Month: May 2018

Treating issues with mental health can be a daunting and very sensitive task for anyone that is suffering from any kind of mental illness — but the problem for many is that a lot of patients just don’t know where to start, according to David Ebersman.

That’s where Lyra Health hopes to help. The service works with employers to offer a tool to their employees that helps them securely and confidentially begin to understand what kind of treatment they need to seek if they feel like they are suffering from any mental health problems. Employers naturally have a stake in this as they want their employees to stay health, but the goal is to offer a sort of safe space where users can benefit from years of growth in pattern matching and data to help them figure out where to start. The company said it has raised $45 million in a new financing round including Tenaya Capital, Glynn Capital Partners, Crown Ventures, and Casdin Capital. Existing investors that include Greylock Partners, Venrock, and Providence Ventures also participated in the funding round.

“We felt it was important to build an offering that would be helpful to all of the people who work at these companies and are suffering from a mental health condition like depression, or anxiety, or substance abuse,” Ebersman said. “A lot of the people we want to help don’t know where they’re starting. Trying to build and market something narrowly to a subset of the audience requires the audience to know they’re in that subset. Trying to build something more welcoming and engaging for a broader set of conditions felt to us to be a realistic response to the fact that not everyone can self identify. Fortunately technology really helps us with this — we can build a secure and confidential place where an employee can go and answer some questions that relate to their symptoms, severity, treatment preferences and use technology to match them for the right care.”

Lyra Health first starts off working with employers to figure out a plan to communicate to employees that the tool actually exists. But that’s one of the biggest challenges, as mental health issues — like anxiety or depression — can be very sensitive subjects for employees. Lyra Health has to work with employers to convince to give them confidence to explore it as a safe and confidential place, where they can put in information about some of their symptoms while feeling like that information is going to locked down.

From there, Lyra takes a close look at that data and then build a set of recommendations for the patients based on what they think some of their symptoms correlate to. Lyra Health has a network of around 2,500 therapists, most of which don’t participate in traditional health plans, Ebersman said. Lyra Health then connects patients with those therapists, and they can schedule the appointment online and get started right away. Lyra Health then periodically checks in with the patients to see how they are doing and ensuring they feel like they are getting better — another data point that helps the company figure out if its recommendations are working.

“We really believed that the experience that we give to patients today could be dramatically improved,” Ebersman said. “This is part of the healthcare system that’s really hard to understand, it’s hard to navigate, and there are a bunch of different types of solutions for a variety of different conditions. We felt that trying to build a comprehensive solution that would make it easy for clients to find the care that was matched correctly to their needs and preferences was a tech problem we could start grappling right away.”

Ebersman previously oversaw the initial public offering of Facebook as its CFO, but the challenge Lyra Health entails is one that may be just as complex. Not only does the company have to establish and maintain that network of high-quality doctors and therapists, it also has to ensure that it builds and maintains a robust data set that ensures that its recommendations are actually on point — and get better over time. If it ends up as a bad product, employees won’t use it, and the recommendations can’t improve at any point. And amid all of this, the experience has to feel like a good and approachable one, even though it’s partially tackled through machine learning.

“I think we are able to successfully communicate to employees what Lyra does in a way that doesn’t seem intimidating or stigmatized,” Ebersman said. “I think the experience of exploring what your care options are using technology is a little easier for people. I think there are places where technology plays a critical role in this journey. One is creating a safe environment where you can dip your toe in the water. I also think a technology based experience can give you confidence that the best care for what you need is out there. I do believe that for most people in the care journey, interacting with a human who is warm and who you can relate to, and who has skills to help you, improve is an important piece. But if you think comprehensively from the beginning to the end of someone’s care journey, there’s a critical set of roles technology can play to ensure that more people engage and have a better experience.”

Ebersman hopes Lyra Health is riding a wave of increased awareness and attention for mental health. That could encompass anything from apps like Lyra Health to companies that are focusing on wellness like meditation apps like Calm (which is reportedly valued over $250 million). All of these companies have been able to raise pretty significant rounds of financing, but it also means that there will be a lot of activity — and a bit of a race to get adoption and build up the kind of robust data sets you need to have a formal defensibility in the marketplace. There are other approaches to mental health like Huddle, but the trick will be figuring out how to get people on board and spin up that flywheel that will make the experience better and better.

” Many people with mental health conditions don’t ever engage with the system, or if they do, are quickly intimidated with how confusing and frustrating it can be,” he said. “We believe if we build a simple and warm tech-based experience that’s confidential and secure, we can get more people engaged with the mental health system. Our engagements are about seven times higher than the companies were seeing with the solutions they had before they launched Lyra.”

from TechCrunch

iPrice, a service that aggregates Southeast Asia’s e-commerce websites in a single destination, has pulled in new funding led by messaging app Line’s VC arm, Line Ventures.

The round is officially undisclosed, but TechCrunch understands from a source close to negotiations that it is worth around $4 million. Existing iPrice backers Cento Ventures (formerly known as Digital Media Partners) and Venturra Capital also took part in this round.

iPrice, which has its HQ in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, previously raised a $4 million Series A in late 2016. Today’s investment takes the startup to $9.7 million raised overall.

The company was started in 2015 in response to the growing number of e-commerce companies in Southeast Asia, and in particular the increasing number of vertical-specific options. Even though there are some giants, such as Alibaba’s Lazada, the region has a number of smaller players that can struggle for visibility. iPrice was initially a coupon site, before pivoting into an aggregation model which essentially acts as a destination for shoppers to then go on and purchase items from e-commerce retailers.

In a way, it is much like flight booking sites — such as Skyscanner — which ask a customer where they want to go before scouring the web for the best travel deals. iPrice does this for e-commerce in Southeast Asia. It hopes that simplifying things through a single destination portal can make it the go-to online buying site for the region, which now has over 330 million internet users — more than the population of the U.S. — according to a recent report co-authored by Google.

iPrice on the web, although its mobile app and mobile browser version are more used

Today, iPrice claims to offer over 500 million SKUs across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. The company said that over 50 million people visited its site since December 2016, and this year alone it is aiming to grow to 150 million visitors.

The company said electronics has been a particular driver while, outside of working with e-commerce firms to drive business, it has developed a B2B business with media groups and brands, including Mediacorp in Singapore and Samsung in Indonesia, who pay to tailor its service. Last year, it developed an insightful report on the state of e-commerce in Southeast Asia.

The deal makes sense for Line Ventures because of the unique vantage point that iPrice occupies, while it also ties into parent company Line’s desire to go beyond being a messaging app and build out a mobile ecosystem. That’s seen it develop services such as food delivery, ride-hailing, payments and e-commerce, although it has struggled in the latter category. A relationship with iPrice might give it greater insight for future e-commerce ventures in Southeast Asia.

from TechCrunch