusting to the merger. Headspace's CEO has a 55% approval rating - keep that in mind when you get to Modern Health. Similar to Ginger, even with the confusion with the merger, it seems everyone agrees at Headspace Health you're working in a supportive culture and a company that cares about you.

The Headspace app is more focused on meditation and wellness than mental health services, so there's not nearly the same data as some of the other platforms. However, Headspace can use your data to serve advertisements to you on Google and Facebook. Ginger is handling the sensitive information and their Notice of Privacy Practices is pretty impressive, with an extensive explanation of how data may be used for research.

Lyra Health (lyrahealth.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Founded in 2015, Lyra Health is an employee assistance program that provides mental health support to employers. They do not have a direct to client offering. According to their site, they get 10X utilization compared to other EAPs and 88% of members improve with care. Lyra Health has raised a total of $350 million and last raised $235 million at a valuation of just over $5.5 billion dollars.

What's their mission? 

Lyra’s mission is to provide life-changing care for people and transformative value for your business. In a world where billions of dollars are lost in productivity due to mental health struggles, Lyra Health is on a big mission.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Lyra Health was co-founded by David Ebersman. Prior to founding Lyra Health, David was CFO at Facebook for five years and prior to that CFO at Genetech a biotech research company. Lyra does have a clinician as COO, Connie Chen MD. Connie is a board-certified internal medicine physician. It does not appear that Lyra has any mental health clinicians on their executive team.

Cofounder Dena Bravata MD, is no longer with Lyra and left back in 2016. She has since served on the board or as an advisor at a number of health startups.

What's the business model? How does this company make money?  

Lyra Health is an EAP and is offered at no cost to members. Lyra charges employers based on utilization.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Lyra Health is an EAP and thus provides services to employees at no cost. Lyra is partnered with companies like Zoom, Starbucks, Twilio, and Morgan Stanley. Lyra says 97% of members are less than 20 miles from a Lyra in person provider. Lyra has several options for employees. First, family care means care is available for adults, couples, and kids aged 2+. For preventative care, Lyra has self-guided lessons and evidence-based coaching. Lyra not only offers therapy but medication management and substance use programs.

Lyra also offers manager consultations, crisis incident support, legal support, financial services, and ID theft support.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Lyra Health is not a subscription service thus clients can stop anytime

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Lyra Health claims to have a network of 100% evidence based provider network made up of 4,500 providers. Lyra has therapists, coaches, and physicians. For therapists, Lyra offers compensation for in-session and administrative time. Benefits include 401K, equity options, tech stipend, and medical, dental, and vision.” Their PTO includes vacation, sick leave, and holidays. They also offer free CEO training and license renewal reimbursement.

According to Indeed reviews, there is not a 401K match and 5 paid sick days are offered per year. Pay seems to be moderate with reviews on both sides “good pay” and “pay could be higher.”

The Review 

 

Lyra Health has exploded as an EAP offering and is working with many of the tech sector's leading companies of the past years. With decent compensation, benefits, and moderate pay, it’s not a bad option for clinicians. With numerous case studies, Lyra appears to be a very data driven healthcare organizatin and focused on improving clinical outcomes. 88% of members improve with care. Lyra provides healthcare and is thus bound to HIPAA. Since their marketing website is geared toward employers, it’s not surprising they use Facebook Pixel, and not really worrisome either. If an employer allows it, Lyra can use or share your data for research purposes. Their description here is extremely broad and doesn’t clarify the types of organizations it could be shared with. Lyra may record your sessions unless you object at the time of your interaction. Lyra also puts the responsibility on individual providers and does not claim responsibility for the services they provide. 

Modern Health (modernhealth.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Modern Health is a modern mental health EAP company founded in 2017. Modern Health last raised $74 million Series D at a valuation of just over $1.1 billion dollars. Modern Health offers courses and meditations, mental health coaches, and licensed therapists.

What's their mission? 

Modern Health is on a mission to destigmatize mental health, remove barriers to care and provide proactive support AND clinical support when needed.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Modern Health was founded by Alyson Watson. Prior to founding Modern Health, Alyson worked in Operations at Collective Health and Keas. Collective Health is a tech company that creates products to help other companies better take care of their people. Keas was acquired by Welltok. Keas was an engagement platform that used gamified experiences to incentivize health habits. The VP of Clinical Care at Modern Health is Myra Altman Ph.D. who has advanced several times during her career at Modern Health and has practiced as a licensed psychologist.

Note: Modern Health did have an additional co-founder who was fired by Alyson for performance reasons. The co-founder, Erica Johnson, in turn tried to sue Modern Health claiming wrongdoing.

What's the business model? How does this company make money?  

