Reducing the Barrier to High-Quality Counseling with Peer Collective
Xoogler.co Founder Stories: Tim Desmond of Peer Collective
“Do you believe that if every therapist read your book, the field would be more effective?” Tim Desmond’s colleague asked. It was 2015 and Tim had just written his first psychology textbook. Tim understood that research shows that when you increase a therapist’s academic training, their outcomes don’t necessarily improve. Therefore, Tim could not wholeheartedly answer “yes” to his colleague. Tim began to explore what it would actually take to change the field. After consulting with various field researchers and experts in outcome research, the core idea that emerged was that the biggest predictor for positive outcomes in mental health is the qualities of the providers. These qualities are called common factors, which include warmth, empathy, and the ability to form alliances.
“There are many different schools of therapy, but it is the common factors that everybody agrees are important and matter the most for outcomes. Nobody is creating a product around this. Nobody is innovating in the space around improving common factors. We realized that if it is possible for people to reach out to individuals with exceptional common factors right in their moment of need, that would radically transform how mental health works in the US and globally. This was the initial seed of Peer Collective,” says Tim Desmond.
Focusing on Common Factors
Peer Collective is a platform that focuses on accepting non-professional counselors that exhibit exceptional common factors to provide high-quality peer counseling. Prospective counselors go through a series of tests that are analyzed by the Peer Collective team. Those who have traits that are known to lead to better outcomes — such as warmth and empathy — are provided with the resources to help those in need of counseling. Since the criteria is not limited to applicants with degrees, the large number of candidates guarantees a low, reasonable price for those being counseled. Through this process, Peer Collective solves the three most significant barriers to counseling: price, quality, and accessibility.
Building Peer Collective
After leaving Google in the Summer of 2019, Tim began doing market research, putting together a team, and developing the minimum viable product.
“We were running a lot of experiments during this time. In some ways, Peer Collective is a category-defining company because peer counseling for a general audience does not exist right now. People who are senior researchers in clinical psychology hear about the project and are like, ‘This is exactly what we should be doing. How can I help?’ But people who are less familiar with the state of the research are not as understanding. But what’s important is that it’s not hard to educate users. The reason it is not hard to educate users is that the pain point is so great. People really need support, and they have nowhere to go. Educating investors and partners has been the biggest challenge. But now that we are getting into 2000 users, it is a little easier for them to just look at the user data and understand that people really do like this.”
An Innovative Process to Finding Top Counselors
Tim worked with Bruce Wampold, one of the top mental health outcome researchers in the world, to develop a video assessment process where the team at Peer Collective can analyze five minutes of video and accurately predict how good anyone would be at providing mental support. The video assessment process puts the prospective counselors through challenging scenarios and analyzes their responses. Based on what research shows on common factors and other outcome drivers, the Peer Collective team has developed a metric that distinguishes which candidates have higher emotional intelligence. Peer Collective has the ability to bring on non-professionals that are of higher quality than traditional mental health counseling centers. Interestingly, there are candidates with a master’s degree in counseling that respond to the scenarios notably poorer than candidates with no academic training. This further supports that academics do not produce results.
“For me, this has been the most interesting part. Our plan is to automate the video assessment process with ML once we get into a growth phase. This way, we can have thousands of people going through it.”
Launch
Peer Collective has seen great feedback and growth after launching in September 2020. The team released a Sean Ellis Product/Market Fit survey to their first 600 users, which displayed that 42% of the users would be very disappointed if they could no longer use the product. This supersedes the Sean Ellis threshold for a great product.
“For me, that lands a lot stronger than 5-star ratings after each session. Everyone leaves 5-star ratings after each session but there is a 5-star politeness factor. This really dug into it more. I feel very excited about the user love that we have. We are trying to transfer that user love into a deeper level of engagement. There are a lot of users that use the service, love it, then use it once or twice. We know that many people would benefit more from engaging more.”
The Future of Counseling
Tim believes in around ten years, this form of highly vetted counseling will be the primary treatment in the mental health system and people will be referred to mental health professionals on an as needed basis. “There is no need for anyone to be paying $200 an hour for the type of support that should be available for $25.”
More About Tim Desmond
Tim is a psychology professor, therapist, and best-selling author. His publications include Self-Compassion in Psychotherapy, The Self-Compassion Skills Workbook, and How to Stay Human in a F*cked Up World. Tim was recruited to Google in 2018 to help with a project in Area 120 where he served as a subject matter expert. Tim founded Peer Collective after leaving Google.
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Resources
Learn more about the Sean Ellis Product Market Fit here.
Xoogler.co Founder Stories Series
Xoogler.co hosted the Xoogler.co Demo Day USA on December 10, 2020, which featured 16 startups who pitched to over 100 investors. The startups were handpicked for the event, and they all have at least one ex-Google employee on the founding team. Peer Collective was one of 16 startups that presented. Check out Tim’s presentation here.
Following the demo day, we sat down with several of the founders to learn their stories. The Xoogler.co Founder Stories Series looks to highlight the journey of each founder, share their learning experiences along the way, and showcase the exciting ideas each founder left Google to pursue. Be sure to follow us for upcoming Founder Stories! Read our most recent story below:
