Mindset and Mental Health and the start-ups in this space
A weekly newsletter on start-ups and venture
Welcome to Heroa, a weekly newsletter for women in start-ups and ventures. If you enjoy what you read, please do share this newsletter with friends and like it above!
Hello and welcome back to Heroa.
Based on user feedback, I've decided to make this newsletter more focused and a bit shorter. This week I’ll be focusing on mindset and mental health, and next week I’ll be talking more about space tech and, in particular, the software behind it.
This newsletter's mission remains the same to raise awareness of women in start-ups and ventures through publishing and promoting content that they write and by interviewing them.
This week there’s content on:
Mental health tech
Community selling
How to set up a business with your best friends
Round-up of the news this week
A Stanford study shows that ‘Zoom fatigue’ is real and is partially driven by a non-verbal overload. Spill has created “Mindful Meetings”, a product that allows you to add 2 mins of audio meditation for people before joining any call. Yuval Noah Harari: Lessons from a year of Covid. Broaden your view of ‘best’ to make smarter, more inclusive investments. Google fires AI ethics researcher Margaret Mitchell. European companies set to dominate the psychedelics market. “Buy-now, pay later” scale-up Klarna is raising $1BN at a $31BN valuation.
Insights
“There is a huge supply shortage (in mental health).” Sarah Du of Pear VC
Mapping out mental health tech: 70+ start-ups changing lives by Sarah Du of Pear VC. Six areas Sarah predicts continued momentum in are: 1) solutions for mild and moderate cases of mental illness, 2) solutions focused on prevention and upstream intervention through seamless monitoring and diagnoses, 3) the unbundling of mental health services, 4) solutions targeting youth, 5) senior-focused solutions, and 6) provider tools that monitor and improve patient outcomes.
The Rise of the Community Department by Lisa Xu of First Mark Capital. In recent years, the community has evolved from a “nice to have” to a key business priority in modern companies. Companies across different industries and sizes are waking up to the fact that community can be a driving force for some of their most important metrics and goals like acquisition, engagement, and retention — and that community can, in fact, create long-term competitive advantage.
The Community Flywheel (credit: Commsor)
From the operators
“The word ‘failure’ was never meant to be associated with the human condition. In fact, it was introduced in the early 1900s in America to describe bankruptcy.” Julie Fedele of twofeetin
‘Fail fast but don’t really fail’ by Julie Fedele of twofeetin. This is a mindset newsletter, but I’d highly recommend signing up for it so you can read about Julie’s experience of setting up start-ups (and why after her most recent newsletter, I’m now using the word experiment instead of failure).
Social influence and how brands can use it by Ana Andjelic, Chief Brand Officer, Banana Republic and Author. Social influence rests on the fact that we habitually rely on others to know what to buy, read, wear, or listen to when faced with an abundance of choice. When these others are “regular” people just like us, we tend to trust them more than we would a compensated spokesperson, a model in an ad, an invisible editor, or a distant celebrity. Ana explains how brands can leverage social influence.
Once CEO Clémentine Lalande: How I Sold Our Company. Clementine describes how she sold Once the dating app she founded to Dating Group for $18m from launch to exit.
How to start a business with your best friends by Ariadna Pui, founder of AMZA. Based on Professor Noam Wasserman’s book, “The Founder’s Dilemma”,, approximately 40% of the businesses he studied were formed by friends. However, businesses with friends-founders are also more likely to fail, according to the same research. Each social connection on the founding team increased the likelihood for the founder to leave by 30%. Ariadna talks through her lessons learnt from setting up a business with her two best friends.
Events
Venture Deals are starting their spring course on March 7th. Apply now.
Heartful Academy presents How can the world of startups and investing become inclusive & diverse? on Tuesday, March 9
Investing in women in Fintech on Wednesday, March 10
Job opportunities
Investment Professional at Oxx Ventures
SEE YOU NEXT MONDAY!
If you have any comments, questions, or want to chat about start-ups and venturing, then do drop me a comment.
Written by Alexandra Wyatt, based in London but a global traveller. You can also reach me on Twitter and Instagram.