In Today’s Edition…

Each week, we cover a UN SDG: news, an exciting startup, and an influential thinker worth knowing.

Our focus is UN SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being:

• Current Events: 

  • Research team at UCLA pushes innovation to improve liquid biopsies

  • WHO warns of deteriorating health system in Eastern DR Congo

  • Controlling the effects of aggressive food marketing - a priority for the WHO

  • A new blood test for preeclampsia approved by the FDA

  • Maternal deaths in the United States growing at an alarming rate

• UVWC: MentalHappy

• Insights from: Andrea Ippolito 

Without further ado, let’s take a SIP!

Current Events

• Research team at UCLA pushes innovation to improve liquid biopsies: Researchers have created a new technology that could augment the effectiveness of liquid biopsies. This method offers promising improvements in non-invasive cancer diagnostics by using machine learning algorithms to increase the precision and effectiveness of identifying cancer-related genetic mutations from a blood sample. Read more here.

• WHO warns of deteriorating health system in Eastern DR Congo: The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a severe health emergency warning for Eastern DR Congo. Due to migration, overlapping virus infections, and flooding, the region's health system is under tremendous strain, restricting access to healthcare and worsening circumstances for the population. Read more here.

• Controlling the effects of aggressive food marketing - a priority for the WHO: New recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO) are intended to safeguard children from aggressive food marketing. In order to improve children's diets and prevent childhood obesity, the guidelines include advice for countries to tighten rules and policies, promote healthier eating, and minimize the impact of marketing methods that detrimentally target children. Read more here.

• A new blood test for preeclampsia approved by the FDA: The FDA recently approved a preeclampsia screening test that could offer early detection of the condition. While preeclampsia is a dangerous condition that could potentially impact any pregnant person, it is five times more likely to impact pregnant people who are Black. This proves to be a significant development to mitigate maternal mortality rates. Read more here.

• Maternal deaths in the United States growing at an alarming rate: A new study by the Journal of the American Medical Association (Jama) evinces that maternal mortality rates have doubled in the United States over the past 20 years, with particularly concerning statistics amongst pregnant people who are Black. This underscores the critical need for comprehensive policies and healthcare initiatives to address this issue and ameliorate maternal health outcomes. Read more here.

UVWC: MentalHappy

Below is Unlocking Venture Without Capital (UVWC), a series where I explore social impact startups highlighting their products, industry dynamics, and competition. You can read more about the inspiration here.

Please note that the views and opinions expressed in this post are solely mine, and I have not been sponsored or affiliated with the company in question nor do they represent the views of any employer with whom the author may be affiliated. By highlighting the market opportunity, product overview, and competitive landscape of each company, I hope to highlight exciting products, companies, and industries worth learning about.

📜 Overview

MentalHappy is a support group platform connecting users to expert professionals and other individuals looking for a shared sense of community in their mental health journey. They host virtual group sessions and place a premium on vetting the quality of the group leaders in order to create a trustworthy and effective support group environment.

💻 Product Offering

MentalHappy has two different user experiences — those looking to join a support group and professionals looking to lead their own. For users looking to join a support group, they offer virtual group sessions led by vetted experts in order to ensure trust and safety. For group leaders, they have the autonomy to create and lead their own support groups where they specialize in one or more areas of expertise.

Their website features some of their support groups — topics ranging from empowered parenting to life after divorce to caregiver support. Each session features an introduction composed of video and text, combined with an easy way to register for the next group sessions. They offer both free and paid sessions.

📈 Market Opportunity

TAM - ❌

According to the pricing advertised to group leaders, each person pays $20/mo. This comes out to $240/yr. According the University of Kansas, there are 500,000+ support groups in the USA.

500k support groups x $240/yr = $120M 

This yields a bottoms-up TAM of less than $1B.

Industry CAGR - ✅

According to GlobeNewswire, the estimated CAGR of the digital mental health market industry for the next 8 years is 20.3%, which exceeds NYU’s estimated total market CAGR over the next 5 years of ~14%.

Market structure - ✅

According to an article published by Behavioral Health Business, the digital behavioral health industry is fragmented and has whitespace for more consolidation . This is due in part due to the need to scale to reach audiences spread across different geographical regions.

🏁 Competitive Landscape

Shortlist of direct competitors

• Circlesup — a platform where users can join digital spaces to listen to and/or discuss issues related to mental health; users can join anonymously and discuss a variety of topics

• Sesh — matches you with a licensed group session leader based on a specific topic area; they also have an offering for teams that serve as an employee benefit

• Charlie Health — provides a comprehensive offering of group, family, and individual therapy options that combine into a package that lets users schedule multiple sessions a week

Competitive advantage

The mental health x group offering space is a very competitive space with many platform aiming to guide users into safe spaces where experts can engage with larger number of individuals in a supportive group fashion. MentalHappy puts an emphasis on its transparency with numbers, content, and visibility into their group sessions. In a space built upon the comfort of the users, MentalHappy is going the extra mile to equip users with the information they need to feel comfortable.

