Latest / Low to Grow / Mental Health VC Shiv Bhavnani on building GIMBHI and AI Diagnostics

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Mental Health VC Shiv Bhavnani on building GIMBHI and AI Diagnostics · Low to Grow

0:00
Getting fired was actually one of the turning points in your
0:02
career, and that actually LED you to start getting the.
0:05
I was at a ratings agency. There's not that many out there.
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It's the one that the one that's not S and Pi was in the office
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late one day and I found that. Welcome to Low to Grow, the
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podcast transforming life's toughest moments into
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opportunity for growth. I'm Annie, a Forbes and
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Authority technology founder who's entrepreneurship journey
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brand parallel to a mental health awakening.
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In every episode, I sit down with inspiring individuals and
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delve into how they managed to turn their personal or
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professional challenges into opportunities for growth.
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If you're facing uncertainty in your life, feeling down, or
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simply need a kick of inspiration to keep moving
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forward, this is your space for the honest and uplifting
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conversations that you will want to hear.
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Hit follow so you never miss an episode and let's dive in.
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Today's guest is Shiv Bhavnani, a healthcare investor, founder
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and one of the sharpest minds shaping the future of mental
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health. He is a partner at the venture
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capital firm Evo VC, which backs early stage startups that are
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bridging mental Health and Human performance.
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Now. Shiv is also the founder and CEO
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of Gimbie, a research and consulting firm providing
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insights into the healthcare space that has already featured
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in places like Nature, Axios and Business Insider as a global
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thought leader, have developed a thesis on generative AI in
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psychiatry and is now writing a book on AI in mental health.
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Now, Shiv is clearly someone who really gets both the science and
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the assistance behind innovation.
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But today he is joining a lot of pro podcast to talk a bit about
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his own experiences as a young professional, about big career
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pivots, finding work that matters to him, and also what
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excites him about the future of mental health.
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So, Shiv, welcome to the podcast.
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Thank you so much, Annie. That's a really incredible
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introduction. So it's very generous.
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Thank you. And it's awesome to be on the
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podcast today. Yep, excited for us to be having
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this conversation. So, Schiff, before we start, who
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do you think will benefit the most from listening to our
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conversation today? Honestly, I think it's just
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anybody who's trying to find something that they want to do
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with their career that more aligns with them.
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So basically anybody who's looking for a change and, and
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anybody who's really thinking about a career that resonates
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with what they deeply want to do.
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Wonderful. Excited to dive into it with
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you. So you know, let's just start
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with the heart of it. Why mental health?
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Well, yeah, so I could definitely talk for two hours
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about that at least. But I mean, there's so many
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reasons. I'll first start off with the
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concept that I think when we hear people's stories and people
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tell their stories, a lot of the times it's a linear narrative.
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You know, this happened, this happened, and then that drove me
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to that. Maybe that is the truth for some
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people, but I think that for me, life and pretty much everything
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has been way more of a spiral. So it's circling around
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something and getting closer and then coming back to the same
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spot, but you're closer. And I think my whole life from
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when I was in high school, middle school, I've been
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fascinated by the mind, psychology, consciousness,
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spiritual practices. That was kind of what drew me
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into the world of specifically psychology.
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You know, when you think about problems to solve, you know that
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there have been, you know, me personally and people in my
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family have struggled with mental health challenges.
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And when I look at the world and look at, you know, what problems
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are important to solve, I'm not saying it's objectively right,
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but I, I feel like the mind is really the, it's the gateway to
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everything. It's the software of humanity.
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We all operate using this tool we call the mind, or you can
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simplify it to the brain if you believe in just physical
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substrate. It just seems like, wow, all of
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humanity is really through this filter of the mind and we still
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don't understand it. People in my life struggle with
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mental illness and I came to the conclusion that the reason why
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we don't understand the mind and, and, and the brain is is
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because we didn't prioritize it as a society like putting in the
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resources and time. That's that's kind of why mental
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health for me. So interesting.
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And from your position as someone who invests into really
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early stage startups without building at the intersection of
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mental health, brain health, and as a human performance, what are
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some of the things that really excite you about the future?
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I mean, so many things, like everything for from access to
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mental health care is something that I pay attention to.
