The Starting Point

1 in 25 adolescents and young adults will be diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar, and other related conditions every year. The majority of these families struggle for decades to find stability and a pathway forward that minimizes suffering. I thought that was my fate (John) when I was first diagnosed. Yet somehow, my journey has been dramatically different. Why? Contrary to popular belief, it was not due to the genetic lottery— it is because I have access to care that works. 95% of these families do not. We came together because this isn’t just my personal story, but one that affects our whole founding team... and probably somebody you know too. It is crystal clear that the suffering often associated with serious mental illness is preventable. We are here to ensure that everybody gets the same access that I have.

What Should I Know About Working With Y’all?

Honestly, we are a series of contradictions.

• We’ve raised over $30 million venture dollars to build companies that have a positive impact on the world. Yet, we can barely hold down a job and have major misgivings about the venture approach to company building.
  • Why should you care? Our remedy is to be laser focused on super specific inflection points that lead to building a profitable business— we are not risking the transformative model that changed our lives to the venture hamster wheel.
• We may start companies as a team, but we still take weeks-long vacations. Our CEO may have spent a good portion of last fall camping off the grid while our CTO spent two weeks road-tripping towards a proposal at Hidden Lake in Montana.
  • We require the same from you (YES, sleeping in the woods in 90 degree heat with your partner and smelly dog is mandatory....jk)
• We are most productive at times that don’t overlap. For example, John wakes up before 6am, around the same time that Josh is going to bed. Meanwhile, Lauren operates like a very normal human being.
  • We expect you to find your cadence and live by it (please no group meetings at 3 AM, that would be a bummer.)
• Philz is the best coffee in the world. FALSE, Blue Bottle is. FALSE, you are both huge snobs, McDonalds is totally sufficient...
  • You MUST have an opinion on coffee.
• We are SO bad at uninterrupted Zoom meetings. Kyle’s children pop in randomly, Josh’s dog snores a lot, Lauren’s dog barks, and John’s farm of animals sometimes step on his keyboard, ending the call prematurely.
  • If you are looking for “formal”, this may be an infuriating team for you...

So how do we get sh*t done?

We like vacations and spending weekends with our families. We also really love working together and are personally invested in solving this problem for millions of families. BUT WAIT! HOW DO WE ACCOMPLISH BOTH? Simple! We ruthlessly prioritize and try to follow simple guidelines. For instance, we only live in the gray (no black and white thinkers plz!) and are up front about it. What does that mean?

• Be direct, but not an assh*le: We require folks to be in a place in life where they can be super direct AND empathetic, be independent AND a team player, and willing to go above & beyond for everybody involved. We believe effective communication is a very important part of every job, which takes significant energy and time. This effort is a priority for us.
• Be intentional: When we are together, we are on-time and not multi-tasking. We are all busy, so we have very few meetings; when we do, we are spending them fully present together and we do what we say we are going to do. We primarily communicate asynchronously, so focus and intention during our few real-time meetings is key.
• Understand the gravity of our work: We take every interaction with the families we support, every line of code, and every product decision seriously— all of us. Lives truly depend on it. This requires a curiosity to understanding the entire problem while being proactive about what you need to be successful. There are ZERO silo’ed projects and everything is inter-connected. If you are excited to be a part of the entire product process, start to finish, we are excited to work with you!
• Team “Figure It Out”: We are a growing startup, aka we don’t know what we don’t know. You will need to be part of team “figure-it-out,” not relying on others or “leadership” to solve a problem or move forward. If you work best with close management, this is going to be a tough team for you.

We are all in different cities and different time zones. We get together when we can, but otherwise, if you are hoping for a hopping office with foosball tables, this ain’t it.

If this resonates with you, we’d love to meet you! If you include an adorable picture of your dog/cat/chicken, bonus points.