
Column: Investing in Technology and a Vision to Strengthen LA's Social Net
Dr. Tony Greco is CEO and Founder of Get Help, licensed clinical psychologist, and author, with over 20 years of experience working with addiction and severe mental illness.
He served on the Los Angeles County Psychological Association Board and Chaired the LACPA Early Career Psychologist Committee.
Dr. Greco earned his undergraduate degree in Business Management from Pepperdine University.
Prior to earning a doctorate in psychology Tony was Vice President of Business Development at a hospital detoxification and treatment program, expanding operations and programs. He worked as a business consultant in the treatment industry, writing program materials, and working with treatment executives to develop programs.
He was a manager of citywide conventions, conferences, meetings, and other events, in the non-profit and political sectors, including international twelve-step conferences, gubernatorial campaigns, and was liaison to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama during an official visit to California.
Tony is an advocate in the LGBT community, active member of a twelve-step community and church ministries that work with the homeless and addicted.
Before there were gas stations, roadways or traffic lights, people really couldn't drive their cars very much, or far. It took a while for momentum to build and create the pull for new services. During that time there were people who were just trying to get others to not use their horse.
Even with the technological advances we've seen in the last century, the pathway to recovery still involves jumping on your horse and going a quarter mile down the road.
I tell people all the time, as a psychologist and the founder of a tech company creating solutions to help people find treatment: There is a moment when someone decides they want help. When we come to it, we are filled with the simultaneous feeling of relief and dread. Relief that the person finally wants help, and dread about where to start and how to find them the right place in the brief window of time that desire to get help exists.
That is the window I've been dedicated to decreasing.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
Mental Health Nonprofits and Their Struggles
When someone gets or makes that call for help in the mental health industry, there are countless directories, resource guides, websites and other attempts to capture both real-time information and basic essential information on resources.
The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), estimates that since COVID began, calls to their 800 number hotline have increased 1,000%. Yes, that's one thousand percent.
What do the people answering those calls depend on for their information? A postcard that is mailed out to facilities once a year and (hopefully) mailed back to SAMHSA. That's what they use to update their database. Many great organizations are often not listed or are out of date, duplicated or out of business when they are. Many of the providers I talk to don't remember ever getting that postcard.
They aren't the only government system that attempts to catalog this information. There are so many disparate, disjointed systems, it's impossible to properly inventory all of them. For example, the state of California has invested significantly in a system called the Service and Bed Availability Tool (SBAT). Any substance use disorder program receiving state or federal funding is required to update the system each day at a certain time of day. They need to do this manually, by either calling or by logging in to a portal and updating the information. Each SBAT system is managed separately by each county in the state. The data is not shared. Not with us, not with SAMHSA, and not with any other of the countless systems, databases or hotlines trying to get people help.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles County's homeless authority has their own "real-time bed availability system." The city of Los Angeles, too, dedicates some of their funding (both government and philanthropic) to creating a paper resource directory of available beds.
Non-government funded homeless shelters such as the Union Rescue Mission and recovery houses such as Awakening Recovery that also provide beds, can't be found in any of these systems because they do not receive government funding.
None of these systems are integrated with one another, all require a manual process of counting beds and updating a system, and none of it is anything a clinician in the public can easily or readily access.
How is a person making that midnight call to find someone help supposed to navigate all this? They can't.
It's not just a problem for those trying to solve homelessness. This happens amongst many programs and services across the county — and that same inefficiency, lack of coordination and miscommunication is replicated across the state and country.
Solving the Same Problem Again and Again
Even within this single space within a much larger industry there are nonprofit organizations competing with private enterprises for funding and resources, none of which are truly cooperating with one another. The for-profit, philanthropic and public businesses rarely cooperate. In fact, there are barriers to interact.
A hodgepodge of investors find themselves investing in an industry that desperately needs disruption. Alongside them are philanthropists who donate to nonprofits because they don't want to "make money" off helping the homeless or people with mental illness. Both end up investing deeply in disconnected or uncoordinated ideas.
Many, if not most, recovery residences are still operating using pen-and-paper methods to intake patients, track bed inventory and communicate with one another. At best, some programs use Excel or Google Sheets to communicate, or they pay for overly sophisticated electronic medical record (EMR) systems that are designed for clinical programs tailored for government or insurance billing practices.
Their marketing practices are often word-of-mouth, since programs such as these cannot advertise, even if they could afford to do so, on platforms such as Google, which requires facilities advertising any type of addiction treatment to be certified (which is often too lengthy and costly for non-clinical programs to undergo).
