Disconnect to reconnect: Our investment in Silk + Sonder
2020 has not been our greatest year as a country or as a planet. We are all being challenged with the stresses of the highest unemployment rates since the 1950s, a global pandemic with an uncertain time horizon, deep civic unrest and the impact of natural disasters ranging from overwhelming wildfires to tropical storms. This isn’t even to mention the daily worries of supply chain issues affecting our ability to procure food and other necessities, frayed attempts at homeschooling and general isolation. Whew.
Yet, before all of this we already had a mental wellness epidemic raging. Best estimates are that it costs US employers and healthcare systems an estimated $200–300B+ per year. However, existing solutions to improve our mental wellness are increasingly challenging to access, just when they are needed most.
When I thought of how to improve “mental health” (such a broad term that encompasses so much), the first potential solution that came to mind was in-person therapy. Turns out that in-person therapy is an industry that, in reality, only serves the top few percentile who have the time, money and energy to access it. That leaves most of us — 100+ million Americans — to manage our mental wellness needs on our own. Our consumer dollars go to everything from day spas to calming noise machines to exercise classes to, literally, media that is mind-numbing in an effort to placate or escape our feelings. Many people also turn to prescription solutions: 1 in 6 Americans take antidepressants or a related prescription medication.
The more we’ve learned about the severity and pervasiveness of mental unwellness, the more shocked we’ve become at the dire lack of true solutions. So we went looking for one.
Today, I’m excited to share that we’ve invested in Silk + Sonder, a subscription that includes personal journaling, community, and guided content. It is clear that they have uniquely, and dramatically, improved the mental wellness of their existing users who are effusive about Silk+Sonder. We also believe their approach — rooted in the fundamentals of positive psychology — is widely applicable and poised to help millions more.
Investing in Silk + Sonder
I am, of course, not the first to observe the need for better mental health and wellness solutions. That said, no one is more surprised than I am to have landed on an analog solution as the unlock.
In the past ~5 years, venture capital investment across the spectrum of medically provided mental healthcare to self-managed wellness solutions has grown materially, with ~$750M invested in the sector in 2019. While critical, with my investor hat on, I am less interested in the medical end of this spectrum as scalability, market size and payment models are more complicated. Direct to consumer companies like Calm, Headspace and ClassPass have reached unicorn status as have others taking the B:B path like Lyra that just announced a $100M+ funding round. Peloton, while not a mental wellness company per se, shares the same elements as Silk + Sonder of an analog and associated digital subscription business that fundamentally prospers (to the tune of an ~$8B public company) in lockstep with it’s members. Other companies like BetterUp and Talkspace have raised hundreds of millions simply by bringing 1:1 coaching and therapy online. The fact that all of these companies are growing quickly only further validates the market need.
All of these solutions, though, leave something to be desired. It is the combination of providing access and motivation that is toughest to unlock but what ultimately works best.
Silk + Sonder’s subscription, today, is comprised of 3 parts:
- Monthly physical journal. Yes, really. A physical journal arrives to your door. That you write in with a pen, not a stylus.
- Digital community, called Sonder Club, for members to support, share and connect with each other.
- Virtual programming, called Sonder Circles, for members to learn individually or as part of small group workshops.
It is like Asana for the rest (I’d argue, majority) of us. And for those Asana or other digital checklist users out there (myself included) — how many of you still carry around a notebook? I do. The fact is that there are some goals and needs that don’t fit into the prosumer digital-only productivity solutions.
By the time we met Silk + Sonder it was already a profitable business doing millions in recurring revenue — clear evidence that their differentiated solution is really resonating. The company’s paying customers already span all 50 states. Not the norm for a seed stage company. Then you meet Meha and start to realize how this is the case. Meha is an engineer by training and an experienced product manager who, among other things, is doggedly entrepreneurial and wonderfully impatient with the status quo. She took it to be her personal mission to solve the problem of mental wellness for herself and those around her and, honestly, we are all lucky she did.
Silk + Sonder is a mission-driven team and, in my experience, these nearly always outperform mercenaries. In the past year we’ve heard more senior tech execs than ever before explain that they are leaving their roles in search of something “with greater impact on what really matters.” What greater impact could there be than helping to solve the mental wellness epidemic we’re facing? Silk + Sonder is hiring — join us!
