Co-founded by CEO Marla Beyer, MBA/MHA ’20, 2020 eLab alumni company Hopscotch recently closed on an $8 million seed round led by Greycroft and Inspired Capital.
Hopscotch is a full-service telehealth platform that provides in-network mental health care for children and teenagers, while simultaneously providing support to its clinicians so that they can focus on administering the best possible care to their patients. The startup is addressing a two-pronged issue: a national mental health crisis among children and teens, and burnout among clinicians due to the increased need for their services and the growing mental health-provider shortage.
In a system that has always been challenged and has been pushed to its breaking point through the pandemic, one in five children have a diagnosed mental health disorder. Simultaneously, there is an extreme shortage of behavioral health providers in general, but even more so child-focused providers. Further complicating the already exacerbating situation, many of the available providers don’t accept insurance or are leaving the profession due to burnout with care delivery.
With an engaged user base of over 3,200 pediatric behavioral health clinicians across 50 states, Hopscotch is addressing this issue for both patients and providers. The startup simplifies the process for families to find high-quality, in-network care, and with the funding from its seed round, plans to expand its insurance partnerships and grow its provider base nationally. Hopscotch has signed several major insurance partnerships with both national and regional insurance plans, including United Healthcare, Aetna, and Cigna, among others. For providers, Hopscotch’s platform streamlines insurance and billing while giving clinicians a support network of coworkers and professional development opportunities to help with their careers.
“Providers who specialize in working with children and families take a fundamentally different approach to treatment with respect to how they structure their sessions, the therapeutic techniques and interventions they employ, and the importance of bringing the family unit in treatment. However, to date, these providers have not been offered a modernized tech stack to allow them to truly serve this population effectively,” Beyer said. “Hopscotch is meeting providers where they’re at, prioritizing the uniqueness of their work and building tools with the pediatric population in mind, enabling them to bring the joy back into their practice.”
Alongside Greycroft and Inspired Capital, other investors in Hopscotch’s round included New York Ventures, Remarkable Ventures, Watershed VC, and Cold Start, as well as Elema, Genoa Telepsychatry, and Firsthand – three mental-health powerhouses in the startup ecosystem.
To read more about Hopscotch and its funding round, view the full announcement.