Heimo — Teaser & Pitch deck

Heimo is the anonymous & safe online community for life challenges. We use crowdsourcing and peer-to-peer model to solve the problem of mental health issues by allowing ordinary people to help each others and get support emotionally.

Download teaser (PDF)
Download pitch deck (PDF)

What Heimo aims to solve?

There are billions of stories that are never told. Stories that are too hard to tell or there is no-one who would listen or understand. Shame and stigma are huge problems causing mental health issues. According to WHO, 30% of the population worldwide will have some form of mental disorder at some point of their life. 66% of those people receive no treatment. Massive and untapped market.

In the Southeast Asia, mental health has been a low priority. There are massive workforce deficiencies: for example, in the Philippines there are only 900 psychologists for population of 100 million inhabitants.

Firstly, since there is shortage of mental health professionals in Southeast Asia as well as in many other Asian countries, the official healthcare system cannot provide emotional support for all of those, who need help. Secondly, counseling services (face-to-face psychotherapy) aren’t affordable for people living under $5 dollars a day.

Our solution

Heimo is an anonymous & safe online community for depression and other life challenges. On Heimo you can share your stories without judgement and shame with people who have experienced the same challenges. We use crowdsourcing and peer-to-peer model to solve the problem of mental health issues by allowing ordinary people to get support and help one another emotionally without shame and losing dignity.

Mental health problems are one of the biggest health challenges in the world. Now, it’s the era of peer-to-peer economics where ordinary people offer and receive services from others on a platform. On Heimo, the concept of peer-to-peer is applied in the context of mental health and well-being. In our view, this is probably the only viable solution to provide help to large populations of people with mental issues.

Our ultimate mission is to prevent depression becoming the biggest disease in the world by 2030.

Why does Heimo have the potential to be better than other ways of addressing the challenge ?

What is unique about Heimo, is that we address problems that some other social networks have created such as loneliness, feeling of unworthiness, depression or cyberbullying. Heimo is anonymous, safe platform with no harassment, where emotional help is just one click away.

Heimo is made for peer support unlike other network services available today. Heimo platform can ward off the negativity and the online abuse so common in other bigger sites as the current crop of users is very engaged, leaving little room for vitriolic online behavior.

Also, it’s unique design and story sharing capabilities makes Heimo a truly a superior service on social media space.

What progress have you made so far?

For the past 6 months, we have been piloting in different market areas and looking for our market fit. During our marketing pilot (duration 6 months) we have had 60.000 unique users mainly from Southeast Asia (Philippines, Indonesia). Now we focus on continuing the rapid user growth in this geographic area. We have also improved the features of the platform in collaboration with the active users that have resulted increased conversion rate from 6.8% up to 22%. Over 60.000 stories have been written and Heimo has been featured on major medias in the Philippines.

Potential to Scale

We are looking to have more than a million users by the end of 2018 and 2020 23 million users. We have already allowed thousands of people to receive emotional support by connecting them with one another in short period.

To scale up, we have cooperated with several organizations on joint ventures in Europe as well as gained publicity by news media in the Philippines. For that we need to hire more personnel in Finland and in Southeast Asia. Key roles consist of developers, community managers and designers. Large emphasis will be placed on digital marketing and also cooperating with internet influencers. Plans to scale up:

1) Marketing via influencers, NGO’s and media partners: By influencer’ we mean an individual that has large number of followers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or another social media channel. Partnering with media (joint venture campaign, media for equity).

2) Digital marketing on social media channels: 30% of our new visitors converts to registered users.

3) Our users as brand ambassadors: Sharable content and mission. Our users already spread the word of Heimo on social media and creating viral effect. Important in organic growth.

4) Hiring local community managers. A team of local (Southeast Asia) employees communicating with users (launching campaigns, contests).

5) SEO. Most of the stories are public and covers the most common wellbeing keywords

Business Model

Heimo is a free community, members can share stories and connect with one another for free. In our coming freemium model, users can get valuable personal support from Peer Mentors via private chat. Mentors are regular people, peers, who can give emotional support. People who need emotional guidance and somebody trustful to talk with online, pays 5- 10€ monthly fee to talk safely with such a mentor. Heimo connects people with mentors and takes 20% commission. Peer mentor helps and makes money. However, the freemium model and the willingness to pay should be properly tested (we have currently asked our users via surveys about their willingness to pay with promising results).

Investment ask

We are looking for 0,5 million Euro in order to make the change happen and continue growth in East and Southeast Asia. This is our step to reach 23 Million monthly users and make it 83 Million Euro business in 4 years.

Key team members

Jarno Alastalo
CEO, Co-Founder
Jarno has over 15 years of experience in creating social media services and has been leading one of the largest social media services in Scandinavia called Suomi24.
LinkedIn

Jari Jaanto
CTO, Co-Founder
He has been awarded as the best Finnish programmer (2015) and is a co-founder of IRC-Galleria, which was the biggest youth social media in Finland with 1,5M MAU. He has been an entrepreneur since 2003 and held positions from programmer to CEO.
LinkedIn

Johannes Hovi
Psychologist, Co-Founder
Co-Owner on three growth companies in the field of Data Management, Healthcare and Social Networks. He has also been a researcher in the University of Jyväskylä.
LinkedIn

Johanna Vilmi
Psychologist, Co-Founder
Johanna has worked as a psychologist with children, youngsters and young adults.
LinkedIn

Contact for more information:

Jarno Alastalo
CEO
+358 400 727 373
jarno@heimo.co