The industry must, by necessity, be more concerned with their daily operations and keeping their organization operating — making sure investors and donors are happy (i.e., beds are filled and patients moving through the program) than on attention to standards and outcomes. Even this is done in a vacuum, with each program focusing on their own goals and protocols, without effectively or efficiently communicating with one another.
What gets lost in all of this is the patient needing services.
File:Homeboy Grocery Salsas.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
File:Homeboy Grocery Salsas.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
The New Models
We see innovation happening on a small scale, at the individual program or regional association levels.
There are nonprofits creating positive cash flow with their donation monies, building a food kitchen, incentivizing and employing people who go through their programs who need employment, coming from vulnerable backgrounds.
Look at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, which calls itself "the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world." Through their efforts they have created a bakery. Yes, rehabilitating gang members through bread making has turned into an industry of food chains, catering services and partnerships across the country. If you've been through LAX recently you've probably seen one of their restaurants.
These nonprofits are enterprising, opening and expanding business. They're organized as nonprofit hybrids that are breaking down the wall between nonprofit missions and private investment operations. They are partnering with other social enterprises and creating networks across the country and world.
The missing piece: connecting these organizations to one another, and giving professionals such as myself, and the public, access to find out more about them. We need these enterprises and programs connected in a platform that everyone can access.
A Post Pandemic World
What we are creating now is a new formula for success. In a post-pandemic era the need is greater than it's ever been.
The California Consortium of Addiction Programs and Professionals (CCAPP) refers to this phenomenon as the "parallel pandemic," where we will see an increase in addiction overdose deaths and homelessness. "Saving lives endangered by addiction in the era of COVID-19 will take concerted leadership and a cross-systems approach," the consortium wrote in a report to the governor and Legislature.
Prior to the pandemic, Feeding America estimated that 1 in 7 Americans depended on a food pantry for weekly food. That number is only going to rise following the joblessness and homelessness resulting from the pandemic, while the means to locate and provide such services is just as difficult and disconnected as ever from other services and providers. Various nonprofits — again, all functioning and operating independently — and organizations such as Foodpantries.org are providing those services but are disconnected technologically from other search tools and engines.
A social worker would need to know where and how to access these services and provide that information to the individuals receiving services.
Photo by Dimi Katsavaris on Unsplash
Where Do We Go From Here?
We are seeing groups of people and organizations coming together now in new and unique ways. We are working with nonprofit organizations providing services, seeing those services get subsidized by philanthropic dollars, for technology that is backed by private investment dollars. All in the effort to get people off an oval track just going in circles, and onto a road, ultimately preparing them to drive down a superhighway that hasn't been built yet.
There is a nonprofit we are working with (can't mention the name yet), that received significant funding to create a digital resource directory. Rather than using that money to outsource technology developers to create a proprietary tool, we are partnering together, pooling our resources and sharing our technology to create something greater than the sum of our parts. Together, we are doing more than either of us could have done individually. This saves the nonprofit hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars paying for the creation and maintenance of the tools we'll need to work together.
It also allows us to combine our collective intelligence and expertise, and create an even better tool, maintain that tool, and benefit from the collective wisdom of other partners across the country, in other segments, serving different communities.
To realize this vision, we'll need to build new onramps for public, private, and philanthropic partnerships. We need money to pave that way for the impact we want to see. That is exactly what we are working on at GET HELP, with our partners and affiliates.
What we're planning and creating together is a new infrastructure. One that is built by visionary customers, entrepreneurs and the next generation of social impact investors. Amongst these are the next Rockefellers and Carnagies. They didn't build or invent the automobile, but they supplied and fueled the infrastructure that surrounded, supported and sustained it.
We are creating partnerships and affiliate programs with national and statewide associations such as CCAPP and the National Alliance for Recovery Residences (NARR); with "feet on the street" organizations such as Hope through Soap in Atlanta, GA,; and with social-model recovery residence programs such as Awakening Recovery; and large homeless shelters and service providers such as House of Hope and the Weingart Center.
In addition, we are in collaborative conversations with seeming "competitors" in the private sector, where we are focused on the same vision: to raise the industry standards and improve the processes for collecting and sharing data.
It's better for everyone involved, including the ultimate beneficiary who may never know the work we are doing together to get help for them: The person suffering from mental health, addiction or homelessness.
