Technology

The millennial generation — people born between 1981 and 1996 — are on the cusp of becoming Americalargest generation, according to projections from the U.S. Census Bureau. What else we know about this demographic: millennials are increasingly choosing to live at home with their parents, put off marriage and children, and not buy stuff like cars and luxury goods but instead access those goods through sharing services.

What they can&t do without: wellness. Itone area where they&re willing to spend money on compelling brands and experiences, even when they cost anarm and a leg. And thatsomething that Soraya Darabi, Will Nathan, and Marina Hadjipateras inherently appreciate as millennials themselves, as well as, more newly, investors.

In fact, after embroiling themselves in startups — Nathan started an interior design startup called Homepolish; Darabilast startup was a (now-shuttered) fashion marketplace called Zady;Hadjipateras worked as VP of investor relations for her familyshipping company, Dorian LPG, which went public in 2014 — the three friends decided to try funding companies that make their peers feel good.

Enter Trail Mix Ventures, a New York-based outfit that invests in the &future of living well.&

Ita broad mandate, but the trio apparently sold the idea,securing enough capital — $3 million — from founder friends in January of last year to get started. Some of the then-nascent companies they have backed since includeThe Wing, a 2.5-year-old women&s-only work and community that has now raised $42 million altogether;Parsley Health, a two-year-old, membership-based wellness practice with locations in on both coasts that has raised more than $10 million; and Henry the Dentist, a two-year-old mobile dental clinic whose seed investors also include the early-stage, New York-based venture firm Brand Foundry.

Asked where the three get their deal flow, Nathan points to the many entrepreneurs who Trail Mix counts as investors, including cofounder Neil Parikh of the sleep company Casper; cofounder Nick Taranto of the meal kit company Plated; and Warby Parker cofounder Neil Blumenthal, who is also CEO of the eyewear company.

Nathan says the broader network in New York that the friends have built over the years also &opens doors for us and connections that help founders get to their next level.&

Meanwhile, Darabi notes that while a lot of investors talk about being former founders, having so recent a memory as the three do of being in the trenches adds meaningful value. She calls it &founder-to-founder intimacy.&

Whatever the case, things have gone well enough that the outfit — which is officially closing its debut fund today with $11 million — has now funded 16 companies altogether, typically via first checks that are roughly $300,000 in size.

Ittoo soon to say how any of bets will fare longer term, of course. But one is doing sufficiently well that Trail Mix is right assembling a special purpose vehicle (essentially a pop-up fund designed to invest in one startup) to enable its backers to invest more in the company.

Asked if more of these SPVs are in the firmfuture, she says, &Absolutely. We receive a lot of inbound interest from our [investors] in doing these.&

Given that kind of traction, along with the opportunity the group is chasing — new startups are cropping up every day focused on broadening access to wellness — we&d guess a new fundraising effort can&t be too far off for Trail Mix, either. Stay tuned.

Goodwall, a US-focused student and graduate professional network which aims to connect young people with college and employment opportunities, has closed a $10.8 million Series A funding raise.

The round was led by Randstad Innovation Fund, a strategic corporate VC fund that focuses on recruitment, and Swiss private equity firm Manixer. Additional investors include Francis Clivaz, Zurich Cantonal Bank and Verve Capital Partners.

The 2014 founded startup says it will be using the new funding to grow the professional network, which has a core demographic of 14-24 year-olds, and more thanone million members at this stage.

&Our main initiative with this round of funding is hiring new talent in New York to support our expansion,& saysTaha Bawa, co-founder and CEO. &The funding will be used to grow our product team to provide better features for our two demographics: Highschool and college students. We are growing our sales team as well, to handle the demand that enterprises have shown in our talent.&

&The United States is our current focus and will continue to be the focus throughout 2018. We will be growing with our students and serving them in college,& he adds.

&We intend to widen the appeal to the college/post-grad segment by focusing on driving value in terms of being found easily (via a mobile-first experience) by the companies that are interesting to them, whether they be startups or larger companies, for internships or first jobs. Beyond this, as with high school students, we will provide current college students the ability to connect and support each other.&

Goodwallbusiness model is based on generatingrevenue from colleges and enterprises looking to recruit students on the platform.For its target young people, the pull is an online platform where they can connect with fellow students and try to get ahead by showcasing their skills and experience, networking, and learning about education and employment opportunities.

Goodwall says it matches its college student and graduate users to employers for job and internship opportunities, while its high school students get connected to colleges and scholarships.

The startup is competing with traditional college and larger job boards but Bawa argues that its matching process offers an advantage to employers because itscreening candidates so they get more relevant applications, rather than scores of irrelevant ones which they then have to sift themselves.

The platform generally offers employers a way to source, connect and engage with a pool of motivated students and graduates — with employers able to pay Goodwall to get their brand in front of thetypes of students or recruits they&re looking for.

&The typical Goodwall user is an English speaking, aspirational go-getter that is either college-bound or in college,& says Bawa. &Goodwall does not aim to only serve the 1% in terms of grades and achievements, though we have many students in this category, from Robotics Fairs winners to Olympic Champions. Rather we strive to serve all ambitious, hardworking students and bring their uniqueness to light via our comprehensive profiles.

