This week Darrell and Jordan talk with Real CEO and Founder, Ariela Safira. Real is a therapy platform that aims to make mental healthcare more accessible by offering group sessions and curriculums a user can engage with any time. While in college, Ariela had her first encounter with the mental health care system and realized that people were only seeking help for their mental health when they were in crisis. She then spent years studying the ways people seek care and how therapy could be more accessible and effective. In this conversation as they dive into everything from the research that lead her to found Real to religion to the merits of Goop. CW: suicide and attempted suicide.
This week Darrell and Jordan talk with Real CEO and Founder, Ariela Safira. Real is a therapy platform that aims to make mental healthcare more accessible by offering group sessions and curriculums a user can engage with any time. While in college, Ariela had her first encounter with the mental health care system and realized that people were only seeking help for their mental health when they were in crisis. She then spent years studying the ways people seek care and how therapy could be more accessible and effective. In this conversation as they dive into everything from the research that lead her to found Real to religion to the merits of Goop. CW: suicide and attempted suicide.
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Darrell Etherington 0:02
Hello and welcome to found. I'm your host Darrell Etherington and I'm here with the cognitive to my behavioral therapy and CO hosts
Jordan Crook 0:10
Jordan crook here. Wow, cognitive. I like to get cognitive. Yeah, that feels like a compliment. I'll take it.
Darrell Etherington 0:16
You're the thankee. One. That's just the do thing.
Jordan Crook 0:21
The animal action.
Darrell Etherington 0:22
Yeah. Today we're talking to area sephirah. Real on this show, TechCrunch is found podcast where we tell you the stories behind the Saturdays. So airy, Allah has created real, which aims to make mental health care more accessible to everyone, basically. And the way they do that is by making it affordable, so they aim to provide it in the kind of almost like a Netflix model.
Jordan Crook 0:55
I was just gonna say that. Well, it's like the Netflix model for mental health.
Darrell Etherington 0:59
Well, we think I like Jordan, because we're so smart, the smartest sides of the same brain, apparently. Yeah, they give you therapy. And the way they make it accessible is by offering a lot of group therapy. They also offer one on one but group therapy is the model that makes it different from other competing services and is also according to Arielle, something that members seem to want to do more than the individual one on one therapy, which was a surprise to me. But once she explained the reasons, it did make sense.
Jordan Crook 1:30
And it's not just group therapy that you go and attend in a group, you can actually watch videos of previous group therapies and just passively learn and listen. Yeah,
Darrell Etherington 1:38
there's like an on demand library as well. Even more like Netflix. But we do want to warn listeners out there. We do talk about mental health struggles in this episode, obviously, but we also talk a little bit about suicide. It was part of our as founding journey. And I also mentioned to her my own experience with that and talk about it in a bit of detail. So if that's a trigger for you, this might be the episode to just go ahead and skip but we had a great conversation with Aria, and I'm gonna let her take it away
Hey, Ariela, how's it going?
Ariela Safira 2:19
It's going well, I'm so excited to chat.
Darrell Etherington 2:21
Yeah, excited to have you here. You're our first guest of 2022.
Ariela Safira 2:27
Flattered happy 2022.
Darrell Etherington 2:29
Yeah, happy 2022. i This year seems to be you know, it's full of promise right. Now, how about for real is this set to be an exciting year for real and your company
Ariela Safira 2:39
very much. So, you know, we launched just about a year and a half ago as a public facing membership. And this next one I try to is all about really forming and more depth full relationship with our members and growing the platform itself through a few unique ways. And I'm very excited to see that come to life. And I hope we also have the chance to meet together as a team much more to crossing our fingers that the health of our country allows for it. And I'm very excited to get more IRL time with the team. Yes,
Darrell Etherington 3:08
we've all got fingers crossed for that to happen, for sure. But I think actually, it's worthwhile to take a step back. And just if you want to give a quick explanation of a real is for some of our listeners who might not be familiar, obviously, they're all TechCrunch fans, they've all read the terrific article by my co host here, Jordan crook. But in case they haven't give them the high level elevator pitch of what it is, this
Ariela Safira 3:28
is the first time I'm doing so in 2022. It's really what real is, is we're making mental wellness an essential part of well being. And what that looks like today is offering a monthly membership model all access through your phone that allows for you to maintain your mental health and work on your mental health in everyday format and a price point you can afford. So right now more literally members can join real at a price where for less than $20 a month. And what they have access to is every month we're capturing their mental health and identify decline or improvement. And then they have access to a suite of mental health care products all built in house by both our clinical teams and our design teams. And so we have products called Pathways. We have events, we have real talks, and they're all formats of both on demand and live opportunities to engage with various parts of our life that impact our mental health. So things like forming a better relationship with your body image and improving your communication relationships and working on your depression. So a range from like every day, frustrations, insecurities caused mental distress to the very depth full issues are really lying within us members have the opportunity to work on it all in a more accessible format.
Darrell Etherington 4:43
Jordan, I know you previously spoke to Ariel. So do you want to kick us off with what were you super interested in learning more about based on that conversation?
