🧠 The Othership is Boarding
The latest on the business of mental health and wellness
Welcome to On The Mind, a collection of stories, news, and analyses on the startups, investors, and thought leaders in mental health and wellness.
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It’s been a minute (three months) since my last newsletter went out. A lot has changed for me since starting On The Mind over a year ago. Most significantly, after one year in the MBA program at Berkeley Haas, I dropped out to join an early-stage venture fund investing primarily in psychedelics, Vine Ventures.
I’ve been diving deep into the world of psychedelics and believe they will play an outsized role in the future of mental health and wellbeing. They’re not a cure-all and not for everyone, but they are a powerful and underestimated tool for shifting perspectives and making us more conscious of our behaviors and relationships. Many people don’t realize how quickly psychedelics are becoming available for legal use. In the US, MAPS is leading the way in bringing MDMA to market to treat PTSD as early as Q3 2023 (Vine is currently helping MAPS raise $70M to prepare for this). Therapists will begin legally administering psilocybin (magic mushrooms 🍄) in Oregon in the same year, and broader FDA approval could come by 2024 or 2025 driven by clinical trials run by Compass Pathways and Usona Institute. The largest psychedelic company by market cap at the moment is Dublin-based GH Research, which is taking 5-MeO-DMT through clinical trials for treatment-resistant depression and could be administered widely to patients well before the end of the decade.
Working full-time has kept me from publishing at the pace I started with, and I’ll be simplifying the newsletter moving forward. I will continue to track all mental health-related investments on a consistent basis, and may occasionally share content I’m following and my thoughts on the overall mental health space or psychedelics specifically.
The mind is a crazy place and we’re just beginning to figure it out.
Here’s what’s included in issue No. 15:
Facilitating peak experiences to regulate your emotions
Looking at the benefits of breathwork
Trying breathwork for yourself on the Othership
🎙️ Interview with Robbie Bent, Founder and CEO of Othership
Conversations with founders, investors, and thought leaders in mental health and wellness.
Robbie Bent is a beast. He’s a modern-day Jesus Christ (happy belated!) – he’s got the long hair, humble attitude, and when you look him in the eye you can see a soul who’s conquered his own shit and now just wants to help others do the same.
I met Robbie almost a year ago, and this guy hustles. There’s not a question out there that he can’t get an answer to. When he needs to make a decision, he somehow finds his way in front of the world’s top 5 experts on that particular topic and aggregates the best responses. He’s surrounded himself with an equally passionate team (shoutout to Emily, Amanda, Harry, and the rest of the Othership crew) who have latched on to an extremely important yet overlooked area of mental health: bringing modern wellbeing modalities to mainstream audiences in an approachable, fun, science-backed, and community-driven way. I’m undoubtedly biased as Vine is an investor, but after experiencing two in-person Othership events myself the last couple of months, I really believe the team is on to something special. With the official launch of their app and the flagship physical space in Toronto, the Othership is boarding.
Tell me a bit about your background and path to creating Othership.
After I graduated from business school, I worked in finance with investment banks and hedge funds, working 100-hour weeks and absolutely hated it. I decided I was going to do a startup since it’s the best way to get rich, and I was chasing after money.
I started a global telecom platform that let you use one sim card when you traveled and gave you a local number wherever you went. After raising $25M, it completely failed.
I ended up moving to Israel and that was when I started getting into the world of meditation and learning about other wellness modalities – breathwork, hot/cold therapy, psychedelic medicines.
When I returned to the US, I moved to San Francisco, learned about Ethereum, and joined the team. During that time, I continued exploring how to manage my own wellness and it evolved from personal ideas and experiences into something I knew I needed to build community around. That’s when I decided to create Othership.
What does Othership do?
We facilitate peak experiences. A peak experience is something that creates space for a shift and enables emotional regulation. We turn off the thinking mind and allow people to experience the feelings that they naturally shy away from. Peak experiences are an engine for finding meaning, and especially powerful when paired with a strong community.
