Mental health problems impact millions of people. All 7.7 billion people living on Earth might suffer from anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and other symptoms at any given time. 

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, one in four people older than 18 in the United States experience mental health issues each year. The pandemic has increased the rates of people with new or worsening mental illnesses. 

With mental health, the biggest challenge is keeping track of one's mental health and ideally maintaining positive mental health. To date, tracking mental health has been an art, not a science. There are thousands of wellness and meditation apps available but none of them can track your actual mental health in real-time. There is no way to connect the dots between self-assessed mental health and multiple vital signs from heart rate variability (HRV) to quality of sleep, stress level, noise level, and more. Biosignals in combination with visual and environmental data create a full picture of the member’s mental health status and help to track the efficacy of interventions in real-time. 

We are excited to partner and invest in the brilliant Earkick team in helping proactively prevent mental health problems with the first real-time data-driven mental health tracker. Their deep tech artificial intelligence platform will analyze health markers, vital signs, voice and sentiment analysis to detect early signs of anxiety, depression and other mental health problems. We see a tremendous value in tracking mental health in real-time and believe that Earkick will improve the quality of life for billions of people. 

We at LDV Capital have led their $1M pre-seed financing and this article shares more details.

Earkick is actively hiring machine learning & iOS software engineers who share the vision of improving mental health for people around the world. They have a distributed team. See if you are a perfect fit for their job opportunities.

Here at LDV Capital, we invest in people who are building businesses powered by visual technologies. We thrive on collaborating with deep, technical teams leveraging computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data. We are the only venture capital firm with this thesis.

Earkick is co-founded by two serial entrepreneurs, Dr. Herbert Bay and Karin Andrea Stephan. When we met them, we immediately recognized their deep domain expertise.

Karin Andrea Stephan’s master thesis was titled, “Therapist in the Ear - How hearables can extend the efficacy of treatment into a patient’s daily life”. She examined existing needs in the current interaction between patients with anxiety disorders and their therapists then explored how technology could support a recovery. Her findings show that there are several critical points, where an audio-based digital solution could support patients with building up coping skills and optimizing the course of mental illness recovery.

Dr. Herbert Bay previously led the user sensing team at Magic Leap. He always wanted to combine his domain-level insights with bleeding-edge machine learning algorithms to finally make mental health measurable for everyone. That's how the idea for Earkick came alive.

He also co-founded two companies that leverage visual technologies – kooaba, the first cloud-based image-recognition platform that was acquired by Qualcomm, and Shortcut, an AI-powered recipe and cooking app. Before joining Magic Leap he was leading Captural, a company that built an AI-enabled photo-book app.

Evan Nisselson, General Partner of LDV Capital, had regular brainstorming calls for months and offered Herbert & Karin a term sheet to deliver their vision before they even incorporated Earkick. 

Our LDV team has been testing the early Earkick app and it is now live on in the Apple App Store for you to Download. Thrilled to note that it was featured in the “Hot This Week” category for three weeks.

Tracking anxiety & Mood with Earkick will help you surface patterns and trends. Additionally, in the app, you can track your personal goals and see how achieving those goals - e.g. a 15-minute walk around the block or a 5-minute breathing exercise benefits your state of mind.