Jordan Crook 4:52
Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things that hit so hard for me when we first talked or Ella was how long group therapy has been around and how impactful it's been and effective it's been and yet the fact that it's generally been under employed, I mean, I know that like in my life, if I've struggled with things, my first thought is not where's the first group that I can go to talk to about this, right? Like, it's just not how our minds default when we're feeling vulnerable. For those of us who are in therapy, we set this Tuesday 1pm meeting. And my biggest moment of struggle through the week where I needed the most might be Thursday at midnight, and I might not be vibing for therapy, I might be having a wonderful day, or I just want to live in the moment and enjoy and then to like dredge up how I'm feeling and try to better myself in that moment might not be where I'm at. And so how in your life, and through your experiences, did you have the lightbulb moment for both of those things, and a little bit more on the process of how you decided to put it all together.
Ariela Safira 5:59
So there wasn't one light bulb moment, it definitely was a process of years of learning and iterating. And I'm able to tell a much clearer story. Now, you know, everything looks clearer when you're looking back then when you're in the moment, but I'm happy to share some of my background that led me to where we are today. And I should add, obviously, our team and all of their insights have contributed essentially, I started working in mental health care about seven, eight years ago, I'm not a clinician by training. I was an undergrad at Stanford at the time. And I became passionate about it when a friend had attempted to take her life. And really, that was my first experience the mental health care system, the first time I'd ever seen or visited a rehab, understood meds. And I thought the system didn't make sense. But one of the biggest issues being that the first time she met a mental health professionals and she intends to take her life, it wasn't surprising to me at the time, I thought I've never met a mental health professional am I going to wait until I'm in crisis to do so. And so I threw myself at it and haven't stopped working on it since essentially, the time I got in touch with the founder of IDEO. We hit it off and end up spending a few years working together on redesigning mental health care actually left Stanford, I thought I dropped out entirely. During that process, I went over to Liverpool, England to work out what's considered the most innovative mental ward in the world. And one of the insights they brought to life that drove to a new innovation was that the majority of people were reaching their facilities, were reaching them for the first time at crisis. So the same phenomenon that happened with my friend, and what they realized that as long as this system continues to exist within the NHS hospital system, no one's going to come into play or crisis, we have already defined the hospital as a place for illness, right for crisis. And what we have to do is meet people where they're at. And what that meant for them is that they also simultaneously identified that libraries throughout Liverpool were these centrally located beautiful buildings that were going completely unused, because new generations were not making use of libraries. So what they did is they actually redesigned what while I was there as their first library to be offer a cafe be a bit more terrified, and then offer a group classes within that cafe and free classes on things like anger, and, and all were led by non clinically trained individuals and volunteers. And they really took the format of a curriculum driven group class. And the idea was like, how do we bring this to where people already are? How do we make this convenient for them such that fewer people reach crisis, right, and such that more people have the tools to even name when they do. And I bring that up, because it's something that I'm sure has sort of manifested my brain for years. And from there, I continue to work on care. And I went to IDEO New York to work on having to redesign the healthcare, I joined city block, which really makes use of that community driven model and hiring Community Health Partners. And part of the philosophy that drives city blocks thesis that I care model is that you need people from one's community to drive that person's healthcare journey. And so in various ways, it's showed up, I'm sure in many ways you do resource group, right? It might not be a group led by a therapist, you're sort of friends who are similar to you. I do think as humans, we look for ways to bring it up. This is not a pretty long story. Digging, it's a long winded way of saying I finally dropped out of Colombia successfully, this time to sound real. And the origin hypothesis of real was, let's not just put one on one therapy online, let's not just put a cute brand on therapy. Instead, let's take 10 steps back and ask what is the definition of a successful mental health care model? And how can we bring that to life? And how I defined at the time and we certainly still define it now is first and foremost, it needs to be a system that can reach every American. Secondly, any space system that every American can afford. Third is as clinically effective. How can we prove this health whatever helps my look like and four is a has to reach people before rock bottom Hi, this huge issue takes an average of 11 years between facing symptoms of mental illness and actually reaching care. And that's really unfortunate for a person Since health, and it's really hard to treat someone when they're already at crisis, we know preventative care is such a more efficient way to build a health care system, right. And so what that looks like in practice was we raised our first round of funding. And what it was used for is one, as I mentioned, that we really needed to reach the scale of Americans and one on one therapy will never reach the scale of Americans because we don't have enough therapists, right. So at the time it was we need group models, and that looked like groups of 20 groups of 40. And second to that was, we need to build pathways and where that came from our one on one therapy is really hard to capture the benefits of or the efficacy of use, there's no beginning middle and end, it's a pretty indefinite blackhole of an experience. And people go once a week, so once a month and once a year. So it's quite hard to capture from a research perspective, what is driving someone's improve efficacy and care? Is it going once a week? Is it this therapist match? And so we built these programs is curriculum driven programs such that we would have a clearer model to work with and people can see where am I in this journey? How am I doing and the third piece that really needed a high quality conditions to bring this model to life, and high quality clinicians don't want to work at startups. I mean, now the world's a lot different. They want to work at Stanford med school and Harvard Med School. And these work environments that offer a very different culture than slack powered startups, we build this really wonderful brick and mortar location. And finally, is when you reach people sooner, right before they hit rock bottom when you did invest in both a brand and a new type of care that actually makes sense every day. So we raised our round of funding geared up to build a brick and mortar studio interviewed 126 therapists and founder founding team of five studios set to open April 2020, COVID, had run off able to do that, but ended up being a really fortunate experience for us. And I think for our mental healthcare system, in that it really forced us to open our eyes and listen to what do people most need? And what does it mean to meet people where they're at? Because we had no other option, they were not leaving your home. And what do I mean by that, essentially, really, immediately, we anticipated mental health needs are going to skyrocket, we need to put something up now. So we put up what was meant to be a one month offering a free digital pair offered in both one on one and group format. And that group format was comparable to the pathway. And that was very curriculum driven. There was a model people could look to and