Masawa Minute 53
What’s the potential in 2022? | Limited Investment Opportunity | + More!
This is the Masawa Minute — mental wellness, social impact, and impact investing snippets from what we’ve read the last two weeks + where you can get active.
Happy New Year! We’re still riding the wave of excitement for new beginnings and are thrilled to see what opportunities for growth and positive impact 2022 might hold. Naturally, this newsletter reflects that — it’s all about the latest trends, innovations, and ideas that could shape the next twelve months. Enjoy!
Masawa Thoughts
New year, new you? Naa, you’re still the same person, just a reframing in the brain about getting back on track.
Looking back, 2021 was indeed a year, one for which we’re incredibly grateful, especially to the emerging community of mental wellness enthusiasts, innovators, and investors who are on this journey with us to make a lasting impact for all. For 2022, we’re focused on building out and strengthening our community and offering more diverse opportunities to take part and get involved.
The first concrete action in this regard is offering you, our community, the unique limited opportunity to invest alongside Masawa in an exciting startup, “not less but better”, that’s addressing problematic smartphone usage. Learn more in the ‘Startup Spotlight’ section of the newsletter + respond if you’re interested in hearing more about the partnership we’re putting together with this great team.
Startup Spotlight
Do you often find yourself or others mindlessly escaping into the screen attached to the hand? Smartphone overuse, a societal issue, leads to sleep deprivation, anxiety, and depression. Current solutions like trackers or app blockers don’t address the root problem.
not less but better is a Berlin-based startup that is addressing smartphone overuse through evidence-based content and a proprietary machine learning approach. They launched a fun pledge now joined by more than 1066 people (us included!) to reclaim the time we spend on screens. It’s a helpful tool to learn more about your screen time habits and become more mindful of your digital consumption. If reducing time spent on your phone is among your new year’s resolutions, check it out!
Attend
Making Mental Health A Priority In High Growth Startups
One of the most important factors behind any company’s success is organizational health. It is, however, particularly true for high-growth startups where founders often find themselves burnt out and unable to get the support they need. So if you want to learn how to make mental wellbeing a priority in fast-paced, target-driven environments, this is an event for you! Three panelists — James Routledge from Sanctus, Lauren Cunningham from Bumble, and Will Beaton from MyTutor — will share their expertise on January 19th 12:00 CET — all you have to do is sign up now to save your spot. See you there!
This Week’s Story
What’s next for mental health and venture capital?
2021 has been a good year for mental health investments — that’s no surprise to anyone who’s interested in the sector (or reads our newsletter). Investment in mental health accounted for a third of all digital health funding in 2021, with $3.1 billion surging into mental health ventures by the third quarter of the year alone. Considering the speed with which the sector is developing as well as the lack of regulations for mental health interventions, what can we expect in the future of mental health care?
On one hand, there’s a lot of uncertainty around how to choose an approach that will be effective, issues with uptake, and debates on how to best address the questions of equity and accessibility. But there’s also a notable positive shift in how venture capital is being allocated and what products are being funded, with intention of doing good work becoming one of the top priorities. Next to that, psychologists are getting invited to take key positions in recently funded companies, bringing the necessary clinical expertise and helping to protect the products’ clinical integrity.
Moreover, American Psychological Association (APA) was appointed by the FDA as an “expert partner organization”, tasked with providing insights into behavioral change technology and methodology in the process of making regulatory models more tech-friendly and removing barriers between innovative developments and consumers. This, among other things, signals that big changes are coming and venture capital has undeniably played a key role in the process by bringing mental health care innovations to the center of the digital (mental) health landscape. It’s going to be an exciting year!
Mental health, meet venture capital
What else we’re reading…
🎊 It’s always fun to look back on the previous year, and particularly so when it’s good news — it turns out that the most popular search themes of 2021 include mental health, healing, and resilience. The world remains optimistic and seeks ways to facilitate positive change — what better mood there is to enter the new year with?
📱Lately, social media hasn’t received the best reputation, given the rising concern about its impact on users’ mental health. Now, however, there’s a new app hoping to turn it around. Supernova, a self-proclaimed ethical social media alternative, not only hopes to become the space for positive and secure interactions but also promises to donate 60% of its ad revenue to charity, MQ Mental Health being the first on the list.
🎇 Ketamine therapy is going mainstream — what a time to be alive! Research has shown it to be an effective treatment for people experiencing anxiety and depression. But how exactly does it work and who will the service benefit the most?
🎊 While positive change is taking place, healthcare disparities still exist and affect millions of people. From better data collection to rethinking behavioral health models to serve patients more effectively, healthcare stakeholders share their thoughts of what are the next steps to take towards advancing health equity in 2022.
🎍There’s a lot of information about the detrimental effects of climate change on our mental health. But how can we utilize insights into human psychology to inform our behavior and find the most effective course of action to tackle the climate crisis?
Gabija works as a Marketing & Communications Coordinator at Masawa. She lets her vision of a more just, sustainable, equitable world guide Masawa’s story and inform the work towards transforming global mental wellness to make it accessible and accepted.