What we — as the entrepreneurs and investors in the healthcare technology industry — are defining is a whole new infrastructure for a much longer journey to empowered recovery.
The question that we face on a daily basis is this: Who are the innovators both within the industry and without who are willing to invest time, effort and money into creating a new system?
Today, we see private automobiles driving on public roads --- those were built by public sector funds, and the public sector provides licensing and regulation. Using those models, we have to think broadly about sources of capital and how philanthropic, public and private companies can contribute to the journey.
Dr. Tony Greco is CEO and Founder of Get Help and a licensed clinical psychologist and author with over 20 years of experience working with addiction and severe mental illness.
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Los Angeles is home to around 5,000 startups, the majority of which are in their young, formative years.
Which of those thousands are poised for a breakout in 2021? We asked dozens of L.A.'s top VCs to weigh in. We wanted to know which companies they would have invested in if they could go back and do it all over again.
Boiling
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGaW1hZ2VzJTNGcSUzRHRibiUzQUFOZDlHY1EwRjdlRzlxY3JFd1lNVS12T2VTWng1NFd6VFdWUktaMFpyQSUyNnVzcXAlM0RDQVUmaG89aHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZlbmNyeXB0ZWQtdGJuMC5nc3RhdGljLmNvbSZzPTEwMDImaD1jOGIyM2Y5YWNhNGNhNDY3NzZhNmUzNTU3MWI2YzAzNjcwOTU1Nzg0ODQxZDdiZGIyZjAxMzUxNjdkN2I5NWY2JnNpemU9OTgweCZjPTE2MDM4MjI5MTgiLCJleHBpcmVzX2F0IjoxNjY1MTY5NTcxfQ.iTVRhSe0UulUxSyMUZ4QA7_0njADdWe3QEJ28-xW6m0/img.jpg" id="a03b9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="03faa4898896a9ce5be09d51dc104b73" alt="Pipe logo" />Pipe
<p><a href="https://www.pipe.com/" target="_blank">Pipe</a> provides financial services to help cloud service companies tap into their deferred cash flows, allowing them to continue growing without taking on debt or giving up ownership. For subscription-based businesses, this makes it "as if all of your customers converted to annual plans overnight," according to the company.</p><p>Founded by Harry Hurst, Josh Mangel and Zain Allarakhia, the company <a href="https://dot.la/pipe-taps-60-million-seed-extension-2646245409.html" data-linked-post="2646245409" target="_blank">raised $66 million of seed funding earlier this year</a> in a deal led by Craft Ventures and Fin Venture Capital.</p>Clash App Inc.
<p>Created by former Vine-r Brendon McNerney and entrepreneur and marketing expert P.J. Leimgruber, <a href="https://www.clashapp.co/" target="_blank">Clash App</a> is a short form video platform similar to TikTok, but without built-in sound libraries. It's geared toward empowering creators with innovative monetization options and inclusive communities.</p>XCLAIM
<p><a href="https://www.x-claim.com/" target="_blank">XCLAIM</a> has created an electronic platform where bankruptcy claims that take a notoriously long time to process can be digitally traded. Founded in 2018 by Matthew Sedigh, who has operated in the corporate restructuring field for more than a decade, the company says "rather than wait years for the bankruptcy court process to issue payment distributions, creditors can now access immediate liquidity by selling their claim to interested buyers." Earlier this year, it raised a $4 million seed round led from Luma Launch, First Round Capital and Freestyle Capital.</p>Simmering
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGaW1hZ2VzJTNGcSUzRHRibiUzQUFOZDlHY1JlR3QzLWlHSmFtYVJnLXNwSXVYcDc5N0xOdnpTYWhYYVloQSUyNnVzcXAlM0RDQVUmaG89aHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZlbmNyeXB0ZWQtdGJuMC5nc3RhdGljLmNvbSZzPTYwNiZoPWU3NzNhYTkwODZkNmE4OWQwMWU0ZjZkODk0ODU1ZWEyZDIzMmU3YTYyNzJjYTU3Mzk3MmI0NmQ0NjAxMDY3YzMmc2l6ZT05ODB4JmM9MjQ3NDg5MDE0MiIsImV4cGlyZXNfYXQiOjE2NzAzMzU0NjB9.iqCUfvVUI22AGAz-QYPiS7XFb26sw3mGaU8seorLqxQ/img.jpg" id="44f84" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cbdc9b0cdf21d3873eef2a40647ae810" alt="Freck Beauty logo" />Freck Beauty
<p><a href="https://freckbeauty.com/" target="_blank">Freck Beauty</a> manufactures beauty products intended to make the user feel seen. Remi Brixton, the company's chief executive officer, founded the startup in 2015 when she was in search of a freckle makeup product. When she couldn't find one, she launched her own, the FRECK OG. The East Los Angeles-based company raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding in a deal led by KarpReilly and Stage 1 Fund earlier this year.</p>The Skills