name and the cut two was was a huge success, not just because so many people took part in it. But even more so because we gathered learnings we've never gotten in person, one, everyone preferred group over one on one, which was a huge surprise, because a free one on one session is a far better deal than a free group. Yeah, to about half the people are joining groups anonymously, videos off names hidden and three, when we would follow up to ask, you know, hey, if you want a more private experience, do you want to join a one on one time and time again, folks would share? No, I want to be in this group. Right? I want to learn tools from the therapist, I want to learn examples from other people. And the insight that came to life is hey, the reason why I'm not going to one on one is not because of cost you remove that. It's I don't know how to talk about my body image for 45 minutes, right? What does it mean to talk about my recurring nightmares, I've never learned that I've never seen examples of that. And really, the gap was people need to learn in the same way that we have an education for so many other concepts of our life, people needed that form of education for mental health care. And from there, maybe on a one on one, maybe they won't. But the underlying thing is I need a community of people that validates me and the very thing I'm facing, and then to that teaches me where do I go from here? What does this mean? What is happening to me? And so that drove us to the care model. We're driving forward today. And wow, am I sorry, that took so
Jordan Crook 13:34
that was good that there was so much there like to unpack one of the things that stands out to me is the idea that people want to learn from therapy, it feels like bad timing with the launch of the studio and April 2020. But there's actually a lot that's really moving in your favor, right in terms of one, just our willingness to be open and vulnerable. I think this generation of millennials and even more with Gen Z are like, Yeah, I'm, I'm going to therapy, you know, there's that meme of, you know, boomers being like, she's going to therapy, and millennials being like, Listen to what my therapist said. So I think there's that one thing. And then there's also the piece where I think that breakthrough therapy, I don't know if that's what it's actually called, if that's like the technical term for it. But the idea that you go, and you talk, and you talk and you talk and your therapist says How does that make you feel? And then you keep talking? And how does that make you feel? And you have to come to your own conclusion six years later, I think that's powerful for some, but I think it's not really in vogue right now. I think the idea that you can go and learn tools, I mean, you see the explosion of people like Adam Grant and Brene Brown and kind of the way that they say, Hey, like, let's talk about this in terms that you could learn and then use moving forward and have actual tactics to deal with things and interviewing the therapists that would be right for this. How did you think about that and make sure that those are people who are not just psychologists, but are educators
Ariela Safira 15:00
Great questions, I should start by saying one of the things that really frustrated me about the mental health care landscape ahead of my founding reel was how often organizations, startups, companies would state we have vetted therapists. And yet none can answer what is the definition of a vetted therapist when I think it really does a disservice to the end client who is so unaware of what the system looks like, and really set them up for failure as they enter and meet a non vetted therapist hate them and then leave practicing their mental health care forever. So we took that really seriously from the jump and what that looked like was interviewing 126 therapists. That was the first round interview for all of them, conducting five rounds of interviews for all of them inclusive of case studies. So actually sharing a variety of this is a clinic that comes in nature XYZ, how do you respond, and then also, we sent in secret shoppers to actually go in and do sessions with them, not sharing what they're associated with real. And one of the biggest reasons for that was pretty early on, I identified every single therapist telling me the same thing. When you're storytelling your care to me, you're going to say, I have an eclectic form of care. And I meet the client where they're at. And it was a combination of psychoanalysis and CBT and DBT. And it's really hard to capture that genuinely until you're live in front of them.
Darrell Etherington 16:20
Yeah, at this point, there must be a set of like, right answers that have been established. Right,
Jordan Crook 16:25
exactly. It's those real secret shoppers are those like real employees like what how do you even no secret shoppers like go into Chipotle and make sure that they get the right change? But like I've never heard of a secret shopper going in to like do
Darrell Etherington 16:38
their I've offered secret software jobs all the time. I get that
Jordan Crook 16:43
much retail you do I assume that you get a lot of secret shopper?
Ariela Safira 16:48
Therapy? Yeah, so there were three friends all have different ages, sexualities and races so diverse in what they're asking for, at least based on the expectations of what therapy thinks is diversity diverse in that way. One is my childhood best friend is I think the most mentally unwell thing I did was see 30 therapists in one
Jordan Crook 17:08
month. But it wasn't like they went to an actual, like, secret shopper agency. And yeah, so I was about to say that what a what a order, what is. So one other thing that I wanted to talk to you about, and then I'll maybe pass the Darrow for a hot minute is you clearly I have a deep passion for the healthcare system. And for, you know, therapeutic care and mental wellness. But it's also very intellectual. The way that you're talking to us about it is I'm just curious about being the leader of a company that is focused on mental wellness must put a lot of pressure on you as a human being not just as a CEO or a founder to kind of meet the criteria of the end result of these curricula, right, or be vulnerable, but be thoughtful, and be communicative, and be empathetic, and all of these things. And so I'm just curious for you, as a human being and as a living, breathing person, how you kind of approach not so much the intellectual side of things, or the business side of things, but the emotional side of what you as a founder represent and what real represents to your team and to partners to other therapists who are trying to sign on to end users to investors, whoever write to us, I
Ariela Safira 18:19
defer to being as human as I can be. I don't soom I am the a plus student of all our pathways, I haven't completed them all. But I am certainly open and honest about what I don't know. And I think that my superpower is being able to combine the understanding people understanding the more hippie dippie side, if you will, of this and having the language to name what this means and what its impact is on an investor level on a payer or health insurance level. And think it's my job within the company to play the role of a translator as well, because we have such different departments that real people working together have never worked together. And what's so magical is wow, they all say and think in such a valuable ways the gaps are in the translation. And of course, there's like what a pm product manager was taught to say and communicate what KPIs and metrics they hold themselves accountable to. They're named differently. But the principles and philosophies behind them are very similar to what our therapy team is doing that they will never use the same words. And, you know, a great example of that is retention, right to an average therapist, that sounds like an ugly business word. Why is a goal to retain members and what I believe and certainly spend time communicating to like therapists and payers alike is the very problem with our mental health care system is that we lack retention. And so we built millions of emergency department options, millions of things to do at crisis, and we have no sustained model of taking care of your mental health. You have therapists would call us inability.