&In high school these go-getters may not always be the best students academically, or at the college level, they may not necessarily be enrolled at top ranking institutions. Ultimately, these are the type of students we are looking to work with and the type of talent our partner universities and companies are looking to recruit.&

At the highschool level, Goodwall is also competing with scholarship and college matching websites but Bawa arguesit also offers kids additional value — given the platformfocus on building a community around achievements, connections and mutual support.

The network is also of course competing with LinkedIn — certainly at the older end of its age range. But because Goodwall offers tools for high school students ithoping to get in early and build a relationship that lasts right through college and users& early career path, by acting as &the first resume they build&.

&We grow with them,& is howBawa puts it.

While the startup is taking VC funding now to focus on further building its network in the US, he confirms it would be open to an exit to a larger professional or student focused network in the future, saying: &We&d like to continue growing with our members.&

Commenting on the Series A in a statement, Paul Jacquin, managing partner at Randstad Innovation Fund, added: &We&re excited to support the Goodwall team in building a new segment with college and graduate demographics after their success in creating a unique and positive community to gain support, receive guidance and opportunities. The level of engagement on Goodwall has been impressive and unique in its community aspect. We are thrilled to bring the platform to its next chapter of growth.&

In recent months, we&ve seen more and more funding flowing into tools for mental wellness — whether thatAI-driven tools to help patients find help to meditation apps — and it seems like that trend is starting to pick up even more steam as smaller companies are grabbing the attention of investors.

Thereanother one picking up funding today in Spring Health, a platform for smaller companies to help their employees get more access to mental health treatment. The startup looks to give employers get access to a simple, effective way to start offering that treatment for their employees in the form of personalized mental wellness plans. The employees get access to confidential plans in addition to access to a network and ways to get in touch with a therapist or psychiatrist as quickly as possible. The company said it has raised an additional $6 million in funding led by Rethink Impact, with Work-Bench, BBG Ventures, and NYC Partnership joining the round. RRE Ventures and the William K. Warren Foundation also participated.

&…I realized that mental health care is largely a guessing game: you use trial-and-error to find a compatible therapist, and you use trial-and-error to find the right treatment regimen, whether thata specific cocktail of medications or a specific type of psychotherapy,& CEO and co-founder April Koh said. &Everything around us is personalized these days & like shopping on Amazon, search results on Google, and restaurant recommendations on Yelp & but you can&t get personalized recommendations for your mental health care. I wanted to build a platform that connects you with the right care for you from the very beginning. So I partnered with leading expert on personalized psychiatry, Dr. Adam Chekroud our Chief Scientist, and my friend Abhishek Chandra, our CTO, to start Spring Health.&

The startup bills itself as an online mental health clinic that offers recommendations for employees, such as treatment options or tweaks to their daily routines (like exercise regimens). Like other machine learning-driven platforms, Spring Health puts a questionnaire in front of the end employee that adapts to the responses they are giving and then generates a wellness plan for that specific individual. As more and more patients get on the service, it gets more data, and can improve those recommendations over time. Those patients are then matched with clinicians and licensed medical health professionals from the companynetwork.

&We found that employers were asking for it,& Koh said. &As a company we started off by selling an AI-enabled clinical decision support tool to health systems to empower their doctors to make data-driven decisions. While selling that tool to one big health system, word reached their benefits department, and they reached out to us and told us they need something in benefits to deal with mental health needs of their employee base. When that happened, we decided to completely focus on selling a &full-stack& mental health solution to employers for their employees. Instead of selling a tool to doctors, we decided we would create our own network of best-in-class mental health providers who would use our tools to deliver the best mental health care possible.&

However, Spring Health isn&t the only startup looking to create an intelligent matching system for employees seeking mental health. Lyra Health, another tool to help employees securely and confidentially begin the process of getting mental health treatment, raised $45 million in May this year. But Spring Health and Lyra Health are both part of a wave of startups looking to create ways for employees to more efficiently seek care powered by machine learning and capitalizing on the cost and difficulty of those tools dropping dramatically.

And itnot the only service in the mental wellness category also picking up traction, with meditation app Calm raising $27 million at a $250 million valuation. Employers naturally have a stake in the health of their employees, and as all these apps look to make getting mental health treatment or improving mental wellness easier — and less of a taboo — the hope is they&ll continue to lower the barrier to entry, both from the actual product inertia and getting people comfortable with seeking help in the first place.

&I think VCare realizing therea huge opportunity to disrupt mental health care and make it accessible, convenient and affordable. But from our perspective, the problem with the space is that there is a lot of unvetted, non-evidence-based technology. Therea ton of vaporware surrounding AI, big data, and machine-learning, especially in mental health care. We want to set a higher standard in mental healthcare that is based on evidence and clinical validation. Unlike most mental health care solutions on the market, we have multiple peer-reviewed publications in top medical journals like JAMA, describing and substantiating our technology. We know that our personalized recommendations and our Care Navigation approach are evidence-based and proven to work.