Social Impact Tech: Adam Lippin of HearMe App On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact

The HearMe App is aiming to solve loneliness and a sense of disconnection, relooking at the mental wellness landscape. We want to create opportunities for connection.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Adam Lippin.

HearMe is an on-demand emotional wellness app that connects members to trained volunteer listeners for instantaneous text chat, anytime and anywhere. With thousands of empathetic listeners across the globe, HearMe helps you find support, release stress, and feel better through one-on-one peer support. With strong foundational principles as their guiding force, HearMe’s diverse community of dedicated and trained listeners creates a sustainable peer support network that offers wide-ranging benefits for both those receiving the support and listeners themselves. There aren’t many opportunities for authentic connection in daily life; HearMe makes these connections possible whenever you need them.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up in a working-class town called Ossining, New York, which i’s a river town and home to Sing Sing prison. Although we were 26 miles from Manhattan, the people I grew up with might as well have been 1000 miles away from Manhattan. Ossining is in Westchester but not a part of Westchester if that makes sense. My mom was a teacher and my dad had a store similar to 7-eleven, a mom-and-pop shop/convenience store that possibly wouldn’t exist nowadays. I came to the realization about my sexuality when I was in middle school, but I didn’t have the courage to come out and tell anyone about it at the time. Instead, I covered my true self up and pretended to be someone that I was not. Hiding my true self was the most painful experience that I’ve been through, but I was terrified to be found out. And so, I continued to force myself to “fit in” — act, dress, and behave in a certain way — to be as “normal” as possible in the eyes of friends, family, and society at large. This is perhaps the most familiar recount of many LGBTQ+ individuals. For those of us who struggled with acceptance, staying in the closet meant not being judged, teased, bullied, or hated for who we really are.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Since I started the company, we now have 25 employees. And because I’ve been so open with my story, people really share with me what they are going through and I get to see a window that a typical employer wouldn’t get to see and because of that the value alignment and the humanity reaches another level. I feel so much closer with the people that I work with, I create a unique connection because we know each other’s stories in a different way. As we are all multi-dimensional beings and because of the company’s mission and values, people feel comfortable sharing stories. It’s been an incredible and inspiring privilege to be able to hear, hold, share with and learn about people on this deeper level.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’ve had so many different people who have influenced me. In my first job as a Commercial Real Estate Broker, my first job in the City, I had a boss called Barry Gosin at a Real Estate Company called Newmark Group. Barry taught me a valuable lesson, he would ask you something and if you weren’t focusing on the answer, he would keep doing what he was doing and let you keep on talking. He taught me not to be fake because people don’t have time for nonsense. It’s ok to not know what you are doing, just don’t pretend like you do. If it means enough to you you’ll figure it out. He never directly said this lesson but throughout the years, I understood that this is what he was saying–no patience for excuses, be clear in your communication. Honesty in communication was the takeaway, it corresponds to my whole life trying to whizzle out of drugs, alcohol, and into meditation; you need to go through it. I created barriers in my relationship with Barry because of all these excuses.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“We are the survivor of the nurtured, not the survival of the fittest.” We need to be there for each other and all of this hardness has cursed into our culture and made people very unhappy.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Perseverance — In my first business, Atomic Wings, we ran a kitchen and a bar in UES Manhattan, and on a Thursday night at 2 am one of the cashiers said to me, “I can’t deal with these people, they’re such idiots”. And I said “you’re in a kitchen and a bar that is open at 2 am selling chicken wings, who do you think is coming at this time? You’re getting upset over the obvious.” We have a choice every moment of understanding what is in our control and what isn’t. There is not a day where I don’t feel a little punch in the gut and the key is to stop and think about how do I work around it to find a solution? I have come to the conclusion that the answer is creative thinking and understanding that frustrations and setbacks are a natural part of the process.

Realism — Keeping a positive mindset to understand that things are hard, it is the natural order of life, and it’s called work for a reason. There is an internal locus of control and an external locus of control. From a very early age, I have focused on the internal locus. I assimilated that I can’t control anybody or anything, but I can control my reaction to things.

Knowing that you don’t know everything — there will always be things that I don’t know, and instead of feeling bad about it, find people that have different skill sets. It’s ok to not be the smartest person in the room when you are trying to build a new company and a new team because you will otherwise have nothing to learn. As the Buddhists call it, you need to have a beginner’s mind, always open to ideas and other people because otherwise there is no point, you will stop learning.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our society. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?

The HearMe App is aiming to solve loneliness and a sense of disconnection, relooking at the mental wellness landscape. We want to create opportunities for connection. Loneliness is a major health crisis, according to Dr. Vivek Murty, worse than smoking 15 cigarettes a day and obesity. It leads to all kinds of negative health and behavioral outcomes and if we can begin to tackle loneliness, we can begin to address one of society’s major problems. In order to do that, we need to join all of our experiences. We can finally rethink how we take care of ourselves as a community and as a world to bring more empathy, compassion, and kindness in order to bring all of us together so people can feel empowered supporting other people, and people can feel worthy of getting the support that they need creating a victorious cycle.