Darrell Etherington 20:00
Yeah, right? All the acute cares is the result of there being no sustainable model. Right,
Ariela Safira 20:06
exactly. And so I think it asks of me to be very patient, because startups move very quickly. And every stakeholder is asking for a pretty quick response. They're all messaging you at once and one to sustain real, I definitely think it's my job to identify and elevate the values of all people within it. And also like real will be better when I can identify it, I just need to be patient and not have knee jerk reactions and doing so and to simultaneously maintain my mental health. The process
Darrell Etherington 20:36
with Jordan was saying asking that question, it reminded me a lot of a common thing that therapists talk about, right, which is like, in my role, patients often look to me, as I should be the exemplar of everything that I'm trying to help them with. And it's like, well, that's not how this works at all right? Like, that's, whereas if you look at us, like me and Jordan, and you're like, people expect us to be, I don't know, alcoholics and spendthrifts, or whatever, like, we're in the editorial industry. So the expectations are a lot lower. But I guess it's in terms of identity, like do you identify more with the entrepreneurship community or with like, the kind of mental health professional community? Or is it a blend of both? How do you feel about that? And how do you feel like the expectations are upon you
Jordan Crook 21:22
pick aside draw.
Ariela Safira 21:25
I don't think it's so black and white, I think there are examples of founders who feel like a community to me, and there are examples of founders and entrepreneurs I'm not
Jordan Crook 21:37
very diplomatic way, I'm not aligned with
Ariela Safira 21:41
maybe because of my alignment of the mental healthcare community I emphasize and how challenging it is to be a founder and how lonely it can be, and how lack of tools and language result in some of the poor behaviors, founder, and maybe a real could help that. And I don't mean that a cheesy way. I mean, genuinely think most of the issues in this country would be solved. If we were taught proper communication and patience for one another, we just never were. And so often, I think when it comes to mental health care, we as a country are so narrow minded that we define mental healthcare as the therapy appointment, right. And early on, when I was interviewing therapists, for real, one of my questions was I would name my goal is to improve mental health in this country, my goal is not to expand therapy. And what I mean by that is, if I find that ballet classes improve the mental health of this country, I'm putting ballet classes on the map, are you with me there that takes a much more like open minded way of thinking and a much more goal oriented way of thinking as opposed to a product oriented way of thinking like I'm relentlessly don't care what the product looks like, as long as it's solving for this mission, which is probably why we were able to like seamlessly evolve from brick and mortar to this digital tool, because my energy, my connection was not with the product ever. It was what is the thing that's going to serve these people. And I think that we have a country that doesn't know how to think that open mindedly and certainly the pandemic forced us to and it's been way easier to have these conversations with stakeholders. I named this because I think what's causing our mental distress in this country is largely that we were never taught these tools. And while it's not one on one therapy, I think we would benefit far more if from K through fifth grade, you were taking classes on emotional health, I totally trust you, you're doing better than if we deploy one on one therapy to every individual in this country once they hit 45.
Darrell Etherington 23:34
Yeah, I think like what you were when you were describing the benefits of people get group sessions, like, and you mentioned it, but it sounded so analogous to just education, right? Like the way that we've designed public education is the same like in a group setting where people can not only learn from the person giving the instruction, but observe each other, and learn from your interactions and how other people handle that, and how people who have more experience with it, deal with it. And then if the people make a misstep, or whatever, like the person who's in charge, and who's the expert can correct them and model good behavior. All those things are huge benefits of group setting, right. And it brought back a fairly upsetting personal memory. But like, you know, I had a friend who committed suicide in high school and he he had attempted it first and then he ended up in the psych ward. And that was my first interaction with mental health care at all right. And, you know, we visited him in the psych ward, and it was terrifying because it was a old bad hospital, everything was locked down. It did not seem conducive to mental health at all. It seemed conducive to fear it was it looked like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or something like it was, you know, terrified, and then he eventually succeeded, right. Like he wasn't successful at attempts and he did later on, but you know, that was it for years and years and years. That was what I knew of, of mental health care, because it was totally siloed from anything else that we were doing in school or, like, you know, they did the thing that they always do. which is we have a counselor assigned to the school, you can go talk to them, if you want at whatever time and you know, nobody does that. But we did get together in groups in friends houses and talk through those things, right? It's something that is definitely missing. I mean, I guess the challenge is like, how do you turn that underground thing? How do you combine the professional spheres with that thing that is like where people are starting on their own? Right? And you talked a lot about that. But how do you actually bridge that? How do you say like, this is a place where you can keep feel comfortable coming in, if you've always only experienced the other side, where you're like, This is something over here that I don't want to touch until I absolutely have to write
Ariela Safira 25:37
one of the unlocks, we've definitely found and I believe it is before anyone says out loud, a concern. There are two years of introspection, like a certainly a taboo concern. There are two years of analyzing this in your brain. And then finally admitting it to yourself before you say it to another person. I trust that what a successful mental health care solution looks like is meeting someone within those two years. And what happens is, when it comes to like the one on one therapy solution today, which I admire for many other reasons, is they wait for the two years and then there's another like year of like so I could say up I don't know if I'm gonna say it to therapists, I was told freaks go to therapy, and then I got a whole nother stigma going on confronting. And so I think of this as like we as a community and as a country have been doing this in many ways. And tools, like Reddit are a great example of where
Darrell Etherington 26:30
we're talking. I was like, it's weird, because it's become there's so many communities, and they were for other purposes, but they end up sort of like holding each other up.