👋🏽 My Personal Take

• This space is very competitive with many players aiming to provide the same value add to users — the competitive advantage may come from the quality of the experts that each platform is able to attract

• Although there is clearly a need, the total market size on just offering group session support is significantly smaller than the larger digital mental health market size — a more comprehensive package may need to be explored in order to grow the revenues of the business

• Providing transparency and easing users into the sessions seems to be a key focus — an important part of the GTM might be finding the channels to reach users through their existing trusted mediums for therapy/support

Insights from: Andrea Ippolito

⚠️ Key Takeaways

The parallels between a founder and a PM are clear — there are many interchangeable skills required between both roles. The extent of overlap depends on which responsibilities the CEO takes on and which they delegate to the rest of their team. Andrea Ippolito possesses a unique combination of expertise in business development, fundraising, and technical expertise, enabling her to effectively manage and lead a startup from both a strategic and product perspective. Her previous venture was Smart Scheduling — predictive scheduling for medical practices — that was acquired by athenahealth. Those same product skills and technical understanding are valuable in her current venture, SimpliFed — a platform expanding telehealth virtual access to breastfeeding and material services. She is also a lecturer at Cornell University where she teaches product management amongst other classes.

🛠️ Andrea’s role: Founder & CEO at SimpliFed, providing access to virtual care for breastfeeding and other maternal services.

💡Andrea’s best advice:

• Embrace hackathons as an early door to startup culture

• Seek near-peer mentors in your network

🔎 Looking ahead:

• Navigating working with larger health systems and fundraising in the upcoming uncertain investing environment

• Listening to podcasts focused on healthtech and entrepreneurship more broadly

• Growing and maintaining a learning mindset

📜 Background

Andrea Ippolito, the founder of SimpliFed, has a diverse professional background with a strong focus on impact. She started off as a scientist at Boston Scientific where she co-led and initiated BSC's "Communities of Excellence" (CoEs) to enhance collaboration and efficiency in R&D for product development. She also conducted assays to evaluate inflammation markers for a drug-eluting stent platform and optimized predictive assays to determine effective drug dosages for pacemaker leads — for which she was selected as one of the "Top 5 New Faces of Engineering" by the Society of Women Engineers in 2010.

Andrea then went to graduate school at MIT to pursue her Ph.D.. There, she became heavily involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem at MIT. As a graduate student, she founded Smart Scheduling which developed a predictive and intelligent scheduling solution for medical practices, which was subsequently acquired by athenahealth in 2016.

She then spent time working in the government — she was a Presidential Innovation Fellow in 2014 where she played a leading role in establishing the VAs Innovators Network, enabling VA employees to utilize innovation-related skills to identify and address on-ground problems. She also co-leading the VA Innovation Creation Series and organized the Prosthetic + Assistive Technology Challenge to promote the development of open-sourced prosthetics and assistive technologies for veterans through crowd-sourcing platforms and makeathon programs.

After serving as a Presidential Innovation Fellow until 2017, she became a Lecturer at Cornell University — teaching various courses ranging from product management to entrepreneurship. It was here that she started her current venture, SimpliFed.

Founded by Andrea Ippolito in 2019, SimpliFed is a telehealth platform that aims to democratize access to baby feeding and breastfeeding services. They provide evidence-based and inclusive virtual care covered by insurance, with a mission to promote health and economic equity by building trusted relationships with parents, partnering with healthcare payers and providers, and driving policy and practice changes in the realm of baby feeding.

🎙️ Highlights

🛠️ Andrea’s role:

Andrea Ippolito's current role involves leading a comprehensive baby feeding platform that works with health systems to provide support throughout pregnancy. The platform's services are covered by federal health plans. Her day-to-day responsibilities include engaging with investors, partners, and customers, and working with her team to implement plans, set metrics, and generate traction. As a technical founder with a background in biomedical engineering, she brings problem-solving skills and a high tolerance for tackling complex challenges. Her experience in government has also equipped her with the ability to navigate bureaucratic structures and tolerate slowdowns when working with people.

💡 What is Andrea’s best advice?

Embrace hackathons as an early door to startup culture

Andrea is passionate about young people getting engaged with startup culture from an early age. She herself ran the Accelerate Contest and participated in MIT 100 while attending grad school there.

She suggests “considering working at a startup or starting your own venture.” But doing a startup on your own can seem daunting and impossible, so she suggests a shortcut.

“Accelerators can provide valuable resources, mentorship, and networking opportunities to help you succeed. Look for incubators in your space to tap into a supportive community of like-minded individuals, investors, and innovators.”

Andrea personally met one of her first customers and later met her acquirer through her experience participating and working in hackathons.

Seek near-peer mentors

Networking is always useful, but there’s a specific type of networking that has worked best for Andrea.

“Find mentors who are slightly ahead of you in their entrepreneurial journey. They can offer valuable advice on fundraising, navigating the industry, and overcoming challenges based on their own experiences.”

She follows that up by still underlining the importance of surrounding yourself with mentors, investors, and other innovators who can offer guidance, support, and connections. Being part of a network provides opportunities that can, after all, give way to potential customers and potential acquirers.

🔎 Looking Ahead

1. Navigating working with larger health systems and fundraising in the upcoming uncertain investing environment

Read more here and here.

2. Listening to podcasts focused on healthtech and entrepreneurship more broadly

She recommends Entreprenista, a16z podcast, Startup Health, and HIT like a Girl.

3. Growing and maintaining a learning mindset

Read more here and here.

‼️ Learn More

If you are interested in health tech, being a founder, or would like to learn more about Andrea Ippolito, please reach out to Andrea on LinkedIn.