Improving Mental Health for Millions of Teens - Appa Health
Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in mental wellness but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Robert Miller, Co-Founder of Appa Health, located in Oakland, CA, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
Our mission at Appa is to help millions of teens improve their mental health through meaningful relationships. We do this by pairing teens with near-peer mentors (adults aged 21-35) who have backgrounds in the helping professions. Along with weekly 1:1 mentorship, our teens also have access to our content library: an evidence-based set of skill-building tools anchored in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, designed by our clinical team, and formatted into GenZ-friendly, engaging, short-form videos. With this approach, teens are motivated by mentors who have walked a similar path. Through those relationships, we can deliver skills that teens can use for the rest of their lives. We’re currently reaching families and teens through private and public high schools. In the future, the program will also be available as a part of employer health care plans.
Tell us about yourself
My wife and I have four kids. Just before the pandemic, our oldest son struggled with anxiety and depression in his senior year of high school. It was a gut-wrenching experience. To begin, it was really challenging to find an available therapist to help him – we struggled getting recommendations, and when we did, the ones we found had months-long waits. Even when we did find one, the structure of traditional talk therapy didn’t seem like a great fit for our son. As we talked to other parents and looked at the data, we realized we weren’t alone: mental health challenges for adolescents have become incredibly widespread in the past few years. Just about everyone raising kids have been impacted by this crisis, yet there aren’t enough resources specifically catered to adolescents. Coming out of that experience, I decided to do something about it. I was fortunate to already be in the digital mental health space, where I was exposed to wonderful clinical experts. With their input and input from my son and an incredible group of teen advisors, our founding team was able to design a program that is affordable and highly effective in getting kids better.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
Earlier in my career, I brought to market solutions that saved time and money for businesses, which is important. In my more recent roles, I have been fortunate to work with teams focused on having a significant positive impact on mental health and quality of life. Simply put, the work I am doing now feels more urgent and meaningful. My biggest accomplishment is having a direct impact on mental health by way of innovative, evidence-based approaches that reduce stigma and make support more affordable and accessible to those most in need.
What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?
Fear of failure is something that comes along with launching a startup. Founders always face pressure that they may let down their team, investors, and families by failing to execute or just missing the market need and timing. One way we’ve been able to better manage that pressure is to focus on moving quickly and prioritizing clarity over certainty. There is no ‘perfect’ in a startup context, so we optimize for quickly testing and de-risking our assumptions to find the best answer for our teens, given sometimes tight circumstances. The one area where we are much more conservative is around family support and teen safety. We spend all the time we need there and invest additional resources to make sure we are delivering the absolute best product, from all dimensions to our teens and their families in regard to safety.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
Find a problem you and your team are deeply committed to solving. Make sure your customers see clear differentiation and a high level of value compared to their existing options. Lastly, take care to surround yourself with a mission-aligned team of co-founders and advisors with complementary skill sets. That shared vision and diversity of strengths will be your foundation for success.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.appahealth.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/appahealth/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-miller-profile/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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