Ariela Safira 26:37
Yeah. Which is great examples of like, during that two year block, what is it that you need a space to digest without necessarily speaking, right? Like, step one is like the speaking part, even if it's typing, that's frickin hard. Right? So I need the opportunity to do that. I think that Reddit has an exceptional job at bringing that to life even sir to YouTube videos where people in the comments if you searched a lot of the sleep videos and YouTube people in the comments, threads are truly one another's support systems and speaking through what are their recurring nightmares look like? And why do they wake up at the same time every night and people we as human animals are looking for this and finding this and it's showing up in these settings that maybe weren't built for that as the only missing piece I would argue in making it a successful mental healthcare system as if it were sustainable, right, if it actually was built to sustain you in this mental health care journey, if it was guided by a professional, I use the word guided intentionally as no one is the expert on you you are but what a trained professional allows for as someone who knows how to identify and name what is going on, and offer the course correction the tools that would otherwise make a group by having a group
Darrell Etherington 27:53
Yeah, both those examples you brought up and are perfect for describing what happens when that is not present, right, because you have so many of them end up being very dangerous or hateful groups. Since you're a found listener, I'm gonna bet you're also pretty interested in startups and technology. So great news, we're gonna give you an offer for 50% off, subscription to Extra Crunch. Extra Crunch is TechCrunch is a premium product. And what you get there are deep dive interviews with some of the best startup founders and investors in the industry. You get surveys of different investors in different areas of expertise and geographies, you get market maps of opportunities in new and emerging industries. And you also gets deep dive looks at some of the so you can subscribe to Extra Crunch at Extra Crunch. COMM that's probably the easiest way. Or if you're already on TechCrunch, follow the links for Extra Crunch. And you'll get a prompt to subscribe and then just enter that code that's found the name of this podcast during checkout and you'll get 50% off on either a one year or a two year subscription.
Jordan Crook 29:01
So I wanted to deeper into this thing that's happening naturally. Right? And it leads me a little bit to real as a brand. Because, yeah, okay, I have sleep problems. So I look up sleep videos. And then because I can't sleep, I'm in the comments and Oh, someone gets it, I can talk or I go to read it to get my mind off of this anxiety that I have. And I'm in this community. So like, it's a backdoor. It's not like an active I need to go do this. Right? For example, with girls example, if they had said, Hey, we have a counselor assigned to the school come in groups and talk in a comfortable setting. Still probably wouldn't have happened. Right? Right. It happened naturally when they were hanging out in a basement with the friends. Oh, you remember so and so like, let's talk about this. And it just happens organically. How do you develop a brand where the moment someone hears about real they don't think the same thing that they probably have thought this whole time of that two year block or whatever.
Ariela Safira 29:56
So what I'm hearing is if most of these solutions, be it, read it or the guidance can sort of middle school or a therapist exists as a cue point solution. It's still the case that I go when things suck, and then I leave. And how do you build a system that has sustainability? How is real doing? So it takes a combination of redesigning the emotional and tactical design or elements of the solution? What I mean by that, first and foremost in a tactical perspective as to be affordable enough that people will do it month over month, right, all of these solutions, particularly for adults, they cost an amount of money. And we as people in this society are constantly checking their credit card statement to see is this worth my time needs to be low enough cost, too is in needs to spark joy. Joy is not the same as happiness, right? You have to feel a reason for coming a purpose. And we're constantly figuring this out at real constantly iterating and people are also constantly changing, right? And these past two years, were a great testament of wow, what does someone need to feel well in this environment, and that accountability, I think comes in two different ways. One is socially, we are more accountable to work that has co workers in it than consulting work, right? We like gravitate towards other human beings, what other human beings need of us. So I think a solution requires that bout of, I have a person I'm accountable to I'm eager to hear what's happening to them next week, I want to share what's happening. And also the second piece which I personally resonate with more is the system needs to be offering me something such that I have unique value if I stay here for a year. An example of that is like what are you capturing within me? What story are you identifying that and the year, I want you to hold that the investor way putting it as data. But the internal way is like, there are so many examples of one of the best tools we know in mental healthcare there are so few things we can point to and say we know this maintains mental health. And one of those very few things is daily journaling. Who daily journals don't mean in journalism industry, guys are doing this. People are not doing it. Why? Because I don't feel any accountability to my notebook. And I don't feel any accountability. I mean, like Google Docs, and I might feel good in the moment. But there is no relationship I have with Google Docs, I would love a platform who I journaled within and actually told me a story through that journaling and actually fed me a year later, like this is where you were at a year ago, build a platform that allows me to form a relationship with myself. And that is really hard, it's really hard to even translate their like emotional piece of that to a technical or product format of it. But the point being is that forming a relationship with yourself is such a fuzzy concept I'd bet for most, if not all Americans, and the goals of a sustainable mental health care system is one that shows you there's value to doing that. And that actually operationalizes it, you know, an analogy I constantly think to and I haven't yet cracked what it is. They constantly think about religion and I was raised by parents of two different religions and follow neither. So I'm so different from like, what is religion? You know, people in many ways it religion is a pursuit of the same thing that we're trying to get to today in mental health care, religion tied that purpose to a different higher power, a different being. But conceptually, it was solving for a lot of what mental health care today it's trying to bandage our lack thereof, things like human beings need community, human beings need constant perspective checks. And I think and again, I don't know religion, but I do understand that it is the concept of weekly Shabbat, the concept of weekly Sunday church, I think what it brings to light is we need to be routinely removed from our everyday life or
Jordan Crook 33:33
even just like the existence of a higher powers of perspective, check, right? Like, oh, yeah, I'm small. Yeah, let's zoom out a little bit. I think it boils
Darrell Etherington 33:41
down to like, structure, community and narrative are the three main ingredients. And like, those are the things really yeah, those things, right.
