James Oliver, founder of the co-founder matching app Kabila, has launched the Kabila Founder Mental Health Fund, to support founders’ mental health. Backed by the Social Good Fund, the initiative received a $25,000 seed grant from Techstars Co-Founder Brad Feld.
Supporting founders’ mental health
Kabila Founder Mental Health Fund will provide free mental therapy for founders in the Kabila community. This includes founders in the Kabila Ventures portfolio, Oliver’s new pre-seed fund.
“So many early-stage founders I talk with are having a HARD time right now – making tough decisions like selling their homes and leaving their spouses to move out of state temporarily to chase opportunities to grow their startups,” Oliver wrote on LinkedIn.
Each founder will be given four mental therapy sessions through BetterHelp or a therapist of their choice. The grants are named after Oliver’s late grandmother, Carmen Reid, who left her abusive husband to raise two children on her own. Reid passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage before Oliver was born.
“She died very young of a cerebral hemorrhage, probably from all the pressure that she was dealing with. “Maybe she would not have passed away so young if she had access to mental therapy resources,” Oliver said.
Oliver’s struggles as founder
Oliver knows the difficulties of being a founder. His first startup, WeMontage, failed while he was dealing with the early stages of fatherhood. His twin children were born prematurely, each via an emergency C-section. Two days after his children’s births, he went to the accelerator, led by gener8tor. Before the demo day presentation, Oliver was met by an angel investor group, who were willing to invest $250,000.
“I dropped to my knees and thanked God because everything I was going through at that time was really hard. So that was my introduction to being a parent and entrepreneurship,” Olivier said in an interview with AFROTECH.
He’s spoken openly about being in therapy. “Over the last four years, I quietly paid for 400 mental therapy sessions for parents who are entrepreneurs via the the work I was doing with the Parentpreneur Foundation. And we didn’t receive any notoriety for this work.”
Brad Feld, a leading investor and co-founder of TechStars and Foundry, has also been candid about his struggles with depression.
Image: Nasdaq
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