#21 Kalda - Mental well-being app solely for LGBT+ community
I'm joined by legendary west coast angel investor, Zach Coelius. Zach is a 4-time entrepreneur and his last company, Triggit was acquired by Gravity4 in 2015. From then on, Zach has become one of the most revered angel investors in the US with circa 50 investments to his name and 80 invested in total. He currently invests $200K-$1m cheques into early-stage companies and $2-$5m cheques into later-stage ones. Zach uses 3 vehicles for investing; a $45m fund with Industry Ventures as the sole LP; a friends and family Rolling Fund that invests alongside the main fund; and his own syndicate on Angel List that has over 3000 members and was actually the first syndicate on Angel List to get a billion-dollar exit when General Motors bought Cruise Automation in 2016. The syndicate has had 6 exits in total including Hello Sign who were acquired by Dropbox in 2019 for $230m. We listened to the pitch from Daniel Botcherby, co-founder of Kalda; the world's first mental well-being app specifically for the LGBT+ community. In Beta stage, Kalda is looking to bring together members of the LGBT+ community who are struggling with their mental health and provide group therapy sessions, daily check-ins, peer support as well as fixed courses people can go on. 1 in 2 people in the LGBT+ community have suffered some form of anxiety/depression in the last year, 3x the general population. Due to NHS wait times, high prices for individual therapy and stigma that LGBT+ people feel from a therapist not from their community, Kalda is looking to bring people together and at the same time democratise mental health services, making it affordable, easy to access, instant and being surrounded by peers and therapists from the same community. Zach prefers to engage in a more general conversation, rather than a grilling, so we had a chat more broadly about the market in general, expansion plans, future product roadmap and aspirations, competitors and the merits/risks of going after a niche. Some super insightful things highlighted by Zach as well as a very competent founder in Daniel. Brought to you by my Startup Playground, Horseplay Ventures - https://horseplay.ventures/ Kalda - https://kalda.co/ Zach Twitter - https://twitter.com/zachcoelius