A DFW-based edtech startup has landed new funding to fuel its mission to stop student suicides.
Rhithm, a mental and emotion wellness training and content platform, received a $4 million seed round led by Reach Capital. Additional investors include SJF Ventures, Red House Education and Edovate Capital. The new raise brings the company’s total to $4.5 million.
“Rhithm is a mechanism to improve the next generation of humanity at-scale so that they don’t experience the same problems that we're experiencing so that they don’t cause more problems than we haven’t even caused and they can more effectively solve the problems that we’ve created,” said Josh Knutson, co-founder and CEO, said.
Focused on K-12 education, the FERPA-compliant Rhithm platform works by having students and staff take a quick emoji-based survey on things like their mental state, energy level and physical health, and their social and emotional state. That data is uploaded into a dashboard for teachers and districts to track individuals and macro trends occurring across campuses and districts.
Knutson said already the company is seeing real-world impacts. In one district, a student who was experiencing emotional distress and cutting themselves could receive help, preventing a potential fight that was going to happen on the campus.
“We pivoted really well to the learning environment that the pandemic brought to really be able to really give kids and staff an outlet,” said Jake Gannon, Rhithm co-founder and president. “All of this growth has happened with zero marketing. We’re really looking to harness that positive energy around the problem that we're solving… and educators, admins and kids recognize that.”
Rhithm was founded in 2019 and launched about two months before the pandemic hit. While Gannon said, it was initially a struggle, the crisis and the remote learning it caused have accelerated demand for Rhithm’s platform, especially as increased social media use has been shown to drive feelings of anxiety and depression.
“It’s like this two-way street where (the pandemic is) accelerating these mental health problems, and it’s accelerating the capacity that we have to solve them at scale,” Knutson said. “We have tools now that are touching every student, and it’s a lot easier to get in front of them.”
That acceleration has created explosive growth for Rhithm. The company currently serves around 130 districts, representing about 1,200 campuses and 100,000 students, mostly in Texas and Arkansas. It became a post-revenue company in August. Gannon said Rhithm saw about $1.2 million in revenue in the last nine months and projected around $2 million in revenue in 2021.
“For kids, it meets them with a model that they’re already using… it’s adding another cadence to something they’re all familiar with,” Gannon said.
To keep up with that growth, the company is looking to hire. The team has recently expanded from three to about six. Currently, eight positions are posted online, including openings for a director of software engineering, a director of operations and a clinical media manager.
While Knutson said in the future, Rhithm will likely look to expand into other verticals like higher education and B2B services. Its focus remains on K-12 education, where the company already has a 1 percent market share. With the new funding, he hopes that number will increase to about 30 percent within the next two years. He also added the company hopes to decrease student suicides by 60 percent.
“We have all sorts of health care crossovers, we’re going to be putting mental health care providers into this app too, but we want to say, ‘Hey, let’s not get too unfocused,” Knutson said.