There’s a spectrum of wellness products and services out there. You’ve got widely used lighter-touch options like Calm, Headspace, and journaling, and then more intensive options like therapy which is effective but less accessible, costly, and generally requires vulnerability and understanding what’s wrong.
Othership is a new space to explore your emotions that’s fun and built around community. We have both physical and digital products.
Our first physical location is based in Toronto, and includes a 45-person sauna, the ability to create complete darkness, ice baths filled with amazing scents – it serves as a wellness-focused hangout and event space, and hosts guided classes, including breathwork.
Our digital product is a breathwork app, which includes up-tempo electronic music and feels kind of like a workout class. It can replace or supplement a daily meditation practice and can help you almost instantly shift your mind state.
What kinds of people do you hope will use Othership?
Anyone can benefit from our products and we’ll serve a variety of people. We are very cognizant of the fact that peak experiences aren’t accessible to most people though, and we really want to draw in that crowd.
It’s very difficult to do – a lot of people don’t vibe with spirituality, are generally skeptical, and come from professional backgrounds like lawyers, bankers, and engineers that follow stringent paths. I want to show that you can have science-backed fun experiences, which I view as a wedge to mental health for the mainstream.
We have a massive loneliness epidemic. Universally people feel busy and overwhelmed, and since the introduction of mobile phones that feeling has skyrocketed.
I personally struggled with addiction for a very long time, and I changed my own life through meditation practices and psychedelic medicines. I had real trouble trying to teach these to other people though. Meditation has a lot of friction because it can take months if not years to feel adept, and not everyone is open to or ready for psychedelics.
We designed the Othership experience to be more approachable. We’re not talking about energy or spirits. You can feel the impact after a single session. We focus on the science, explaining the longevity aspects and what’s happening in your brain. We’re helping people that want to feel better through a fun, SoulCycle-like experience.
How has Othership evolved over time?
You know the standard story of a startup forming in someone’s garage? That’s literally the case here.
We started with a shitty garage and webapp course. I turned my garage into a mini Othership experience. I built a sauna and ice bath, and we had like 5 of us hanging out in there every day. It started among close friends, and you could just see it on people’s faces, we knew we had something right away. We’d do intention setting, sound bowls, eye gazing, group activities – all creating a natural meditative space.
It was such a cool way to hangout, we started using Mindbody to take bookings and ran breathwork and hot/cold classes. Friends of friends began coming through and a real community formed – people started dating, getting married, going on vacation together. One person messaged me saying Othership changed their life and kept them sober for a year.
Our team has continuously refined the experience, which evolved into our digital app and first commercial space. We reached over 3,000 members coming through the physical space and over 2,500 users on our breathwork app all before we took outside money, just grinding with a garage.
We recently raised our first outside money from Vine, OnDeck, and a bunch of angels and friends, including the founders of SoulCycle, Perfect Keto, Kettle and Fire, Mindbloom, and My First Million’s Shaan Puri to name a few.
We’re building a movement that can deliver peak experiences and continuously inspire awe. We’ll open our first US space next year, and in 5 years plan to have locations across all major hubs in the US and Canada.
What does your business model look like?
We have different business models for each product.
Our digital app is a membership – you can subscribe for different durations (monthly, quarterly, annually) with discounts for longer commitments.
Our physical space has a bit more flexibility to it – we allow free-form drop-ins for those who want to stop by and use the space on their schedules, and a more standard class model with guided, instructor-led experiences at set times. We also have social hours in the evenings, with longer time limits, louder music, live DJs, and healthy refreshments – these are all about encouraging connection with others.
We engage in a lot of partnerships and are always looking to team up with others to offer a mental health component for people working to transform their lives. We work with companies like Eight Sleep, Levels, Mindbloom, OnDeck, Field Trip, and many others to build on each other’s offerings.
Who do you consider to be your main competitors?
In terms of offering both the physical and digital aspects in a congruent way, nobody. We’re pioneering a new category.
