Addressing Mental Health At Work: Modern Health Raises $51M Series C

Modern Health is providing a “fourth pillar” of health care, what Alyson Watson, founder and CEO, likes to call the company’s mental health platform for employers that compliments the typical health plan offerings of medical, dental and vision.

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“We think of people across the whole spectrum, from red to green, to provide continued support, not just when someone is in crisis mode, so when someone is faced with adversity in life, they feel good about the support they have,” Watson told Crunchbase News.

“Most providers don’t accept health insurance, so we work to get people access to therapists quickly,” she added. “Trying to get access to mental health through your employer is often like trying to use Netflix without the internet. While Modern Health sits outside the plan, it is the part solving access to care.”

How it works: Employers sign up and pay for the plan. When Modern Health is launched inside the company, employees can download the app and take some clinically validated assessments. Modern Health takes that data and creates a personalized care plan for that person, which can include anything from therapy to self-guided virtual programs to meditation prompts.

The mental health and wellness platform, headquartered in San Francisco, brought in a $51 million Series C investment round led by Battery Ventures. The firm was joined in the round by Felicis Ventures, as well as existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, 01 Advisors, Afore Capital and Frederic Kerrest.

With the new round, Modern Health has raised just over $95 million since the company was founded in 2017, including its $31 million Series B round in January, according to Crunchbase data. Watson estimates the company’s current valuation is between $500 million and $1 billion.

After receiving its Series B, the company continued to scale. It has doubled its number of customers since March, revenue has grown 25 times, and it has built a global network of mental health experts in 30 countries. Modern Health now has more than 190 enterprise clients, most of whom have more than 1,000 employees, but Watson said the company is attracting more companies with 5,000 to 10,000 employees.

The new round of funding is going to support the needs of those clients, especially in the area of product, design and engineering development, scaling the sales support, and client success, she added. In addition, Modern Health will be working on data analytics.

“We want to continue to delight and deliver for our customers, and that includes providing employer analytics and insightful reports to help them get a pulse on potential burnout on one of their teams, and how to support employees,” Watson added.

Meanwhile, mental health remains top of mind for employers, especially during the global pandemic. The global behavioral health market is expected to reach $240 billion by 2026, according to a 2019 report by Acumen Research and Consulting.

Startups in this space are also gaining attention from investors. In a list of U.S. startups working in mental health, 212 received venture-backed funding within the past five years. In fact, investors pumped $2.3 billion into these companies during that time frame, according to Crunchbase data.

Roger Lee, general partner at Battery Ventures, said via email he has seen the effects of mental health in his personal life and that society is only becoming aware of how serious of a crisis mental health is.

“Individuals facing mental health issues are still misunderstood, misdiagnosed and stigmatized at an alarming rate,” he said. “Modern Health is solving this problem pragmatically by providing scalable solutions to businesses and making mental health an integral piece of the benefits stack.

“At Battery Ventures, we realized that the B2B companies in this space were best suited to tackle this pressing mental health crisis and, out of those companies,” he said “Modern Health differentiated itself through its triaging model, where individuals are connected with the right level of care. This approach, coupled with its coaching services and comprehensive platform, makes Modern Health the company that is taking steps to address the mental health epidemic.”

Illustration: Dom Guzman