Unknown Speaker 33:50
Mm hmm. And I might take that from you. I'll quote. Yeah, that's good.
Darrell Etherington 33:54
All I need is charges a 15% of the company.
Jordan Crook 34:01
He's gonna keep up the income for all of his funding. Retail there. Yeah.
Darrell Etherington 34:05
Which is a valid form of therapy. No. I think we're also like, what we do is his his writing, right, but like, I think in general, people like cohesion in their own personal narrative. A lack thereof is what causes the problem. And then what you're getting at is the same thing where you're like, what you want is to be able to look back and see like the story progressed.
Jordan Crook 34:26
Yeah, and even one on one therapy like I don't know that that's very present, right? Like you might get a good therapist who's like, let's take a look back. And you know, let me glance at my notes and show you like what you were saying about yourself a year ago versus six months ago versus today. I don't think that's very common right at all. I think it's really like onward.
Ariela Safira 34:47
We think we remember a year ago we go we real do an annual reflection, both in written form and video form. And then every year we put the previous year's together in a shared video format and last year I looked at mine, but I do not recall saying, leave to this. It was a really beautiful recognition of growth of evolution development. And I think particularly when we start thinking of the younger demos and what care looks like for them, we have to be all the more thoughtful because you know, we're seeing these headlines that are speaking to her mentally distressed, they are mentally unwell they are not only are they facing mental illness at higher rates than anywhere else, but they also they are not relating to the traditional healthcare system. They were born into a digital first world they were born into a world driven by short form content driven by products that gather, analyze, understand their data, so freakin deeply, like a second the product speaks to them. They're speaking the same language and their same accent. And we're seeing it statistically, they're not engaging with the healthcare system the way older generations do. And they're a lot more vocal when they see gaps, right Millennials already are both were vocal Gen Z's vocal. And something that I'm worried about is we have a lot of examples of people putting the care system that exists today online and then dumping a lot of money on marketing to spread that to the masses. And one of the big problems is that care system itself, that's what needs updating, right? The same reasons while I was at Columbia, I'm like, wow, yeah, Freud made this 120 years ago, this did not apply to my people 120 years ago, it definitely does not apply to me today. When you think of these younger demos, and they were born in such different worlds that really resulted in different behaviors, different illnesses, different manifestations of illnesses. I think it's always been flawed that we had such a clear cut definition is how does depression manifest? And how does anxiety manifest that was always problematic, but now it's reaching greater extents? Because people are changing more rapidly and changing more rapidly than the healthcare system is keeping up with right Snapchat, and Instagram and Peloton are far better at adapting their versions of a care model for their user and understand the user and iterating based on that user than the healthcare system that maintains or health
Jordan Crook 36:56
maybe not for the benefit of the user. But yeah, right. Yes,
Darrell Etherington 36:59
yeah, their motivations are not aligned.