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It's like if we develop, let's say we develop some new
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treatment, but it's, it cost $1,000,000 and only 5 people in
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the world can get it, is that, is that progress?
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I would not consider that progress.
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I mean, it is one aspect of progress in the kind of
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treatment efficacy world. But I think we have things that
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do work. Access is a big problem in
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mental health care. There are some companies which
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seem, you know, maybe somewhat boring on the cover of it.
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But what they're doing is helping connect providers and
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people who really need care, usually through the very
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complicated Byzantine structure of government payers.
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So things like Medicaid. So I would, I would say 1 area
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is expanding access. That's that's what interests me.
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And, and I would say AI in terms of specifically diagnosis and
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reconceptualization of like mental health disorder
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classification, not AI necessarily in terms of AI
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agents. That, that that's interesting to
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me, but less, less so than using AI to basically redefine what
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mental illnesses and identifying different types of biomarkers
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for mental illness. Because I think today what we
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think of as depression is probably 16 different disorders,
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probably overlapping with our definition of anxiety.
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Or that's just a, a random example, but our classifications
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aren't necessarily real. They're kind of made-up.
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That's interesting. So what you're saying is using
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AI tools to, I guess, more effectively segment the
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different classes of mental disorders so about people can be
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treated more effectively based on what subset that they have?
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Yes, exactly. That process will involve
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rewriting the DSM. People always ask the question,
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is that practical? I think that ultimately it'll be
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necessary for us. We will hit a roadblock in terms
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of how effective our treatments can be without new
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classifications of disorders. What does CSM stand for?
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The diagnostic manual, basically it's a manual of mental health
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disorders, kind of like gold standard for diagnosis.
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OK, understood. You've talked a bit about the
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diagnostic portion. What about using our tools in
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the treatment of certain mental health conditions?
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Yeah. So we, we've seen AI therapists
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as everybody knows, that's kind of, or maybe I'm just in a
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little bubble, but I feel like there's been talk of AI
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therapists as of the last year or so.
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So that's like, you know, a autonomous agent that
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potentially treats people. You have clinical decision
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support tools for providers and therapists and any, any type of
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other mental health professional in the space.
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I think it's definitely interesting and there's a huge
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need and demand for it. If you think about how many
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people are using ChatGPT or any kind of consumer LLM for
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emotional and mental health support, it's already there.
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It's people are using in 10s of millions of people are using
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those tools for mental health support.
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Now you can argue, is that right?
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Is that going to be effective? That's another question, but
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people are using it, there's big demand for it, that there's a
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very interesting case for AI to be used directly as a treatment
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like some type of treatment agent.
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But like I said, I think diagnosis is actually in kind of
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redefining mental and brain health issues and disorders.
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I think there's there's huge potential there.
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Which organizations in your view are leading development and also
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driving the end use of using AI in diagnostics for mental
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health? The diagnosis front, that's
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still largely being done by universities and you know, there
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are definitely some companies that have worked on identifying
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blood based, neural based or even digital behavior based
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biomarkers for mental illness. But it seems to me from from the
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outside, it seems like it's tough to do that without making
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sure what you're looking for is homogeneous.
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Like let's say, let's say depression for example.
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There's been some very interesting companies that have
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worked on voice based biomarkers for depression and anxiety.
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One of those companies is Kintsugi.
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Another company is Themia. And I think they've actually
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been somewhat successful and made some serious progress
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there. But I think the more specific we
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can classify illness than, you know, finding a biomarker for a
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very specific presentation of something is much potentially
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easier. It's chicken or egg obviously
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too, terms of AI agents like chat bots for therapy.
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There have been a huge, huge proliferation of these
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companies. There's been dozens and dozens
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and and kind of the juries out. We have yet to see who will
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emerge as a winner in this space or even from a clinical
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perspective. Understood.
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I want to take a step back. Where did you start your career?
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Started my career in the financial services world.
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My first job out of school was working at Morgan Stanley on a
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sales desk, selling a kind of complex product to banks and
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insurance companies. Just a far cry from the world of
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mental health and healthcare innovation when I was in
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college. Extremely interested in the mind
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of the brain. I started off as a neuroscience
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major actually, and through a kind of rough year for me when I
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was 19, I failed out of almost all of my courses in one
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semester, which were very heavy on neuroscience.