Wim Hof and XPT host similar wellbeing modalities in their own physical spaces. Brthwrk offers an entry point into breathwork with their digital app, and Open has a cool spirituality-forward brand.
In terms of a total lifestyle transformation and finding more meaning, we’re gonna aim to own that.
What’s in-store for mental health in the next 5 years?
I’m most excited about accessibility. Despite all the focus on mental health, especially since the pandemic began, there’s no cool mental health brand. There’s almost nothing inspirational, that makes you say, “fuck yeah I want to be a part of that.” The only one I’ve seen is Madhappy run by Peiman Raf. There will be a SoulCycle or Soho House of mental health, where people turn to get the same mental tune-up that they get for their physical bodies at the gym.
I’m also very bullish on the impact of psychedelic therapies. Psilocybin for people in palliative care is a no-brainer. I also think couples therapy will open a massive opportunity. Divorce rates are still super high in the US. I expect every therapist will eventually recommend MDMA therapy prior to divorce. More generally, I hope 1-2 psychedelic experiences in times of stress can become the norm for anyone who seeks it.
Advances in technology will also drive a lot of change. Both neurotech companies like Flow and Halo Neuroscience, but also AI that can break down accessibility barriers and deliver proper therapy to the masses without requiring people to be vulnerable to a stranger.
What’s been the hardest part of building Othership for you?
Definitely the overwhelm that comes with building these two separate businesses. Most investors tell you to just build the app. Some tell you to just do the physical space.
It’s hard because from a financial standpoint it might not always be the best outcome to create both simultaneously, it can take away from short-term growth. But we’re trying to build a 50-year business here and want an amazing product that enables real transformation. I want people to feel that Othership is the brand they have the most emotional engagement with, and for that we need to be accessible both in-person and digitally.
On top of that decision, everything has just been a hustle. I hadn’t done a direct-to-consumer business before, had to learn digital marketing from scratch at OnDeck, and struggled through the process of building a physical space. It’s all been difficult, but that also means it’s going to be hard to copy us.
🩺 Clinical Coverage
Discussion of clinical concepts, studies, or perspectives on mental health and wellbeing.
There are a lot of different breathing exercises that fall under the umbrella of “breathwork,” and each have their own particular use cases. Dr. Zandra Palma of Parsley Health covers the general health benefits you can draw from a breathwork practice here.
In summary, breathwork:
Alkalizes your blood PH
Increases muscle tone
Has an anti-inflammatory effect
Improves blood pressure and circulation
Elevates your mood and reduces stress
Despite the well-documented effects, there haven’t been many proper studies done to build a clinical evidence base. A new study run by Matthew Johnson of Johns Hopkins intends to change that - Johnson will evaluate the impact of Holotropic Breathwork on veterans suffering from PTSD.
💰 Recent Investments, Acquisitions, and IPOs
Rundown of recent investment news in mental health and wellness companies.