Ariela Safira 37:03
But yes, iterating, for sure. To think of it through that lens of I mean, it was already flawed. The Care System assume these very few clinicians dictated what humans are. And these research papers at sample sizes of 30, white guys became the definition of mental illness across the entire world always problematic. And now that gap is gonna look even wider. We're talking to demographics who changed very much and are vocal when they notice care products, systems don't resonate with them. Part of
Jordan Crook 37:34
the reason that I wanted to talk about like the brand, right, like the front door of real Yeah, was because I was reading through the article that I wrote a while ago. And it was really interesting, because Megan Rapinoe, and Eric Kendrick, yeah, Kendrick are investors and presumably, in some way shape, or form brand ambassadors as well, right. They have huge platforms. And it was interesting, because Megan and Eric, they seem picture perfect for real, right. Like, Megan is known for speaking her mind being vulnerable, just saying what she wants and needs and kind of going after it. And Eric also, I think, is known for being pretty vulnerable, especially as like a big NFL to just be like, oh, yeah, it wasn't like I was suffering from something really acute and serious. But I just felt off and wanted to do something about it, right, like, can't find two better people when the other person on a cap table, which I didn't realize when I was writing it, but I am now going to Paltrow who does not have a great reputation for like wellness, right or like credibility. And so I'm just curious, how did that happen? How did you think through that in terms of bringing Gwenyth on because you have these two people who are brand ambassadors that feel so aligned and then one it's just feels like it comes out of nowhere a little bit for you and what I know of you and what I know of real
Ariela Safira 38:48
so I think one is pow tro invested in an incredibly admirable mission. And that was there are a lot of hippie dippie Frou Frou things that could be incredibly valuable to the world but remain perceived as hippie dippie Frou Frou because there is no legitimize respected platform that story tells them. She built that platform. One like any brand, sure there are going to be gaps or hurdles along the way. And I'm someone who doesn't have a TV and never had a TV. I follow celebrities all too much. So I do think we hold them to a standard that is not human. She is a founder and CEO and not a I don't think PhDs are that impressive either. But she's not a PhD MD you know, in all of sciences, she speaks who she is, and some people agree, some don't. But I think her underlying mission actually quite resonated. It manifests in a very different way. And goop is a very different kind of company. But understood, there are things that could be very valuable. And what's so unfortunate is people often find them when they hit a rock bottom part of their life, right? It's almost a cliche that the person finds spirituality or finds crystals find acupuncture when they lose everything. And that mystery does a disservice to the world. How can I bring that mystery to light in approachable format? Maybe those who are woke in New York City in LA, like that's not approachable. And I already knew what acupuncture is. So who cares. But those in the middle of America and like certain other areas don't have that access to information. And so certainly different brand in many ways, though she had continues to be very helpful and naming, what are those gaps and also teach me and I know any other founder she's invested in like, is when things get hard, and this is how to solve for them. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it
Jordan Crook 40:27
does. Definitely.
Darrell Etherington 40:28
Yeah. Also your point about like, people being too hard on that too hard on but like, I'm very harassed. Because I'm not hard on celebrities to the jury. It's sort of like the culture of celebrity. Yes, I don't want to participate in the culture celebrity I don't think should exist, but that is actually more sympathetic to the individuals they're in. And I think also like a lot of what she's doing, and I, by no means want to be like an apologist for goop, or whatever. But like, a lot of what she's doing is that thing where it's like, Let's speed up the process of you going to these places and extremes, I was
Ariela Safira 41:05
gonna add, I do think we are not good at treating things as tools our brain defers to everything is God, I'm in particular, in mental health care, this shows up, someone goes to a therapist once and they're still depressed after a session, their mental health care doesn't work, when we instead think of it as this is one tool for me to use to improve my mental health. And we center ourselves in that story. And this is one tool biased by this person, or this organization, still will be helpful to me, but I will remain well don't care how the organization or the person does, I will remain well, for them as identify this is one tool that has one format, what do I feel what I resonate with, when I process it, right when I take part in it, and I think that approach to be taken when we engage with therapists, when we engage with products, spirituality, fitness, maybe it's human, that we're all looking for a purpose. And we apply that to everything in front of us. Maybe that is intrinsically human. And the best way that we know how to feel settled as if we belief in something or partnership with something means like, this is my new higher power, right? And
Jordan Crook 42:10
we want black and white, gray, so uncomfortable for him. So it's like the Oh, therapy didn't work. I'm still depressed therapy is a waste of time. Or it's like my therapist said, yeah, right. Bible, right, there is no, like my therapist said that I could do one of two things. And maybe I should feel those out and see how it works. We prefer binary so much more.
Darrell Etherington 42:34
In my experience, a therapist presented that way. Like here are some things that may be of use to you, but your like stupid human animal brain takes it away, like, oh, that's the way to do it. Yeah, no, you're doing nice trick.
Ariela Safira 42:48
We just don't, I mean months ago to off track, but like we weren't the education system we were raised in, I don't think it taught us to trust ourselves that much like all of these hurdles. And certainly these issues are raising really come down to the fact that we don't value our own point of view enough our own perspective enough. And it is way easier to say my therapist said than it is to say I don't want to take part in this, right? So often humans resort to rather than telling someone, here's how I feel about you this feedback I have on you instead, say everyone's saying that it's vulnerable. And we weren't taught how to stand our ground that way, and how to maintain respect from others when the opinion is just ours, as opposed to be the opinion of many others. And I'm not sure how we best learn that I don't know how we marry learning to respect and value ourselves and also being like a part of a greater community.
Jordan Crook 43:37
Well, I think entrepreneurs have a big role in that, like, especially entrepreneurs like you, because I think that what you said about, I've always talked about it as being more obsessed with the problem than the product. But you kind of said the same thing, right? Which is like, if it's ballet classes that get the job done, then we're going to do ballet classes. I think that just like in the education system hasn't taught us like stand up for I believe in this. It also hasn't accounted for, there are five or six different ways to do long division, right? Like they do it differently in Japan than they do it here. Right. So the ability to kind of say like, my means are going to be different than yours, but our ends are the same also feels very difficult for humans. I think that my path is this way and your path is that way. But we're going the same direction. That part for whatever reason, our stupid animal brains can't compute that either. Right? So I think that entrepreneurs who think the way that you do and are able to translate and say like, you're going here and you're going here, but we're all ending up at this station over here is super useful and can set an example right because I assume that the people working with you and the people around you are learning some of that as well.