How do you think your technology can address this?

By allowing instant connections with someone that has the desire to be heard, seen, and validated as a human with someone that is available to do that for them in real-time. Seamlessly, without the stigma and cost of the conflicting nature of clinical support. HearMe addresses the everyday, clinical concerns or issues of life that we all have.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

My own loneliness and sense of disconnection, growing up knowing I was gay and it was not safe to talk about it. I remember wishing I had someone to share it with and not have to hide. This didn’t allow me to get close to people because you can’t get close to people unless you’re honest with people and I felt like being honest wasn’t an option. I knew that therapy was a non-reality. I also knew I didn’t need therapy, there was nothing inherently wrong with me, I just needed connection, and not having connection shut me down. I am not that unique, if I’m feeling this, other people are feeling this too and I want to address this.

How do you think this might change the world?

Empathy and kindness can change everything. If you have clinical issues, hopefully, you have access to get them clinically addressed. A lot of our struggles come from not being seen or validated, not being able to share what we’re going through, and having no access to do that in a psychologically safe or protected way. We are going to be judged regardless. If you have a lot of people around you there is judgment, and if you don’t have anyone around you then loneliness comes into play. Having someone to share with is the most important aid that most of us need, it gives us air, a sense of community and we are communal people, we don’t do well alone, that’s why prisons have solitary confinement as a punishment. This is the worst thing you can do to someone. We have an innate desire and need for community, it shouldn’t be just for lucky people, it should be accessible for all of us because if you don’t have that and you hold everything in, you may start to choke, your blood pressure goes up, you may get all the negative physiological effects of loneliness or you start to close your world, even more, it’s a negative cycle.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

We are taking the original concepts of the early days of the internet where there were chat rooms that would bring people with a common interest together, fans of a particular topic. We are using technology to solve problems that technology created. We use technology to address human issues and we take what is good about social media — the connection and community it can foster without all the negatives, which is everything else.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)

Sense of proportion in history — For example, if you are a gay kid, you don’t have an understanding of gay history, of who was there before you, and what is your responsibility as a gay kid. So many people come into technology with a very narrow viewpoint.

Not focusing solemnly on a business standpoint — People entering technology are concentrated on NFTs, on what’s new and what’s hot and making money, but are not paying attention to “what can happen”.

Understand the consequences of technology — There needs to be a social conscience that is brought into this world of technology otherwise we find ourselves in the situation that we’re in. It’s been documented how teenage girls feel about their bodies based on Instagram and this is common knowledge. People that are in the technology space, because of its potential hazards need to not have that moral abotomy, they have an obligation to do that. The problem is a lot of them don’t and it creates all these problems that we then have to figure out how to create solutions for.

How does your humanity come into your business — Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do it, where does your humanity come into the situation? So much of technology can be good if you use it for good and so much of technology can be bad. If half of the energy that went into creating gaming would go into solving these issues, all these brilliant people would be making a difference. The focus should be on how do you take this capital and dedicate it to being a decent human being?

Accept your responsibility — It’s fun to get swept in, it’s a herd mentality, it is what it is, it brings capital in areas that could be beneficial but if you’re playing with technology you have a responsibility. Just like if you are a teacher you have a responsibility to your students. Be really careful, go into it understanding the potential liability of what you’re doing. It makes me think of Ralph Nader who was one of the first people to go after capitalism and tell car companies that they have a responsibility to make sure that the cars don’t kill people. He said, “Not everyone who works above the 17th floor necessarily has to have a moral abotomy”, that always stuck with me because I love the concept of business and scaling and growing and I find it challenging. I hopefully have a skill in it but I also have always had that social-political Buddhist thing in me. How do you create businesses that are socially responsible and still profit-making business? I wanted to start by climbing up a private sector solution to a public health crisis, that’s what I wanted to do, I didn’t want to start another non-profit, they are wonderful but that is not me.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

If you can lend a helping hand, a helping hand will be lent to you. That is also the concept of HearMe, the listeners take as much out of the conversations as the people reaching out to the listeners.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

I know it sounds crazy but, Yoko Ono, I used to have a fascination with Yoko Ono.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

They can download the HearMe App and find out more about it here.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.

About the Interviewer: Jilea Hemmings is a staunch believer in the power of entrepreneurship. A successful career revamping Fortune 500 companies was not enough for her entrepreneurial spirit, so Jilea began focusing her passion in startups. She has successfully built 6 startups to date. Her passion for entrepreneurship continues to flourish with the development of Stretchy Hair Care, focusing on relieving the pain associated with detangling and styling natural black hair. For far too long, people with tender heads have suffered in pain. Until now.