Alto Neuroscience, a precision psychiatry startup, came out of stealth with $40M across its Seed and Series A led by Apeiron Investment Group (Link)
AppliedVR, a company developed virtual reality therapeutics for chronic pain, raised a $36M Series B from F-Prime Capital, JAZZ Venture Partners, Sway Ventures, and SVB Ventures (Link)
Aptihealth, which provides health plan and health system customers with integrated workflow and care management capabilities for behavioral health, raised a $50M Series B (Link)
Axial Therapeutics, a biotech company focused on treating neurological diseases, raised a $37.3M Series C led by OneVentures (Link)
Beacon Biosignals, developer of an EEG neurobiomarker discovery platform, raised a $27M Series A led by General Catalyst (Link)
BeMe Health, a digital behavioral health tool for teens, raised a $7M Seed round from Polaris Partners and Flare Capital Partners (Link)
BetterUp, a behavioral health coaching platform, raised a $300M Series E at a $4.7B(!) valuation, led by Wellington Management, ICONIQ Growth, and Lightspeed Venture Partners (Link)
BrainCheck, a company that helps assess cognitive impairment, raised a $10M Series B led by Next Coast Ventures and S3 Ventures (Link)
Brave Health, a virtual-first behavioral health provider focused on the Medicaid population, raised a $10M Series B led by City Light Capital, Union Square Ventures, and Able Partners (Link)
Cala Health, a maker of wearable neuromodulation therapy, raised a $77M Series C led by Ascension Ventures (Link)
Cerebral, a startup providing virtual mental health services, secured a $300M financing round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, bumping its valuation to $4.8B (Link)
Charco Neurotech, a developer of a neuromodulation therapy for Parkinson’s, raised $10M in Seed funding co-led by Amadeus Capital Partners and Parkwalk Advisors (Link)
Cognixion, a startup designing an intuitive brain-monitoring headset and interface for people with physical disabilities, raised a $12M Series A led by Prime Movers Lab (Link)
Delix Therapeutics, a company developing small molecules inspired by psychedelics that are stripped of hallucinatory effects, raised a $70M Series A led by ARTIS Ventures, RA Capital Management, and founding investor OMX Ventures (Link)
Elemy, an online pediatric behavioral health startup, raised a whopping $219M Series B led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and co-led by Goodwater Capital and Premji Invest (Link)
Fika, an employer-led mental fitness platform, raised a $1.7M round led by Rising Stars (Link)
Genetika+, a company developing a test that uses blood-based neurological biomarkers to predict the best antidepressant for a patient, raised a $10M Series A led by Greybird Ventures (Link)
Glorify, a subscription-based well-being app for Christians, raised a $40M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz (Link)
Hallow, a Catholic prayer app, raised a $40M Series B round (Link)
HelloHero, a digital mental health company, raised a $7.7M Seed round led by Silverton Partners (Link)
ieso, a UK-based digital mental health firm, raised a $53M Series B led by investment firm Morningside (Link)
Limbix, maker of a prescription digital therapeutic aimed at treating depression in teens, raised a $15M Series A2 led by GSR Ventures (Link)
Magnus Medical, a maker of a neurostimulation medical device, raised a $25M Series A led by JAZZ Venture Partners and Red Tree Venture Capital (Link)
Mightier, a maker of video games intended to help children learn emotional regulation, raised a $17M Series B led by DigiTx Partners (Link)
Mindful Care, a company applying an urgent care model to mental health, raised $2.7M in its Series A led by Sopris Capital (Link)
Mindhouse, a Chennai-based wellness platform, raised a $6M Seed round led by Binny Bansal (Link)
MindLabs, which offers on-demand and live video classes on mental wellbeing, raised a $3.5M Seed round led by PROFounders Capital (Link)
MindMaze, a digital neurotherapeutic platform, raised $125M in funding led by AlbaCore Capital Group (Link)
Neomura Therapeutics, a company developing precision medicine for brain diseases, was incubated by ARCH Venture Partners in collaboration with Amgen and kicks off with $500M in funding (Link)
NeuraLight, a company applying AI to advance drug development for neurological disorders, raised a $5.5M Seed round (Link)
Nirvana Health, a software platform looking to simplify mental health insurance billing, added $7.5M to its prior Seed round led by Inspired Capital (Link)
NovaSignal, a medtech company that assesses and manages brain health, raised a $37M Series C-1 led by Alpha Edison and Reimagined Ventures (Link)
Nurosene, the brain health technology company, agreed to purchase NetraMark, a developer of AI and ML solutions for pharma, for $15M (Link)
