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Mental health

Rebuild the social fabric and the third spaces it lived in.

problems: 1humans affected: 1.5Bcompanies on it: 4capital sources: 1voices: 0

Loneliness, anxiety, and depression are at multi-decade highs across cohorts. Therapy and app-based interventions show modest effects; the deeper agenda is structural — third spaces, civic infrastructure, and a rebalancing of digital toward physical interaction. Hard to measure, harder to manufacture, but possibly upstream of everything from fertility to political polarization.

Problems in this sector

1 ranked
emergingLoneliness & social isolation

The US Surgeon General called it an epidemic. Mortality effect equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

humans1.5B

Companies on it

4 mapped →
Partifulprivate

Event-planning app that has become the default for in-person Gen-Z gatherings. Small but direct attack on atomization.

$150M
Timeleftprivate

Weekly dinners with five strangers in your city, matched by algorithm. Operating in 200+ cities worldwide.

private · no disclosed cap
Wysaprivate

AI mental-health companion with over 6 million users globally. NHS and employer contracts for scaled access.

private · no disclosed cap
Marco Poloprivate

Asynchronous video messaging to maintain real relationships over distance. Anti-algorithm social.

private · no disclosed cap

Capital on it

1 allocators →

O'Shaughnessy Fellowships

Fellowship

$100k for creators across domains, art, science, history, startups.

Further reading