When Sonia Garcia and Stas Sokolin decided to start Amae Health to address the broken care system for people with severe mental illness, they were already well aware of the industry’s problems.
“I started thinking about this problem a long time ago,” said Sokolin, CEO of Amae. “I grew up with a sister who had bipolar disorder for many years, and as a family we always struggled to care for her. It seemed like everything was so fragmented, and it took us so long. Broke the family.
Garcia also had his own experiences with the mental health care system. She lost her father to suicide when she was 16, and then she and her family spent years as caregivers for her brother with schizoaffective and bipolar disorder. Sokolin and Garcia were introduced by mutual friends at Stanford because they were both passionate about the area. The pair knew the system could be improved.
He launched Amae Health in 2022 as a new approach to helping patients with severe mental illness. Amae brings resources — including family and individual therapy, social workers, psychiatric care and medication management — all under one roof. A physical ceiling, that is, as Amae is personally focused on perspective. The startup hired Dr. Scott Fears, who had experience with this holistic approach to care through his work with the Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Hospital, to iterate on the new model rather than start from scratch. Can do and improve it.
Amae Health just raised a $15 million Series A round led by Quiet Capital with participation from Healthier Capital, former One Medical CEO Amir Dan Rubin’s firm. Baszki Group and Index Ventures partner Mike Volpi, in addition to all of the company’s seed investors. The startup currently has a clinic in Los Angeles and plans to use the capital to expand. It will next be headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, followed by locations in Houston, Ohio and New York.
The funds will also be used to continue building the company’s data platform. Sokolin said the company is using AI to go through the data it collects in its clinics to find ways to improve care.
Over the past few years, many startups have launched to improve the mental health care system, but Amae Health’s focus area and approach stand out. Most of the mental health startups launched in the pandemic are digital first and focus on anxiety and depression. Amy looks very different.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having a slate of companies focused on anxiety and depression, and it’s good to see founders focused on helping people with severe mental illness as well. Severe mental health problems Affected 14.1 million people in the US.According to the National Coalition on Mental Illness. But there is little innovation in this sector.
That’s not too surprising: Solutions for people with severe mental illness don’t quite fit a traditional venture model the way many telemedicine and digital solutions do. People with severe mental illness require in-person care, making solutions more expensive and slower to scale.
“When we first went out to raise money, a lot of investors were asking, why are you doing this in person? Why isn’t it virtual?” Sokolin said. “The fact of the matter is that you cannot treat someone who is suffering from delusions or hallucinations. You cannot treat cancer practically, just as you cannot treat it practically. Can’t treat.
The nature of the business also means they’re not yet expanding into all 50 states like some digital health startups have been able to. Garcia said the company is fine with that because it’s more focused on results than scaling.
“It’s about intentional growth and scale, not winning all markets, but really being thoughtful and conscious about how we grow and making sure that we are creating lasting change and recovery in the lives of these individuals,” Garcia said.
Trying to scale too quickly has hurt mental health startups. Therapy telemedicine platform Cerebral has come under fire for how it advertises to potential customers and how it handles patient data in its pursuit of scale.
Sokolin, a former VC at both the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Health2047, said this slow growth can and has worked in ventures before. A medical, a full-service health care system, including personal care, is a great example. The company raised more than $500 million before being acquired by Amazon for $3.9 billion. It’s not surprising that the former CEO is a current investor in Amy.
Sokolin and Garcia are fine with the fact that their approach has turned off some potential investors. They are more focused on building a system for quality care, not how many patients they can see.
“There are more people than anyone can treat,” Sokolin said of the scope of people with severe mental illness. “We’ll never treat anything more than a small fraction, but we want to be the best provider for those members.”
Credit : techcrunch.com