Open, a virtual mental health and mindfulness app, raised a $9M Series A led by Founders Fund and A.Capital Ventures (Link)
Ophelia, a provider of a digital opioid recovery tool, raised $50M in Series B funding led by Tiger Global (Link)
Optina Diagnostics, a developer of an artificial intelligence-powered platform to identify and classify biomarkers associated with Alzheimer’s in the back of the eye, raised a $20M Series A led by DigitalDx Ventures (Link)
Othership, a digital breathwork app and physical space that facilitates peak experiences, raised $2M in funding led by Vine Ventures (Link)
Pace, a mental health startup matching people into peer support groups, closed a $13M Series A led by Pace Capital (Link)
Pear Therapeutics, a digital prescription therapeutic company, secured up to $50M in additional capital from the SPAC it plans to merge with, Thimble Point Acquisition Corp. (Link)
Quartet Health, a company focused on matching patients to mental health professionals, raised $60M in funding led by Independence Health Group (Link), and subsequently purchased InnovaTel Telepsychiatry, a virtual behavioral health provider for an undisclosed sum (Link)
SonderMind, a digital behavioral health company, has acquired Qntfy, a predictive analytics platform that uses mental health biometric data to personalize treatment suggestions (Link)
Therify, a company building a more diverse and inclusive therapist network, raised a $1.3M Seed round (Link)
Thoughtfull, a digital mental health startup in Southeast Asia, raised a $1.1M Seed round from investors The Hive SEA, Flybridge, and Vulpes Investment Management (Link)
Three Good, a workplace wellness platform, raised $2.5M in Seed funding (Link)
UpLift, a company connecting patients with in-network therapists and mental health providers, raised $8M in a round led by B Capital Group (Link)
Valera Health, a telehealth platform focused on patients with acute mental health conditions, raised a $15M round led by Windham Venture Partners (Link)
Videra Health, a remote patient monitoring video platform for behavioral health, announced $3M in Seed funding led by Peterson Ventures (Link)
Wave, a digital mental health platform targeting young adults, raised a $2M Pre-Seed round led by Hannah Grey VC (Link)
Wayspring, which operates a value-based model for substance use disorder treatment, raised $75M including backing from Centene Corporation, Highmark, and the Blue Venture Fund (Link)
Workit Health, a provider of virtual therapy for substance use disorder, raised a $118M Series C led by Insight Partners (Link)
Zeit, a wearable stroke and seizure detector, raised $2M in Seed funding led by SeedtoB and Digilife (Link)
📖 Interesting Reads
Sometimes mental health-related. Sometimes just things I find interesting.
Take the money and run. Bloomberg
The world’s most detailed scan of the brain’s internal wiring. Twitter
Tim Cook puts his support behind the mental health app Shine. Bustle
Sick trees 🌳. Moss and Fog
Potential paths forward for rescheduling psilocybin 🍄. Scientific American
Chris Dixon explains the broader potential of Web3. Future
A long but engaging video on combinatorial game theory. Shit gets interesting at minute 12 but you’ll need the beginning for context. YouTube
Computer vision constructs incredible 3D models from 2D photos. Twitter
Transplanting a kidney from a pig to a human. NYTimes
The ocean is deeeeeeeeeep. YouTube
America’s supply chain nightmare. The Washington Post
The ingredients for novel ideas. Paul Graham
Mental model for “expectation investing.” Tomasz Tunguz
What investors can take away from Squid Game. Financial Times
How I Built This with Noubar Afeyan from Moderna. NPR
Definitely the sickest ski video I’ve ever seen. The Awesomer
Playing with curves and surfaces. Bartosz Ciechanowski
The science of mind reading. New Yorker
🧠 Mindfulness Tip of the Week
Tips to improve your mental health and wellbeing.
There’s no better place to give breathwork a try than on the Othership app itself (especially with a free trial) - you can download it on the Apple store here or on the Google Play store here.
If you prefer reading content and practicing at your own pace, you can find a list of different breathwork techniques and their descriptions from Othership here.
Finally, you can also check out the Othership YouTube channel. I followed this 9-minute session today:
On Your Mind
Email me at dt@vine.vc with any reactions to the newsletter.
If you’re working on something in mental health and wellness, let’s talk. You can book some time with me here.
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Written by Daniel Tarockoff, a partner at Vine Ventures exploring the future of mental health. Born in Michigan. Based in Berkeley, CA.