Announcing our $22M Series A: a step closer to eliminating every barrier to mental health

A note from April Koh, CEO and Cofounder, Spring Health

When Dr. Adam Chekroud and I founded Spring Health in 2016, we shared the same dream: a world with no barriers to mental health. We asked, what if everyone — no matter where they are in their mental health journey — could get frictionless access to the right care, at the right time?

We were fed up with the status quo and brokenhearted by the struggles of our loved ones — those who struggled in silence for months because they didn’t know where to start; those who dialed a dozen providers just to find one available slot; those who mustered up the hope, drug after drug after drug, provider after provider, to try yet another option — again, and again, and again.

When we started, there was already a lot of hype around reinventing mental healthcare. Many solutions promised fast access to something — therapy, meditation, drugs, or even a chatbot. But we knew fast access was meaningless — and potentially even dangerous — if the care was not right for the individual. Everyone is different, and these products treated everyone the same.

Building a world with no barriers to mental health meant that we needed to go beyond faster access — to faster recovery, by connecting people to not just any care, but precisely the right care for them, from the start.

Today, we do this through a data-driven approach called Precision Mental Healthcare. Data collected through comprehensive and proprietary intakes allows us to personalize each mental health journey and match each person to the right pathway for them. We believe that a clinically rigorous foundation of clinically validated technology, licensed care navigators, and top tier mental health professionals will lead to the most effective model possible. But, we are also cognizant that there is much more work to do in our field.

Today, we’re thrilled to announce our $22M Series-A, led by Northzone. Midas List investor Pär-Jörgen Pärson will be joining our board. As the first investor in Spotify, PJ brings his deep experience in building B2B and D2C unicorns to help us grow our customer-obsessed and consumer-grade UX. Northzone will also help us scale internationally. Spring Health today serves members on at least 5 continents, and as employers in the US become increasingly global, we will help our customers develop unified offerings across their entire global workforce.

In addition to Northzone, we welcome two new investors: the venture arm of current customer Equinox — Equinox Ventures — and Able Partners. We are also grateful for the continued vote of confidence and participation from our earlier investors: Rethink Impact, Work-Bench, RRE, Sempervirens, and Warren Foundation.

We see this moment as an important inflection point not only for Spring Health but for mental healthcare broadly. $22M empowers us to scale a radically different approach to mental healthcare to millions of lives. This investment allows us to take a big step forward in building a world where guessing has no place in mental healthcare, where every barrier to mental health has been eliminated.

Some have accused us of being “too clinical.” But we strongly believe that the lives entrusted to us — many who find us in times of crisis — deserve no less than a center of excellence upholding the highest clinical standards. We will continue to scrutinize our approach through data, and we will continue to insist on evidence of clinical efficacy from ourselves and our peers. Our clinical rigor has led some of the largest employers in the US to place their trust in us over other solutions.

A few things I am proud of today:

• Our impact will reach over 2 million lives this year
• We work across all industries — legal, tech, real estate, finance, pharmaceutical/biotech, wholesale, retail, education — with over 50 amazing customers like Sysco, Gap, and Equinox
• As of 2019, we have started collaborating closely with national payers and their members
• Cofounder and Chief Scientist Adam Chekroud now sits on the Editorial Board of Lancet Psychiatry, one of the most prestigious psychiatry journals in the world
• Our 50-state in-person and virtual provider network is accessible in an average of 1.2 days
• We consistently engage over 30% of employees in a clinically meaningful way

I have told some that even if Spring Health were to change just one life, this chapter of my life would be well-spent. It is so humbling to think that we now have before us the opportunity to change hundreds of thousands — ultimately millions — of lives. We promise to treat this as a privilege every day and to do our best not to let our users down.

Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Please feel free to reach out if you want to be more involved:

• To bring Spring Health to your workplace: sales@springhealth.com
• To join our team: our job board
• To learn more: hello@springhealth.com

Here’s to a mentally healthier world —

April Koh, Cofounder & CEO, Spring Health