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So my advisor was like, well, listen, like you're going to
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have to take attention next extra semester.
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It's probably not possible with like the course offerings of
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different labs and things to finish it in time.
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He was like, well, why don't you just do it for fun and you don't
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have to major in that? That's what I ended up doing.
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That kind of sent me in this interesting path because I
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substituted the neuroscience major with an econ major and
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sent me down this path in finance.
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And I never really intended to go down the path, but what I was
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doing was intellectually stimulating enough.
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I was working with structured credit, so highly financially
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engineered products, effectively collateralized loan obligations
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specifically. I worked in that for a few years
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across a few different firms and I realized like this is so
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divorced from reality because it's pretty abstract what we're
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doing. I just felt very far from my
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personal mission. I was about to kind of go deeper
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into space and I got an offer from an investment fund to go
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work as a credit credit investor and I decided to change my path
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and I started Gimme. I started a newsletter covering
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the entire mental health startup innovation ecosystem.
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You mentioned getting fired was actually one of the turning
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points in your career and that actually LED you to start Gimme.
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Could you share a bit more about what led up to that event?
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I was at a ratings agency, which I won't name, but there's not
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that many out there. It's the one that the one that's
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not S&P. At the time I was rating and
13:00
doing research on structured credit.
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Like I mentioned before, the product called collateralized
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loan obligations. At the time there were all these
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new startups coming out that we're lending to individuals.
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So it's called marketplace lending or P2P lending.
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So they're making these kind of unsecured loans or it was a
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person making the unsecured loan.
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I found that basically as as the industry matured, a few Wall
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Street firms started to buy the loans, package them, and then
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sell them as bonds, very similar to a mortgage-backed security or
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collateralized loan obligation, very similar structures.
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I was in the office late one day and I was like, just like
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reading obsessively as I do. And I was reading through some
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of the filings for the securities and I found that
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there was no validation of the information on the loans
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anywhere in this life cycle of origining the loan, selling it
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into an SPV and then, you know, selling bonds based on on that.
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Another way to put it, like the nutritional facts on the bonds
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were fake. There's like basically 0 proof
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for that. I brought it up internally and
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I'm like, wait a second. Like, you know, I just watched
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the Big Short, the, the financial crisis when I started
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a career that was like very close in the rearview mirror.
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A lot of folks had lost their jobs during that.
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And of course the whole world went through a global financial
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crisis. I brought it up internally and I
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said, hey, like we're vetting and rating these securities and
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we don't really bring this up as a risk like it is an issue.
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At least I'm not saying to totally condemn everything, but
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just say, hey, the the originator of the loan is
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basically saying all the information on these loans could
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be totally fake and we have no liability there.
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And then the structure of the bond was not doing any kind of
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due diligence on the portfolio of loans to, to validate any of
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this information. So huge, huge risk if it got
15:07
bigger, if this became a systemic problem, which it
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didn't, but if it did that, you know, that'd be a serious issue.
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And even just for any of the investors in these bonds.
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Long story short, I, I, I wrote a whole research paper on it
15:20
internally. I, I circulated it.
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However, the financial institutions that were doing
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these securitizations were very large and they had very close
15:32
relationships with the ratings agency goes back to the age-old
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incentive misalignment and in the ratings world.
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But they kind of refused to publish it.
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I'm like, what's going on here? Like, you know, we could just
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mention this as a paragraph in a report.
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Like I don't need this to be a whole thing.
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And there was almost like 0 receptivity to it.
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They usually do. I like to shed light on things,
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be transparent and do what's right.
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And I published it with a large news outlet and then an industry
16:05
trade publication. I said these are my opinions.
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They don't reflect anything having to do with the firm I
16:10
work at or anything like that. But very swiftly I was called
16:15
into the office and told to leave.
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I'm glad I did it. I don't have 0 regrets, you
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know, doing the right things that you can never regret it.
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But it did make me think of like, wait a second, maybe I
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need to actually do what I originally kind of conceived of
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as my career working in the world of mental and brain health
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innovation. But at this point, I have, you
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know, no background in neuroscience or mental health.