<p><a href="https://www.theskills.com/" target="_blank">The Skills</a> wants to be the <a href="https://dot.la/the-skills-2649267338.html" target="_self">master class on sports </a>and life. The Los Angeles-based startup launched two months ago and offers classes from gold medal Olympians — including swimmer Michael Phelps and volleyball player Kerri Walsh Jennings — and Grand Slam tennis Champion Maria Sharapova. In December, it closed a $5 million seed round backed by Boston-based Will Ventures, Global Founders Capital, 8VC, Maveron, Hack VC and Correlation VC.</p>Mapped
<p>Founded by Shaun Cooley, former chief technology officer of Cisco's Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Industries division, <a href="https://www.mapped.com/" target="_blank">Mapped</a> provides IoT services in El Segundo.</p><p>The company raised $3 million of seed funding in a deal led by Greycroft earlier this year, putting its pre-money valuation at $9 million. </p>DataPlor
<p>Created in 2016 by Geoffrey Michener, <a href="https://www.dataplor.com/" target="_blank">Dataplor</a> indexes micro-businesses in Mexico (and will soon be expanding to other countries in Central and South America) and sells the data to larger companies.The company relies on contractors in those countries to collect the information from local businesses. It raised $4 million from ff Venture Capital, Quest Venture Partners and Space Capital earlier this year and expects to use it to expand into more Latin American countries. </p>Grow Credit
<p>Launched by serial entrepreneur <a href="https://joebayen.medium.com/a-black-founders-guide-to-raising-a-2m-institutional-seed-round-a8687f95087f" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Joe Bayen</a>, <a href="https://growcredit.com/" target="_blank">Grow Credit</a> helps customers improve their credit score by providing credit for subscription services like Netflix and Spotify. Their MasterCard can help consumers with thin or damaged credit scores and the small line of credit can be upgraded for a fee. The company closed a $2 million seed round earlier this year with participation from Mucker Labs.</p>Outer
<p>The two-year-old Santa Monica-based company has seen business boom during the pandemic as retail stores shut down and online orders surged. The direct-to-consumer outdoor furniture brand <a href="https://dot.la/outer-furniture-raise-2646187491.html" data-linked-post="2646187491" target="_blank">uses backyards as showrooms</a> and <a href="https://dot.la/how-outer-aims-to-disrupt-the-outdoor-furniture-industry-2647872107.html" data-linked-post="2647872107" target="_blank">raised $4.3 million in a seed round</a> earlier this year led by Mucker Capital. Founded by Jake Liu and Terry Lin, a former designer at Pottery Barn, <a href="https://liveouter.com/" target="_blank">Outer</a> aims to appeal to Restoration Hardware and Pottery Barn shoppers. </p>WhatNot
<p>A livestreaming reseller of collectibles like FunkoPop vinyl figurines, Pokémon cards and sports cards, <a href="https://www.whatnot.com/" target="_blank">WhatNot</a> taps into a growing retail trend and promises that the collectibles are verified, much like sneaker reseller GOAT. </p><p>The startup secured $4 million in seed funding this month from Scribble Ventures, Wonder Ventures, Operator Partners, Y Combinator, Liquid 2 Ventures, Twenty Two Ventures and other investors. The company plans to use the funds to expand into video games, comics books, designer toys and vintage fashion.</p>Fourthwall
<p><a href="https://fourthwall.com/" target="_blank">Fourthwall</a> is the developer of an internet platform that helps content creators launch fully-branded websites focused on interacting with fans. Their website tag phrase is "Make a living doing what you love," which is complemented by their model, which provides creators 100% ownership of their website and brand.</p><p>Founded by Walker Williams and Will Baumann, the company has raised $4 million to date, from investors Defy Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Initialized Capital Management.</p>Shop LatinX
<p><a href="https://shoplatinx.com/" target="_blank">Shop LatinX</a> calls itself the "leading beauty, fashion, and lifestyle ecommerce designed by and made for Latinas." The brainchild of two Los-Angeles-based Latinas, Brittany Chavez and Raquel Garcia <a href="https://dot.la/techstars-la-2646304264.html" data-linked-post="2646304264" target="_blank">launched their website</a> before Black Friday in 2016. It features more than 200 brands.</p>First Resonance
