Social Health Reimagined with Robin

From spaces to banking to eyewear and beyond, offline businesses are being rapidly reinvented. As an investor, I’m curious about how people are changing the industries they work in. “Reimagined with Robin” is a show where I conduct live 15-minute interviews with founders and change-drivers who are reimagining all aspects of life.

I’ve been following the trajectory of Loop, a mental health app that seeks to improve our social connections with each other. Loop uses technology to transform evidence-based mental health treatments into accessible everyday lifestyle habits for all. Loop wants to be a resource for managing social anxiety, which can affect all of your relationships—both personal and professional.?

To get a sense of what’s different and important about Loop, I recently spoke with CEO James Veraldi. “If physical health is a measure of the health of our body, mental health is that of our mind and emotional state. Social health is a measure of the health of our relationships in our life,” he says. Loop, in turn, helps you identify where social anxiety tends to show up for you.??

What are you reimagining??

By addressing social anxiety, mental health, and loneliness, Loop is reimagining a world in which it’s easier to connect with other people. These issues contribute to a bigger conversation around preventative health. James mentions that we’ve made some progressin terms of paying more attention to issues such as sleep, nutrition, and stress—these topics are showing up more in everyday conversation, and companies are rising to the occasion to proactively address these as health care needs.?

James describes loneliness as “just this giant issue that keeps getting worse, where I feel like we're very, very underserved and under-resourced.” In terms of our health, it’s not just a mental or social health issue. “It has an adverse effect on every part of your health. Depression, anxiety, cardiovascular illness, dementia; these are all things that loneliness contributes to,” James says.

But loneliness isn’t just about being physically alone—you can be lonely even if you have plenty of people around you, whether at work or at home. As James describes, it has more to do with making meaningful connections. In the workplace, if you’re dealing with something like imposter syndrome or you have difficulty processing constructive criticism, that can make you feel lonely; you can feel isolated by the emotions you are dealing with, and that can have a negative impact on your job performance.??

For James, all of what goes into Loop stems from his personal experience. He describes loneliness as a “vicious cycle” that can continue, despite the fact that he was surrounded by people who offered support and were great collaborators, but he says he “wasn’t socially healthy enough to do so.”

From his perspective, the challenge becomes this: how do we create a technology that helps us develop and improve social confidence, social ability–and then motivate and support us to put that into practice in real life?

Why is this happening now?

The pandemic definitely accentuated our collective loneliness. James mentions a Harvard study from 2021 that found 36% of U.S. adults reported serious loneliness. For young adults between 18 and 25 years old, it’s more than half—a staggering 61%.

“The loneliness epidemic is the biggest unmet problem in our health care industry,” James says.

For Loop, the way into this conversation and tackling this challenge is through understanding the concept of social anxiety. James believes if you’re dealing with that, you’re already struggling with your social health—and loneliness.?

The pandemic’s effects are still with us, though. In fact, the shifting landscape of work—what we do, where we do it, and how frequently we are home, in an office, or travel for work—means those social connections aren’t as easily accessible.?

Another reason? It’s easy to vilify social media, but that’s not totally accurate, James says. The larger landscape of social media, which he calls “consumption media,” can make it harder for real-time interactions in real life. It can also make some people more risk-averse when it comes to social interactions. “It's increasingly sort of robbing us of true social experience and exposure,” which is key, especially for teenagers and others who are coming of age.

Loop’s approach relies on the principles of exposure therapy, which James says is “the strongest evidence-based solution to treat social anxiety.” They’ve been working on how to deliver that in a mobile app that can scale while still being personalized and affordable.

How will our world be changed by Loop in the next 5 to 10 years??

If the tech is “applied properly,” as James describes it, Loop can create solutions that are accessible and scalable. “If we're successful at delivering on our mission to help make this world socially healthier, we can enable more people to build high-quality relationships and succeed in social situations.”

Since its beta launch in October, Loop has seen examples of users? going on successful first dates or speaking up in work meetings—“in some cases for the first time ever because of the habits they're building using Loop,” James says.

The ultimate goal? To be the go-to social health resource for employers, universities, health centers, general practitioners, and individuals.

How are you reimagining yourself as a leader this year?

James describes his own struggles with social health and how they’ve often created bigger problems for him in the workplace that seemed overwhelming and cyclical. In many ways, this app is helping James become a better leader, and not just because he has access to an incredible clinical team or the app itself every day.

On a more fundamental level, though, James believes that as a leader, he doesn’t always have to have all the answers, need to be involved with everything happening all the time, or be the best at everything.?

“The No. 1 job for me is to assemble the right team and set them up to succeed. —everything else is a distant second to that,” he says. “We're going to collectively make the right decisions and continue to grow.”

For a limited time only, Loop is currently offering free pilot programs for employers. Request a demo to learn more about how Loop can help employees build social confidence at work, which can improve job performance.

Loop is also currently fundraising on a SAFE ahead of a larger seed round later this year. For my fellow investors who may be interested in either the SAFE or the seed round, you can connect with James at [email protected] to receive a copy of the deck and set up a chat.?

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+ Special thanks to my colleagues?Amy Chen?and?Megan Tung?who made this come to life!