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So what do I do? I do what I know best is and and
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start publishing market research on the space, covering all the
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investors and startups in the space.
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Not right after that, but a couple years after that.
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After I'd toyed with the idea, I jumped in.
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Wow. That's an amazing story about
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how you actually went back to your roots of neuroscience and
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your interest in brain and mental health while I was doing
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a detour loop. Interesting.
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Thanks for sharing your story, Chip.
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When you were recounting it, you made it sound very streamlined
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and almost quite matter of fact, getting fired.
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No one likes fat. And then kind of deciding how
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you're going to re enter the workforce after getting $5.00.
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So it's really difficult for any of our audience members who
17:23
might be going through a similar thing.
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What advice would you give them? I actually found a job honestly
17:29
after that, like very quickly. I think the bigger question was,
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was that the right job after that or should I have, you know,
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started Gimme earlier? I think I would have liked to
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start Gimme earlier than I did now.
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I was thinking about it at that time, but I just didn't see
17:44
commercial path to actually kind of making it something that pays
17:48
the bills and that you can make actual make a living off of.
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I went back into the finance world after that.
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I would tell people if you're going through a tough time like
17:58
that, I would really take the opportunity to reconsider what
18:03
you want to do and what you really want to do because this
18:07
could be a gift of some time and space to rethink what you want
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to do. Really use that gift of
18:16
redirection. Sometimes it's like, oh, you're
18:19
doing exactly what you want to do and then you get fired.
18:22
That's one thing. But if you're, you know, not
18:25
totally aligned with what you're doing, you're leaving energy on
18:28
the table. There's a lot of friction and
18:30
energy loss through doing something you don't really want
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to do. I like that earlier when you
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mentioned the bigger question for you was should you have
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started can be earlier? For how long was can be your
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mind before you actually started actioning and building it?
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Probably way too long, around three years.
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I don't know why it was an idea. And then I'm just taking more
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seriously than I was actually thinking about a business model.
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So I started to study for the psychology GRE because I was
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thinking about going to master's and PhD program in psychology
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after I got fired. So basically that, yeah, that's
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something I started to do. So maybe it wasn't the idea of
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Gimme specifically, but it was in the world of mental health
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innovation. OK, interesting.
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And could you explain a bit more about about, you know, exactly
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what Gimby does at the moment? We're the global Institute of
19:23
mental and brain health investment.
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Our mission is to drive more capital and resources into
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mental health, mental health innovation.
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My diagnosis of the problem that like, wait a second, why are why
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don't we have enough treatments? Why do we, why has this, this
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therapeutic area been significantly underfunded for
19:48
decades? So I started to look, look into
19:51
these problem. I found that it's not that a lot
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of people say, oh, it's so complex.
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It's I think it was less that and more of that as a society,
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we didn't really prioritize mental health.
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There's a lot of stigma. I think humans in general
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prioritize things they can see. You could see a tumor you can't
20:10
totally see. A mental illness that you can
20:14
see, oh wow, this brain looks differently than the spring, but
20:17
it's it's just harder to see. So I think that in a sense was
20:21
de prioritized. Then you have stigma, a huge
20:23
amounts of stigma amount mental illness.
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We track the entire mental health innovation ecosystem.
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We track funding and basically trends.
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It's how we started and from there, investors, investment
20:36
funds, Angel investors, nonprofits, anybody that had any
20:41
interest in mental health innovation started hiring us as
20:45
a Consulting Group. He would work on different
20:48
engagements, everything from strategy to standing up in the
20:53
innovation arm for nonprofits to investment work and due
20:58
diligence on startups. So basically anything that
21:01
involves mental health innovation specifically, say the
21:04
functional areas we get hired for, our fundraising strategy,
21:10
business development and recruiting, people want to know
21:12
what's happening in the mental health innovation landscape.
21:16
It's changing very quickly. I'm curious when you first
21:19
started Gimbie, what about operation look like was it just
21:23
you or did you have you know other founding partners that you
21:25
put on from the very? Beginning I was the main
21:28
founding partner. We, it was just me at the
21:30
beginning, but then we, when we started to get consulting
21:33
engagements and, and have revenue, then we started to hire
21:36
folks. But yeah, at the beginning it
21:38
was just me. Before AI scouring the Internet,
21:42
making a big database of every single company, doing countless
21:46
calls. I was doing over 20, sometimes
21:49
30 calls per week with founders, investors in the space.