<p>Founded by former SpaceX software engineer Karan Talati and Neal Sarraf, <a href="https://www.firstresonance.io/" target="_blank">First Resonance</a> promises to ease the workflow for manufactures with software intended to provide greater visibility into production and test product development lifecycle. The company raised $1.75 million of seed funding last year from Wavemaker Partners, Stage Venture Partners and PLG Ventures, among clothes.</p>Vurbl
<p><a href="https://vurbl.com/" target="_blank">Vurbl</a> offers curated, one-stop-shop of what it calls the best audio on the internet, which can include podcasts but also goes well beyond that from religious sermons to court arguments. The new platform founded by CEO Audra Gold is being built with the <a href="https://dot.la/vurbl-raises-1-3-million-to-build-the-youtube-of-audio-2647713757.html" target="_self">$1.3 million pre-seed round Vurbl closed in September</a> led by AlphaEdison with participation from Halogen Ventures and Ten13.</p>PocketWatch
<p>Former Disney executive Chris Williams founded <a href="https://pocket.watch/" target="_blank">the studio</a> that produces family-focused content from YouTube stars. This year it launched clock.work, an advertising agency designed to help major brands reach kids. Investors include Viacom, Greycroft, Third Wave Digital and United Talent Agency, along with strategic angels including Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Landau.</p>PocketList
<p><a href="https://pocketlist.app/" target="_blank">The app</a> allows renters to see and share apartments that will soon be available before they're listed — reducing the time properties sit vacant and potentially heating up competition among apartment hunters. It launched <a href="https://dot.la/renter-app-2646416605.html" data-linked-post="2646416605" target="_blank">earlier this year</a>. The company has $2.8 million in seed funding led by David Sacks' Craft Ventures along with Abstract VC, Wonder Ventures and angel investor Spencer Rascoff, co-founder of Zillow and dot.LA.</p>Quilt
<p>The audio-based social platform promises to be the spot for "live, supportive, feel good conversations—just like hopping on the phone with a friend when you need it most." It lets people start a conversation around any topic or join by listening. <a href="https://www.beta.wearequilt.com/" target="_blank">Quilt</a> raised an undisclosed amount of venture funding from Freestyle Capital in 2019.</p>Tonebase
<p>Founded by Abhi Nayar, Chris Garwood and Igor Licthmann, <a href="https://www.tonebase.co/" target="_blank">Tonebase</a> provides high-level music education online. Yale School of Music alumnus Garwood and Lichtman<a href="https://news.yale.edu/2018/01/22/first-person-how-we-are-bringing-high-level-music-education-masses" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> told their alma mater that it built with the idea </a>that it was "a way for people everywhere to learn from the very best musicians around the world — individuals who, due to their busy performing and teaching careers, are traditionally accessible to only a select few." The company has raised an undisclosed amount from Launch fund, e.ventures and other undisclosed last May. </p>Second Spectrum
<p>Launched in 2013 by Jeff Su, Yu-Han Chang and Rajiv Maheswaran, <a href="https://www.secondspectrum.com/index.html" target="_blank">Second Spectrum</a> already has deals with the NBA and English Premier League. This year it scored another one with Major League Soccer to use its optical tracking system to evaluate and analyze performance. </p><p>Second Spectrum puts their tracking cameras inside the stadium. Machine learning and AI-powered analytics provide detailed data that helps coaches and others better understand the game from player speed and deceleration to shot velocity in near real time. That technology can also be used on broadcast platforms to give fans more insight. The company raised about $20 million backed by CAA Ventures, Raine Ventures and The Chernin Group in 2018.</p>Toucan
<p>Founded by CEO Taylor Nieman, Shaun Merritt and Brandon Dietz, <a href="https://dot.la/slingshot-aerospace-ceo-2646797521.html" data-linked-post="2646797521" target="_blank">Toucan</a> is a Chrome browser extension that lets people learn a new language. It scans websites you visit and translates some words into the language you want to learn. The Santa Monica-based company most recently raised a $3 million round backed by GSV Ventures, Amplifyher Ventures, and Wonder Ventures, among others. </p>Serve Automation
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