Bill Withers released the song "Lean on Me" in his 1972 album "Still Bill" about friends helping each other out during hard times, but sometimes reaching out to friends and family about personal challenges is tough. And for many people, the concept of therapy may also be off-putting, culturally a nonstarter or even intimidating.
But support networks are critical for getting through difficult circumstances, and Pace Groups, a San Francisco startup that provides virtual peer-to-peer support groups as an alternative to therapy, has raised $18 million, including a $13 million Series A led by Pace Capital, Sequoia and BoxGroup.
After an initial onboarding process to learn about what other people are going through, Pace pairs members into groups with other users who are facing similar life challenges. The groups then meet weekly for 90-minute virtual sessions that are moderated by licensed professionals.
The company charges $180 for monthly memberships but is offering a discounted rate of $89 per month through February.
Founded last year by CEO Jack Chou, COO Cat Lee and CTO Alex Shye, Pace — which is not typically covered by insurance — aims to bring mental health support to people who don't want, or can't access, therapy for any reason.
Chou and Lee met while working at Pinterest and found they had similar struggles with seeking out help during stressful times. So they created a product they wish they would've had in those moments.
"When I worked with Cat at Pinterest, I also had one of the worst years of my life there. I was in my early 30s and on paper everything sounds awesome," Chou said. "But I was really struggling with a number of different things and I didn't want to tell anybody. Now I recognize it as a mental health challenge but at the time I was afraid to call it that and wouldn't have sought help."
Chou, Lee and Shye have extensive product management and engineering experience and have collectively worked at Affirm, LinkedIn, Google, Oracle, Facebook, Qualcomm and Lockheed Martin.
Lee also spent a couple of years exploring venture capital at Maveron, Sequoia and First Round Capital, but eventually realized that she missed being on a team that was working toward a mission.
After a difficult period when she thought her marriage was over, she looked for communities on Facebook and Reddit that might've provided advice. She also didn't want to feel so alone.
While social media brings people together, it doesn't create space for deeper connections, Lee told me.
"And with the pandemic going on, it really just felt like such a great opportunity to not only help ourselves but to help so many others in creating a new kind of support system," Lee said.
The company has been running a beta program for 2021 and on Wednesday officially launched public apps for both iOS and Android.
Pace Groups currently has 14 employees across the country, and the new funding will help scale and grow the service.
A study published in September in the journal SSM Population Health surveyed respondents about their access to mental health services. Affordability was the number one issue but any barrier to access was correlated with more mental health challenges.