21:53
It was a really busy time and it's cool to be here today.
21:58
For me, it's really, yeah, cool to see.
21:59
You probably can be into almost like a international
22:02
organization. So I know you do kind of events
22:05
and those activities in the US as well as in the UK.
22:08
Quite curious if you had to summarize the biggest change in
22:12
mental health related funding that happened over the past
22:15
year, what would it be? A few things.
22:18
The exuberance from 2020 to 2022 is significantly subdued.
22:23
There was this real euphoria and leading to a lot of investments
22:29
in the space and some investments that probably
22:31
shouldn't have been made. That's a, you know, a large
22:34
trend. AI advancements are basically
22:37
rocking and transforming every single industry and mental
22:42
health is no exception. They're just interest in AI, but
22:45
we're seeing a little less precede funding.
22:48
And that's where as a partner at Evio Venture Capital, that's
22:53
that's really a privilege to be funding precede companies.
22:57
There's a lot more trends. We'll be putting out a report
22:59
probably in a few months. That's kind of what I see in a
23:02
nutshell for the broader audience.
23:04
Thank you. That's interesting.
23:05
And I know it was a difficult question because it's such a
23:08
broad category. You mentioned your work with EVO
23:11
VC. If you had to pick one of your
23:13
current portfolio companies that is really, really exciting for
23:16
you, which one would it be and why?
23:19
It's a really good question. I mean, it's like kind of
23:21
picking your favorite child. It's tough.
23:24
This is an interesting one. It's called Third Space Therapy.
23:28
Third Space delivers therapy and mental health care for Medicaid
23:33
patients. On first look, this doesn't seem
23:37
that novel or interesting, but there is a severe shortage.
23:44
If there's a general provider shortage for mental health care
23:48
that's significantly more pronounced in the Medicaid
23:51
population. And the reason is Medicaid
23:54
reimbursement for mental health care is relatively low and
23:57
operational complexity, cost of compliance are high.
24:01
It's just operationally harder to serve Medicaid patients
24:06
because of all the government requirements and reimbursements
24:10
law. You have a bunch of providers
24:11
who say I don't take Medicaid, I don't take Medicaid, I don't
24:14
take Medicaid. And that's a shame because there
24:17
are folks in that population who really need mental health care,
24:21
and it just doesn't really make sense from a financial
24:24
perspective for some providers to take Medicaid.
24:28
Search space is basically expanding this access and making
24:32
the model work by streamlining a lot of the compliance and
24:38
operational complexity that comes with serving Medicaid.
24:41
So a little less exciting. You know, it's not like a robot
24:46
that can talk to you, but it's really having a positive impact
24:49
on the world. And this goes back to what you
24:53
were saying at the beginning of our conversation, which is the
24:55
companies might not look very exciting on the outside, but
24:58
they're doing the core almost like bread and butter work, but
25:01
as needed in order to make mental health care more
25:04
accessible to more people. Yeah.
25:06
And I think, I think there are definitely exciting companies as
25:09
well. It's just that I think if you
25:11
really want to make lasting change in healthcare, you have
25:14
to work with the system. A lot of our portfolio companies
25:17
do that extremely well. Understood With your VC lens,
25:22
what are some of the key things that you look for in a startup
25:27
that might come to you looking for investment?
25:30
That's a really good question. There are so many things in
25:33
terms of like the problem they're solving in the solution,
25:36
but like putting that aside, because that's very industry
25:39
specific, I would say for founders.
25:42
And we actually have a kind of complex founder assessment
25:45
process at EVO. But something that we look for,
25:49
and I specifically look for is problem obsession.
25:53
Founders who know the problem in and out, like very, very
25:57
obsessed. They know every groove and it's
26:00
like knowing every secret way into the castle.
26:03
Like you really studied it and you, you, it's, it comes across
26:06
that your obsession is not just like mission obsession being
26:10
like, Oh, I hate this, this, that this exists and I really
26:13
want to solve it. It's that passion gets
26:16
alchemized into real knowledge or attempts at gain gaining
26:21
knowledge to like just mental obsession with the problem.