Modern Health is an EAP and earns revenue by working with over 300 companies globally.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Employees of companies that Modern Health partners with get a variety of mental health benefits. Modern Health uses validated clinical assessments to determine the best type of care for employees. Modern Health offers self-gudied courses, mental health coaching, and live therapy. In addition to these, Modern health offers it's own version of group support facilitated by Modern Health therapists and coaches. in fact, 81% of Modern Health members engaged in sub-clinical care as preventative measures.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Modern Health is offered through your employer. You may lose access if you leave your company, are laid off, or fired.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

It does not appear that clinicians are employed by Modern Health. Similar to other companies in this space, applying to be a provider is in an entirely different section of the site than careers. Modern Health offers community events for clinicians and coaches to discuss case consultations and ongoing learning opportunities.

The Review 

 Alyson Watson has an astounding 98% approval on Glassdoor, much higher than many other CEOs in this space. Many online reviews talk about the hypergrowth environment of working in a startup; however, they do NOT state that it has resulted in a loss in quality of care.  Most reviews are very positive. Being as clinicians are contracted, Modern Health's terms make it very clear that any provider/patient relationship is directly between the provider and patient. The way the terms are worded, Modern Health helps facilitate the introduction but then stops there. Any provider/patient relationship is established separately from Modern Health.

Modern Health is very clear they do not sell any information. Their privacy policy and practices are not boilerplate and even call out specifics like using data for research must be approved by a committee.

Spring Health (springhealth.com) 

What is the company? How much have they raised to date?

Spring Health was founded in the Spring of 2016 and is an EAP mental health offering. Spring offers a combination of therapy, digital CBT exercises, and consulting. Spring Health goes beyond mental health services and offers company training and programming, work-life services, legal and financial services, and critical incident support. Spring has raised over $300 million to date at a valuation north of $2 billion dollars.

What's their mission? 

Spring Health’s mission is to help individuals and organizations thrive by eliminating every barrier to mental healthcare.

Who founded the company? Are their clinicians on the executive team? 

Spring was founded in 2016 by April Koh and Adam Chekroud. Before starting Spring Health, April founded Spylight and was their Chief Product Officer. The company was eventually shut down by the founders. April then briefly worked at Shazam before starting Spring Health. According to a ProductHunt profile, Spylight helped consumer purchase what was displayed in your content, for example clothing. Adam is currently the President of Spring Health. At Yale, Adam received a Master of Philosophy in Clinical Neuroscience and Ph.D. in Psychology/Neuroscience. Adam does have two related works published. Adam held a mixture of finance and research-related positions before founding Spring Health.

What's the business model? How does this company make money?  

As an EAP, Spring Health does not directly charge end users. According to a Forbes article, Koh was quoted saying companies can expect to pay $100 to $150 per employee per year.

What does one get for paying that price? 

Quite a lot. Yes, Spring offers mental healthcare, therapy, and med management, but they offer a whole lot more. They offer custom programming to discuss leadership, diversity, and inclusions, and destigmatizing mental health at work. Under work-life services, they list elder care, travel resources, pet care, child care, education, and more. Legal services include divorce/custody, criminal, real estate, bankruptcy, and more. Financial services include budgeting, home buying, life event planning, credit card debt, and more.

What is the cancellation policy? 

Like other EAP offerings, this is offered through an employer. If you retire, get laid off, or are fired, you may lose access to Spring Health.

If applicable, what are the pay/benefits for therapists? 

Spring Health does not appear to have minimum requirements for its clinical network. Spring Health gives clinicians access to their suite of admin and AI tools. According to online reviews, therapists seem to be satisfied with the rate for sessions.

The Review 

 Spring Health is one of the fastest growing EAP programs and it’s no wonder based on the number of services they provide. With that being said, the culture, according to Glassdoor, sounds like a typical startup. There’s a mixture of reviews around micromanagement, average pay, and decent benefits. Much of the sales team seems satisfied while the technical team is more of a mix. As far as therapists, there are not a ton of reviews, but it appears the therapists that have discussed Spring Health were satisfied with their experience. 

Spring Health is the first privacy policy I’ve seen to call out that they haven’t sold any data in the past twelve months. The fact they called out in the past twelve months makes me question whether they’ve sold data more than 12 months ago. Spring Health does have Facebook Pixel on their marketing site to employers which is not worrisome. They do NOT have Facebook Pixel on their care.springhealth.com domain where users sign up or sign in. They do have a Notice of Privacy Practices and their compliance with HIPAA.

On the Apple App store, the app has a score of 2.7 out of 5 out of 27 reviews at the time of writing this. Many reviews state the app’s not production ready. There are actually more 1-star reviews than 5-star reviews. With their size and growth, 27 reviews is an incredibly small sample size.

Thank you

If you've read this far, you can also find a dedicated page for each company on our blog site. Feel free to make comments, leave us a note, or send an email to hello@forhaley.com. 

Future additions to the blog will include more details on therapy modalities, outcomes, and more.