Ariela Safira 44:44
Wow, this talk really has me thinking a lot about religion. Like maybe this was some more line benefit to it. And because we're lacking that, like where do we go on Sunday mornings? What do we do on Friday evenings? We're like looking for some moment like when do we come back together? Like how do I feel certainty I still have community And I do see what humans are gravitating towards, by looking at the issues we face today and what we might need that sense of like, I need constant tabs, and I have a community. And it's funny because on one hand, millennials and Gen Z are both like most relentlessly free from community and incapable to make individual decisions, which might actually make sense in your move both but knit you know, we're moving more and living further away from families breaking those traditions, but not necessarily feeling the comfort and certainty to do our own thing. We are grasping for community via likes and reshares. And,
Jordan Crook 45:35
and the most like surface. Yeah, totally. That's really
Darrell Etherington 45:39
a name only.
Ariela Safira 45:42
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time was so nice to have an authentic conversation.
Darrell Etherington 45:52
Yeah, it was great. It was especially nice, was our first one back. So it really sets the tone for the year,
Ariela Safira 45:58
maybe don't interview a crypto guy after.
Darrell Etherington 46:08
All right. So that was our conversation with our our Jordan, you brought areola to the show? What did you find most interesting about Ariel and real.
Jordan Crook 46:16
So I think her framework for the way she thinks of herself as a founder was really interesting. Obviously, she's gone really, really deep on the whole mental health aspect of things and how the system should change how she could change the system, etc. And has kind of grown into a founder that really sees her company having all these different departments and organizations that she's supposed to translate for them, which I think is a good way to think about it. You know, we think of like, a CEO is leading the vision. And they do but there's also a lot of like making sure the right hand of the left hand know what's going on. And that she put it in really clear terms when she was talking about like the health team versus the product team and how they're working towards the same goal. But they're using completely different language. And there needs to be an intermediary there. So I really liked that.
Darrell Etherington 47:01
Yeah, it's a I think it's underappreciated how much the CEO is responsible for internal communication and cross organizational communication, and how important that is, especially I think it startups where you're blending technology, and something else that's like a profession with a lot of built in knowledge and very different ways of doing things. And we've talked to a few founders about that, about the experience of integrating teams with vastly different sets of experiences. I think she's the first person I've talked to who kind of like listed that as their magic power, or whatever their core competency in that role. So I think that's super interesting, especially in the context of a company that's all about,
Jordan Crook 47:44
yeah, makes a lot of sense. Because a product is about communication, empathy, right? Like these things that it takes to be a good thoroughfare for information to a large group of people with differing short term agendas, same long term goal. So I also thought towards the end, I mean, we tend to do this on found we're just kind of like wander off to some existential conversation. It's kind of our style, but I really enjoyed it this time, not other times. I particularly enjoyed it this time, because I thought, the conversation around the different generations the way they approach mental health, the way they approach just like bettering themselves we're improving in general was interesting. I thought it was funny how she kept being like, I can't stop thinking about religion. Yeah, right. Like we got real metaphysical. So
Darrell Etherington 48:28
yeah, I mean, yeah, that was definitely a recurring theme. We talked a lot more about religion than I was expected to the answer to that conversation, that's for sure. I also thought it was interesting how you brought up the obvious surface level at least conflict between the perception overall of goop as a brand and having like Gwyneth Paltrow on board as investor and that generates some interesting conversation. It ended up being a lot more nuanced than I think probably people might assume. And I like how I defended Gwyneth Paltrow which is like not really
Jordan Crook 48:59
yeah style. I thought that was interesting turn of events for sure. So you said we talked about religion more than I expected definitely way more because I expected zero talk of religion so that was one shocker. And then we talked about celebrities and I found myself in a to be one that's right. Somehow being the only one who was like shady like I don't know
Darrell Etherington 49:24
where I guess against Jordan poor celebrities leave them alone Jordan you bully
Jordan Crook 49:29
Yeah, we should get them together.
Darrell Etherington 49:33
That's gonna do it for us here but if you enjoyed this future, this debate where we debated the merits of both religion and celebrities, one in the same Please rate and review the podcast we really appreciate when you rate and review podcast especially when you give us the top review the top rating five stars. It's literally like it's I mean to go remember
Jordan Crook 49:57
we have like a base 10 Society That's a five star rating, you
Darrell Etherington 50:01
have to go have a CAT scan, and they're gonna, there's gonna be this is dark, but it's also funny. There's gonna be a shadow on the thing and it's gonna be like, This is the era of your brain that's responsible for remembering how many stars there are in the rating system at night.
Jordan Crook 50:15
Just the number five, but it's not the number five, or summary. It's just one.
Darrell Etherington 50:22
Anyways, do Yeah, give us a great review. There's a chance we'll read it on air do and of course, tune in next week. We'll be back giving you everything there is to give. That's all we do. We give it all givers. Round is hosted by myself, TechCrunch news editor Dale Etherington and TechCrunch Managing Editor Jordan crook. We are produced by shad Kulkarni and edited produced by Maggie Stamets TechCrunch his audio products are managed by Henry pick of it. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever get your podcast and on Twitter at twitter.com/found. You can also email us at found@techcrunch.com and you can call us at 510-936-1618 and leave us a voicemail. Also, we'd love if you could spare a few minutes to fill out our listener survey at bit.li/found listener survey. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai