The case for a marketplace platform in the peer support group market makes for an interesting entrepreneurial opportunity.
While the concept of support groups is not new, today virtual support groups are increasingly an integral part of the post-Covid support network available to individuals facing a wide range of challenges – from addiction recovery to chronic illness, mental health issues, relationship advice, grief and many more challenges. With their ability to provide valuable emotional, practical and educational support to more people online than in traditional settings, it’s no surprise that virtual support groups have exploded in popularity.
However, despite growing popularity and the value they deliver, there hasn’t been a centralized platform where people who are looking for support can go to discover options on a variety of topics. It’s not like Airbnb where you search for a specific set of criteria and you’re presented with a list of well-defined options to choose from.
Instead, people seeking specialized support on a topic must broadly search online, attempt to find local options in their own community, or turn to social media networks like Facebook that host online groups. However, none of these options are ideal for people looking for specific kinds of support without geographic limitations, and even if they do, it can be hard to find the right group fit that also has an experienced facilitator with whom they connect.
Creating a Forum For Peer Support
Enter Forum, a marketplace platform launching today with $5.3 million in seed funding that’s specifically built to be a destination for a variety of support-group topics. Forum aims to tap the significant demand for group-based experiences with a network of expert facilitators who are looking to reach more people. With an initial focus that leans more toward health and wellness topics like grief and loneliness or managing chronic conditions and substance-use disorders – but also can include other topics like career advice and relationships – all Forum groups meet regularly on video (as opposed to anonymously via chat) and are meant to foster social cohesion.
As for its revenue model, each Forum group member pays a monthly subscription fee to participate, part of which goes to the facilitator and some of which goes to the company.
Forum was founded by two individuals whose careers lend expertise to this exact use case.
Rajiv Kumar, MD, is a digital health entrepreneur who previously founded ShapeUp after he saw the power a group-based model could have on his patients that wanted to lose some weight. ShapeUp worked with employers and encouraged employees to get healthy by forming small groups. The company grew considerably, and eventually Kumar sold it to Virgin Group in 2016.
“What I saw from peer groups was nothing short of miraculous. People would support each other and hold each other accountable,” said Kumar. “I became so enamored with group-based behavioral change models that I knew it was a business opportunity for support groups.”
Forum’s other co-founder, Lee Pichette, also worked at ShapeUp, but it was while working at another company where he found the “passion.” Pichette was an SVP at The Predictive Index where he led the teams that recruited thousands of independent consultants who were looking to build their own consulting practices.
“I found this to be the most fulfilling work of my career,” said Pichette. “Something just struck a chord with me about helping someone use their skills to build a business and gain independence and success,” said Pichette. “It unlocked the passion economy, and when I think about Forum, we’re tapping into that same thing in a big way with our facilitators.”
Together, Kumar and Pichette want to leverage their belief in the peer-support system and the “passion economy” to recruit scores of potential facilitators who are motivated by helping people across a wide variety of topical areas. These facilitators might not have the resources to get started or might be searching for a system that provides them with more flexibility to set up their groups the way they want. That, they believe, is the secret to building the flywheel that makes platform businesses so valuable (and lucrative).
“Rajiv and I quickly realized that the only way to serve the market was to create a marketplace that could support highly specific peer groups and tackle the purposeful challenges that impact someone’s wellbeing,” said Pichette. “If you tap into the passion economy, you can really create high levels of specificity at scale.”
Starting The Peer Support Marketplace
While there are a smattering of existing players that offer access to support groups, Forum’s goal is to gather the supply of passionate facilitators while also capturing consumer demand by positioning itself as a singular place for high-quality group support on specific topics.
Pichette said that internal Forum research suggests that there are more than 4 million people who are qualified and who have been trained through their regular job to potentially facilitate a support group. To attract them, Forum wants to differentiate by removing many of the logistical barriers facilitators face by giving them all the tools they need to start, grow and host their own groups.
Standing up an online support group and growing them are not easy tasks. Aside from developing an engaging and supportive experience, for those interested, facilitators must figure out where to host their digital group, have mechanisms in place to protect the experience of group members, figure out how to accept payments, and much more. Forum hopes its flexible platform that gives more autonomy and hands-on onboarding process will allow the potential Forum facilitators to spend more time on the “passion” side of their work rather than the administration.
For attracting consumers, it’ll all boil down to the quality of the facilitators, which is why Forum has in place a detailed vetting process.
“We’re looking at their background, we are testing their facilitation skills, and we are providing training during their onboarding process to ensure we only get the best,” said Kumar. “Once they’re on the marketplace and create a group with members, we’ll collect member feedback and give longitudinal development over time.”
Annie Adams is part of Forum’s initial crop of group facilitators. A veteran elementary school teacher, Adams’ life experience led her to becoming a grief counselor in Oregon, specializing in parents who’ve lost children. She joined the Forum platform after the team reached out to her about becoming a group facilitator and has appreciated her experience so far – especially with respect to the administrative support provided.
“It’s been an absolute pleasure. I used to lead support groups as a volunteer in my community, but Forum has allowed me to start a support group that is very professional. They’ve helped me with promotion and marketing materials in addition to social support, which has taken a lot off of my plate,” said Adams. “I really believe in the power of support groups, so I’m looking forward to growing with Forum and creating more groups in the future.”
Forum’s focus on creating a supportive experience for facilitators like Adams and her group’s members is a key part of what’s attracting investor attention. The $5.3 million in seed funding was led by NextView Ventures with additional participation from MBX Capital, Cue Ball Capital, Sahil Bloom of SRB Ventures, Romeen Sheth, Shaan Puri and City Light Capital.
NextView Ventures specializes in seed-stage companies, and its Co-founder and Partner Lee Hower was familiar with both Forum co-founders in their prior professional lives. When he heard what they were doing with Forum, he sensed an opportunity.
“When we’re looking at a seed-stage company, we care about a couple of things, including the market opportunity, the team, the product or service and what the capital needs are for the company,” said Hower. “While we hadn’t specifically worked with Rajiv and Lee before as founders, we were confident they were a team that we’d want to partner with. On the market front, we were firm believers in the impact that facilitated group models can have in mental well-being and career development, but most of the pitches we’d seen were more narrowly focused. So when Rajiv and Lee came to us wanting to create the infrastructure that both group facilitators and members need, then turn it into a horizontal platform that can serve lots of use cases, we knew it could be a big business.”
As for what NextView is looking for in Forum’s first growth phase, Hower said it’s less about the “raw numbers” like number of users or groups, and is more about ensuring that both sides of the marketplace have a strong product-market fit and their respective constituencies are satisfied.
“The platform needs to work within the business constructs that the facilitators want, and members have to be able to find the group they want quickly,” said Hower. “Some of the things we’ll be looking for are whether groups can reach a critical mass in an acceptable amount of time so members aren’t waiting, and whether group facilitators are experiencing success and are on their fourth or fifth or even tenth group.”
Groundswell Of Momentum For Peer Support Platforms
Forum is not the only company in digital health to recently launch that’s looking to leverage the power of groups and human-to-human connection. In July, healthcare startup builder Redesign Health spun out Peppermint, a marketplace platform that hosts online “clubhouses” for seniors.
Designed to address issues like senior loneliness and depression, among other things, the Peppermint platform enables “creators” to start groups around shared interests like gardening or photography. These creators can explore new income streams for themselves while also creating social cohesion and connection for the group members.
While Peppermint’s business model, focus and approach is much different than Forum’s, it’s clear that the business cases for marketplace platforms in the online peer-group market are expanding. Entrepreneurs and investors are seeing more and more opportunities to capitalize on both the creator economy and humanity’s need for connection following the social isolation that was exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Moving forward, it’ll be interesting to watch how the competitive landscape evolves. While marketplaces like Forum and Peppermint might not currently have many direct competitors, if they take off, then they may eventually find themselves in their own peer groups – the competitive kind. However, given the levels of mental health problems America faces, there is more than enough demand to spread around.
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