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Founder mental health, offered by the VC firm, invisible to the VC firm.
A private clinical channel a venture firm can extend to its portfolio founders as a platform benefit, structured so the firm funds access while seeing nothing about who engages or with what. Matched clinicians. Extended sessions. No investor visibility into care.
A founder mental health channel a venture firm can stand up for its portfolio.
This page is for general partners, platform and talent leads, and operating teams at venture firms scoping a founder-tier mental health channel to offer across the portfolio, structured so the firm funds it without ever becoming a party to the care. If that is you, the rest of this page is the briefing document.
CEREVITY operates as a clinical network with direct relationships between the network, the clinicians, and the contracting venture firm. There is no third-party broker layer. Founders are matched, not first-served. Scheduling and intake run through CEREVITY infrastructure. Care is private-pay and out-of-network. The firm's role is to fund and extend access; the firm is structurally walled off from the care itself by design, which is the only way a founder will use a benefit that came from their investor.
Our clinicians are independent licensed professionals. Many have worked with venture-backed founders through fundraises, pivots, and leadership transitions, and they understand the investor relationship from inside their consulting rooms. CEREVITY exists because founders carry a clinical load the venture ecosystem has named but rarely resourced, and because a channel a founder will actually use has to be built so the investor who funds it can never see who walked through the door.
Founders will not use a mental health benefit they think their investors can see.
The single biggest barrier to founder mental health support is not access or cost. It is the rational fear that disclosing struggle to anyone connected to the cap table will read as weakness at exactly the moment the founder is being evaluated for the next round. A channel funded by the firm has to solve that fear first, or it solves nothing.
The research on founder mental health is unusually consistent. In Dr. Michael Freeman's peer-reviewed study, 72% of entrepreneurs reported a lifetime history of at least one mental health concern, including 49% with a personal history, compared with 48% of a comparison group, and entrepreneurs were roughly twice as likely to report depression. This is not a fragile minority. It is the modal experience of the people a venture firm backs.
The disclosure problem is just as well documented. In Startup Snapshot's founder well-being research, 90% of founders said they were not open with their investors about what was stressing them out, and a large majority hid stress from co-founders as well. A benefit offered by the firm, run by the firm, or visible to the firm collides directly with that finding. The structure has to put the firm outside the room.
What changes when the channel is built around this reality: the firm funds and extends access, but the clinical relationship runs directly between the founder and an independent clinician, with scheduling and records held by CEREVITY, and a confidentiality posture that gives the firm no visibility into who engaged or with what. The firm gets to offer real support; the founder gets care they can actually use.
What CEREVITY clinicians actually treat in venture-backed founders.
The clinical scope is built around the presenting profile of founders running venture-backed companies, not the workforce-wide profile a portfolio company's EAP is built for.
Fundraise pressure cycles
The all-consuming sprint of a raise, followed by the depressurization after a close or the spiral after a pass. The cycle has a clinical signature, and for many founders it repeats every twelve to eighteen months.
Investor relationship strain
Managing a board that controls the next check is its own chronic stressor. The relationship is supportive and evaluative at once, and the founder rarely has anywhere safe to process it.
High-functioning anxiety
Performance held together at cost. The deck looks great, the metrics look fine, and the founder is running on fumes that no one on the cap table can see. Extremely common and rarely disclosed.
Pivot and failure grief
Killing a product, laying off a team, or winding a company down is a loss, and it is treated as one. The grief of a pivot or a shutdown is a real clinical event the ecosystem mostly tells founders to power through.
Identity fusion with the company
When the company is the founder's whole identity, every metric becomes a verdict on the self. Separating the person from the cap table is its own clinical project, and it gets harder the longer the company runs.
Founder isolation
The founder cannot be fully candid with the team, the co-founder, the board, or often the spouse. That structural isolation is one of the most reliable and most treatable issues in the founder profile.
Co-founder conflict
The most consequential relationship in the company is also one of the least supported. Co-founder tension drives a meaningful share of failures, and it responds to clinical work the way any relationship does.
Hypergrowth and scaling stress
Scaling faster than the founder can grow into the role produces a specific kind of overwhelm. The job changes every six months, and the founder is expected to change with it without ever admitting the strain.
Three session formats, each chosen for the work.
Most benefits programs offer one session length. CEREVITY offers three, because different kinds of clinical work need different amounts of time. The choice is made between the clinician and the founder, not by what a payor will reimburse.