26:24
And I think that's always pretty palpable.
26:28
You know, see a lot of lot of founders who aren't.
26:30
And I'm like, well, this is going to be a long journey.
26:33
And if you're not obsessed with the problem and not emotionally
26:36
obsessed, I think that's the first step of like, actually,
26:40
you know, being driven and passionate about the issue.
26:42
But does that crystallize into action and like learning about
26:47
in every way you can. If I, you know, I want, I want
26:50
to see people who find ways to get information where there is
26:53
no information. If you're really obsessed with
26:56
the problem, you're going to find the info.
26:57
You're going to figure it out. Oh, I talked to 8 people.
26:59
No, I, I found them. I got introductions, referrals
27:04
to these people who introduced me to them.
27:06
And then I taught there, you know, just just when I see that
27:09
resourcefulness and kind of intensity about the problem,
27:12
that's, that's a good thing. If you had to give an estimate,
27:15
what percentage of founders that you do come across to hear
27:17
pictures from actually have that founder obsession?
27:22
But I think the bar of probably like one out of 10.
27:28
Interesting because the first thing that came into my head was
27:30
the start, which is AC funds generally expect one out of 10
27:34
of the investments to become a Unicorn.
27:36
So I think it's interesting that's the same start there as
27:38
well. Yeah.
27:40
And you know, that's one aspect, right, If you could be really
27:44
obsessed with the problem. But we know let's say this
27:48
industry and we're like that, that solution doesn't, we don't
27:52
think that that approach is correct for that problem or we
27:56
think that this is not totally scalable to won't achieve
27:59
venture scale. So there there's a hundred other
28:02
reasons and investment might not be a fit for a fund.
28:06
But in terms of that kind of like more behavioral problem
28:09
obsession, yeah, I would say maybe one out of 10.
28:14
And either you have a specific type of founder analysis.
28:19
I read somewhere online that either you assess how well
28:22
founders know themselves, which is a big factor in whether or
28:25
not the firm decides to invest. Could you expand a bit about
28:29
what that actually means? Our founder assessment process
28:33
is pretty, pretty long and complex.
28:36
But yeah, self-awareness is something that I think we, we
28:39
definitely look for. What do we mean by self
28:42
worthiness? My take is that it's important
28:45
as a founder to know, like this is a cliche, but it's true to
28:50
know what you're good at, know what you're bad at, to basically
28:53
have a really clear idea of your own strengths and weaknesses.
28:57
Because only if you understand and acknowledge what you're bad
29:02
at can you plug the holes. But if you, if there's no
29:04
awareness of that, it's very tough to to do that.
29:09
It's self-awareness with respect to 1's strengths and weaknesses
29:14
when it comes to operating. Thanks so much, going to move on
29:19
to our podcast staple. What is one thing that you
29:23
believe will allow more people to have better mental health?
29:27
I might break the rules here and say two things because I can't
29:30
choose between these. I think 1 is just sleep.
29:34
Sounds so obvious, but, you know, for years I would have
29:38
ambient light in my bedroom that totally just destroys your
29:42
sleep, like blackout curtains. It's got to be, you know, it's
29:45
really got to be pitch black if you can.
29:47
And I mean, maybe that's. Yeah, I think that's important.
29:52
So good sleep for me. What disturbed it was light and
29:56
temperature. It's like, you know, it's got to
29:58
be cold and dark to sleep well. So I'd say that and then, you
30:03
know, mental health, and I'm, I'm talking about just generally
30:07
staying mentally healthy is not just kind of reflecting in your
30:09
mind, but running that self reflection via verbalizing it,
30:14
by writing it or even recording a journal, doing some type of
30:18
structured self reflection. Be like, why did I do that?
30:22
Why did I think that? Why did I feel that and ask
30:25
those questions and get answers versus just running towards the
30:28
next thing in your life? Chip, it's been a pleasure to
30:33
have you on the Low to Grow podcast.
30:36
Yeah, it's been a pleasure being here, so thank you, Annie.
30:39
That's a wrap for today's episode of the Low to Grow
30:42
podcast. If it resonated with you, leave
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