Since my last blog post, I have reached out to a few more companies with hopes of coordinating my interview. I last spoke about reaching out to the cofounder of MyLife, Jamie Price, and the creator of Anamone, Ananya Cleetus. I’ve not gotten a response to either of my attempts, so I continued on my quest.

I first saw this as an opportunity to understand the current virtual mental health market and the companies within the market that offer a solution specifically for students. In my research, I found BetterMynd who partners with colleges to provide online therapy for students. I reached out to BetterMynd through their general contact page, and directly to their founder Cody Semrau, and have not heard back yet.

Sanvello is a prominent mental health app with counsellors, mood tracking and forums that work with employers, insurances and colleges. I reached out to their Chief Medical Officer, Dr.Monika Roots, who also worked as a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist, which I saw as an even better advantage to the insight I can gain on student mental health and how virtual solutions can serve them best.

Wellnest is a mindfulness app that utilises journalling, mood tracking and niche content to help uses. They work with schools such as Penn State University to offer the premium version to students and analytics to the colleges to best understand their student population. I’ve contacted Marissa Hovasse, CMO and Head of Content via her Wellnest email which I found through thorough digging.

Going forward my next steps are to continue looking into the market and finding inactive businesses to contact that might have failed in the industry. I have learned though that my initial idea has a lot of similar competition, and it is up to me to either refine it to be innovative and new or change routes all together.