The steady cadence of ongoing therapy. Most clients spend most of their care in this format.
For work that needs more room than a standard hour. Focused work on a specific transition or decision.
For work that needs uninterrupted time to reach resolution within a single session.
The 50-minute format supports ongoing weekly work. The 90-minute format gives room for deeper sessions around a raise or a transition. The 3-hour format exists for intensive work, the founder coming out of a close, a shutdown, or a co-founder break. Because CEREVITY operates outside the insurance reimbursement model, session length is set by the clinical work, not by what a payor will reimburse. That is the structural reason all three formats can exist on the same network.
Ready to scope a founder-tier briefing?
Briefings are scoped to your firm and the portfolio you want to cover. We respond personally within 48 business hours with proposed times and any prepared materials relevant to the shape you are evaluating.
Request a briefing →How a founder is matched.
Matched, not first-served. Here is the process that produces the match for a venture-backed founder.
The eligible individual submits a confidential intake form covering presenting issues, modality preference, professional context, and scheduling parameters. The form is operated by CEREVITY, not by a broker.
Intake is reviewed by CEREVITY's clinical leadership against the network's active capacity, current licensure footprint, and modality availability. This is the step that does not exist in an EAP.
A specific clinician is matched to the founder based on the review. The founder receives the match with the clinician's profile, modality, and credentials, plus a direct online scheduling link.
The founder schedules directly through CEREVITY infrastructure. No phone handoff. First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days of the match.
Care continues with the matched clinician on the cadence the clinical work requires, in 50-minute, 90-minute, or 3-hour sessions, without an employer-imposed cap.
Capability comparison for VC Firms and Their Portfolio Founders.
A vendor evaluation framework on the dimensions that matter when scoping a founder-tier-tier offering for founders. Both models have a place. They are designed for different populations.
| // Dimension | Typical EAP | Exec-tier platform | CEREVITY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Network model | Broker layer between firm and contractor roster | Single-vendor platform, W-2 or contracted pool | Independent clinical network with direct relationships |
| Clinician assignment | First contractor to reply with availability | Algorithmic matching on intake-form inputs | Clinical review by network leadership |
| Intake & scheduling | Phone handoff to clinician's line | App-based intake and scheduling | Network-operated intake, direct online scheduling |
| Session formats | Standard 50-min; capped session counts | Standard 45 to 50-min sessions | 50-min, 90-min, and 3-hr formats, no cap |
| Clinical scope | Acute, broadly applicable concerns | Workforce-wide, executive tier as upsell | Built around VC Firms and Their Portfolio Founders presenting issues |
| Modality fit | Generalist talk therapy | Generalist therapy with some specialty | CBT, DBT, psychodynamic, matched at intake |
| Reach | National via roster density | National telehealth, roster variance | All 50 states via telehealth |
| Payment model | Firm-sponsored, in-network | Per-employee-per-month seat pricing | Private-pay, out-of-network, partnership agreement |
| Firm visibility | Aggregate, broker-mediated | Vendor dashboards with engagement | Administrative reporting only |
| Right fit for | Workforce-wide acute support | Mid-tier ongoing with executive add-on | VC Firms and Their Portfolio Founders, end-to-end |
What the firm sees, and what it does not.
For a founder-tier-tier channel to function, the participating founder has to trust that engaging with it does not create visibility into their care. CEREVITY is built around that requirement.
- Confirmation that contracted services were provided to eligible individuals.
- Aggregate utilization at the partnership level, where contractually appropriate.
- Invoicing and eligibility reconciliation.
- Nothing tied to a specific named founder's clinical content.
- Whether a specific named founder has scheduled, attended, or engaged.
- What clinical issues are being addressed, or which clinician is assigned.
- Session notes, treatment plans, or diagnostic information.
- Any attendance detail at the individual level.
Clinicians are independent licensed professionals operating under their own licensure and the confidentiality and privacy obligations that attach to it. Protected health information is held within the clinical infrastructure, and the agreements governing it are defined in writing before the partnership goes live.
Clinical records, session content, and individual engagement data sit inside the clinical platform. The administrative layer the partner interacts with is structurally separate from the clinical layer.
Eligibility lists are maintained on the partner side and confirmed at the point of intake. Administering eligibility does not require the partner to receive clinical information back.
