dartmouth filled weekend
Sunday, September 8
I found out about the Dartmouth Entrepreneurs Forum (DEF), scheduled for Friday, on Thursday afternoon. I immediately registered and texted Amelia. She had been when she lived in SF. She confirmed it was an amazing event and booked a 7am flight the next morning. We met at Convene on Friday morning and spent much of the next 48 hours together. A weekend full of learning and work that didn’t feel like work. Panels, fireside chats, Dartmouth angel program overview, investor round tables, dinner with funky, “low batch” Berkeley wine at Pizzeria Delfina, an afternoon of brainstorming at Laura’s beautiful Laurel Heights kitchen table, dinner with Dartmouth’s Digital Applied Learning and Innovation Lab (DALI).
Lyra and Spring are solving a narrow part of a much bigger and growing problem in a pretty uninventive way, missing big time on the GenZ and beyond populations. Are you part of the 60% of the US population that is employed? Do you work for a company that has invested in mental health/EAP? Do you feel mentally unwell and can we measure how unwell through ~15 [rigid] clinically validated assessments? Can we then diagnose you [sometimes pathologize normal human shit] using the [archaic, non-data driven] DSM-5 via a session with a [limited supply, sometimes low quality, often underpaid] licensed clinician?
How do we assess mental wellness in a more creative, human-centered way that resonates with the next generation? How do we help people on their journey of recovery beyond 1-1 therapy and medication? There are so many other ways to heal - old school clinically validated solutions and otherwise - that mass amounts of people, particularly young people, are exploring everyday. Amelia shared the list of things she’s tried with me. It was…long. I pondered my [also long] list. What has worked for what? What hasn’t? Do other people ever feel the way I do? I ask that in therapy sometimes, but because therapists are taught to focus on you and #hipaa, it goes unanswered. Would it be helpful to know what others’ are experiencing and what has worked or not for them? Sometimes I search on Reddit, but people’s posts and comments are so unstructured it’s hard to sift through and gain anything useful.
Real questions, digging to the root of human emotion and being. Inspire people to learn more about themselves through the questions and their answers, etc. Create a shared language. Answer as many as you want, opt in where you’re willing to share in aggregate with others. Do you feel you have control over this? How much does this matter to you? Review a summary, organized by the 8 dimensions of wellbeing (environmental, physical, occupational, social, spiritual, intellectual, financial, emotional). We have a hypothesis that the very questions validate your current state and create self awareness - both early steps to wellbeing. This is where we will begin - the questions, the design, the experience. Research, test, learn, analyze, pivot. More on the “what and how” we help people with this data to come - bite size curated content, aggregate options, data from your community, connection with your community are a few early thoughts.
Amelia shared a quote with me this weekend. “I am willing to start before I am ready.” I don’t know who said it, but I like it as a mantra for how I want to live my life.
A few random learnings or inspirational musings from the forum:
Time vs energy management
By 2030, there will be more 65+ than 18-
Characters as a way to personify and build a great product
Authenticity is a superpower; think about the feelings to create vs the story
Capture a person’s energy, build the system to help them learn or succeed
Don’t be the CEO/leader you think you need to be; set aside time for things you love
Behavior and tech shifts; what is happening that will shift us? Cloud, social, now AI
“You can never step in the same river twice because you’re not the same man and it’s not the same river” - Heraclitus
