GoKawiilWhen the founders of a mental health app for men called Mental saw that one feature — AI interactive audio — was resonating wildly with their users, they knew they were onto something.
And so the idea for a new, and hopefully safer, kind of AI therapy app was born, which they called The Path, co-founder and CEO Anson Whitmer tells TechCrunch.
Then famed author and motivational speaker Tony Robbins grew so enamored with this startup; he scooched in as a co-founder.
The Path has now raised $14.3 million in seed funding led by Prime Movers Lab (where Robbins is a partner), with participation from speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno, boxer Deontay Wilder, and Designer Fund.
After Prime Movers invested, Robbins began chatting with Whitmer and co-founder Tyler Sheaffer on small stuff like branding, but as his enthusiasm and ideas for the app grew, they offered to bring him in as a co-founder. The author has since helped shape The Path into a therapy-plus-coaching app that taps into Robbins’ popular self-improvements methods.
Whitmer, formerly an early employee at meditation app Calm alongside Sheaffer, says his pursuit of mental health tech was born out of tragic experiences: When he was 19, a beloved uncle committed suicide.
That inspired Whitmer to get a PhD in psychology, and he planned to go into research after graduation. But while he was in college, a cousin left a voicemail. “I didn’t realize until it was too late. It was also a call for help, and he killed himself,” Whitmer recalls.
That spurred a change of course towards work that could bring science’s findings to the masses. Working at Calm was a natural first step, as the research on how meditation improves mental health is solid. Still, after working at Calm until 2021, Whitmer felt he could do more.
“Even though we did have a big impact, it’s not really a big enough impact,” he said. “The issue is, people’s problems are just too idiosyncratic. They’re too personal. They’re unique.”
Plus, everyone will never have access to individual therapy or coaching. There just aren’t enough therapists in the world for that.
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