A Business Associate Agreement is executed where the partnership structure requires it. The partnership agreement defines administrative reporting scope in writing before going live.
What the first 30 days look like.
The hardest part of a founder-tier-tier partnership is not the contract. It is the period between signature and the first founder in care.
A 60-minute kickoff with your team and CEREVITY's partnership lead. We confirm the partnership shape, the eligibility model, the administrative reporting scope, and the internal owner. The BAA, where applicable, is executed in this window.
Your team provides the eligible-individual list. CEREVITY confirms it against the network side and establishes the verification path that runs at the point of intake. Only eligibility confirmation flows forward.
CEREVITY provides a confidential, founder-tier-appropriate comms template explaining the benefit, the privacy posture, and how to access intake. Your team adapts it to your voice.
Eligible individuals begin intake on their own cadence. First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days. By day 30, the partnership is operational and a quarterly review cadence is in place.
The business case for the platform team and the general partner.
Three axes a venture firm's platform team can defend to the partnership. The numbers will vary by portfolio; the structural argument does not.
Founder durability protects the asset you already underwrote.
The firm has already paid the highest price to back a founder: the check and the board seat. A founder who burns out, breaks with a co-founder, or quietly disengages puts the entire position at risk. Supporting founder durability is not a soft benefit; it is protection on capital already deployed, and it pays for itself across very few prevented founder breakdowns.
Founder performance is the single highest-leverage input in the portfolio.
A founder running at 70 percent is not a 30 percent loss to one company. Across a portfolio, founder capacity is the variable that most determines which positions return the fund. Recovery of clinical capacity flows downstream into hiring, fundraising, and the decisions that compound over a company's life.
A real founder-care benefit is a differentiator in a competitive deal.
Founders increasingly choose investors on more than valuation. A named, confidential, founder-tier mental health channel the founder can use without the firm watching is a credible, differentiating platform offering in a competitive round, and a defensible answer to the question of what the firm actually does for founders beyond capital.
Questions founders and their teams ask first.
Clinicians in the CEREVITY network are independently licensed professionals operating under their own licensure and the confidentiality and privacy obligations that attach to it. The handling of any protected health information, and the specific agreements that govern it including any Business Associate Agreement, are defined in writing in the partnership agreement before the partnership goes live, scoped to the firm's structure.
No, and this is the central design point. Administrative reporting only. The firm receives confirmation that contracted services were available to eligible founders and aggregate utilization where contractually appropriate. The firm does not see whether a specific named founder has scheduled, attended, or engaged, what clinical issues are being addressed, or which clinician is assigned. This is contractually scoped before the partnership goes live.
The firm contracts and funds access at the portfolio level. The clinical relationship runs directly between the founder and an independent clinician, with scheduling and records held by CEREVITY. The firm is the payer and the sponsor of access, never a party to the clinical relationship, which is what makes the benefit usable for a founder who is wary of their own investors.
No. CEREVITY is a structural complement. Portfolio companies keep their own benefits and EAPs for their teams. CEREVITY is the founder-tier private-pay channel, extended by the firm across the portfolio, for the founders specifically.
No. CEREVITY is private-pay and out-of-network by design. The structure is intentional: it is the only way to deliver the clinical scope, session formats, and confidentiality posture founders require.
Pricing depends on the shape of the engagement, the number of eligible founders the firm wants to cover, and how the firm administers platform benefits. The briefing call is where we identify the right structure, and the cost falls out of that, not the other way around.
First sessions are typically scheduled within 5 to 10 business days of intake, depending on modality requirements and scheduling parameters. Clinicians are available nationwide via telehealth, which matters for a geographically distributed portfolio.
Through a briefing call. Use the form below or email [email protected] directly. Briefings are scoped to your firm and portfolio; we respond personally within 48 business hours.
Tell us about your firm and portfolio. We respond within 48 business hours.
Briefings are scoped to your firm. Share a few details below and we will respond personally with proposed times and any prepared materials relevant to the founder-tier channel you are evaluating.
The structural argument on this page is based on the firsthand experience of CEREVITY clinicians who have served on EAP panels, combined with widely-published industry estimates of EAP utilization and VC Firms and Their Portfolio Founders-specific data where cited. Specific contractual scopes, including the administrative reporting boundary and the BAA structure, are confirmed in writing in the partnership agreement before any partnership goes live.
