Tiramisu

Increasing social media dependency turns leisure time into passive screen time. Our analysis of GWI data shows that even though the primary stated reason to use social networks is connection with family and friends (a strong predictor of wellbeing), the number one activity is watching videos. 

Of course, social media can be really helpful in building positive connections and support networks. Most networks only become a health problem if they take up too much time in a young person's life and hinder sleep or physical activity, or if a user experiences cyberbullying. The key problem we see is that current networks are not optimized for wellbeing, but rather for advertising. This optimization works extremely well - around $168 per capita were spent on social media advertising in the US last year, $34 per capita in Europe. But it also requires long times spent passively scrolling content - an activity linked to higher rates of loneliness and anxiety, with loneliness and the quality of social relationships in turn influencing mortality risk in a comparable manner to other well established risk factors like high blood pressure, smoking or obesity. This leads to a situation where companies, through their social media advertising efforts, are playing a direct role in the increase of (mental) health issues among youth. And in 2021, 48% of Gen Z (age 10-25) reported feeling stressed all or most of the time.

Despite being the generation most affected by mental health issues, young people are least likely to seek professional care. A recent study shows that 37-84% of US university students that screened positive for anxiety and depression were not seeking treatment, and individuals aged 15 to 24 in Canada are the least likely age group to seek professional mental health aid. When given the option of a peer counseling service, unproportionally large numbers of non-White students, international students, and members of the LGBTQ+ community made use of the service. 

The lack of access and availablity of professional support structures especially for marginalized communities further creates a situation where community organizers and local non-profits provide first line health support. This in turn puts a lot of pressure on community organizers who feel responsible for provision of support, but struggle with limited resources and lack of support to deal with their own stressful situation - and the resulting mental health impacts.

Our solution is what we call a social network of kindness - a network that specifically focuses on health-positive activities like peer support and volunteering, and is designed to encourage close connection, real-world activities, and supportive exchange. We believe that this shift in focus can turn social networks from a potential amplifier of unhealthy behaviour to a preventive tool in (mental) health that is more accessible to youth.

The solution works both in neighborhoods/ local areas and in digital exchange through interest groups. Personal exchange is supported by a secure 1-to-1 in-app audio/ video connection, only after accepting a request. Users also have the option to share anonymous messages and support requests.

Interest groups function both as smaller, more intimate groups to discuss issues like climate anxiety or digital wellbeing, and as tools for community organizers to coordinate and provide support. We are currently testing our solution with first student clubs, some of them peer counseling groups that offer free mental health support and advice to other students, and build a crucial link to professional care systems. More broadly, youth and community organizers can use our platform for peer support and exchange in dedicated groups, and we are actively engaged in community building, best practice exchange and direct support for and among organizers.

Over time, we will gain insight and measures on the wellbeing impact of various digital activities, and aim to build a recommendation system that optimizes proposed activities for wellbeing outcomes, meaning that users will see the healthiest activity choices first. We also aim to build a reward system that encourages and rewards healthy and impactful actions, giving companies the option to promote and reward healthy behaviour as part of their marketing activities.

We want to serve the ~1.6B global social media users age 16-40 that strive to make an impact in their community and / or improve their wellbeing. Our initial focus is on students and young workers in North America and Europe, as those are the largest current markets for social media advertising, but we want to build a globally viable solution.

Tiramisu provides a place where young people can readily find support, open exchange, and opportunities for meaningful engagement. This helps them to replace passive scrolling with impactful actions that improve personal wellbeing, leading to better health, closer connections, and increased opportunity for personal and professional development.

We (the two co-founders) are ourselves at the older end of our target group. One of us has direct experience of untreated mental health issues as a teenager, and the role media/ advertising can play in this context. We both spent extended times of digital remote work with first hand experience of the downsides and health impact of digital-only connection and excessive screen time. 

At the same time, we have a combined 30+ years of experience across technology, business, marketing, human-centered design and impact that greatly helps us to build more viable solutions. After working for Global500 companies where we built global strategies, introduced new products to market and oversaw large-scale development projects, we founded an innovation studio in 2018 that focuses entirely on technology applications for social & environmental impact. Here, we worked with UN entities, development agencies, universities and startups on research, technology training and product/ business model innovation, with particular focus on human-centered design and on new technologies like Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence and AR/VR. A key realization coming out of this work is the core need for better alignment of business and impact goals that we are now trying to build into this solution from the ground up.

In the process of creating this solution and its underlying assumptions, we went deep into the science of connection & mental health, discussed with young people and community organizers from 4 continents, along with researchers, health professionals, non-profit leaders, filmmakers and others that validated/ sharpened our assumptions and helped to improve our understanding. The feedback from our first testers and users has greatly influenced our solution, and we continue to constantly evolve and iterate based on new insights and feedback. 

While growing our solution, we want to build a network of community organizers and local ambassadors, and ensure that our team becomes a diverse representation of people in the areas we serve. 

We are very interested in finding collaborators, amplifiers, partners and advisors that can help us to improve and grow our solution in the various markets we serve or hope to get to, and we would very much look forward to exchanging, brainstorming and improving together with other Solvers. We are particularly looking for youth organizations, student networks and non-profit organizations in the US, Canada and Europe (currently UK, France, Italy) that could help us build close networks and critical mass in different cities, especially in currently underserved communities. Another key area where we are looking for support and partnerships is in the conceptualization and building of our recommendation system. As we are currently fundraising, we would be very interested to meet investors or hear about fitting grant opportunities as well.

While we have seen many new neighbourhood support networks, we have seen very few focused on younger generations, and we have not seen a neighbourhood support network or a social network that would make a direct link to, let alone optimize for, wellbeing and health impacts. 

We believe that a positive example with measureable results could lead to a lot more health-first innovation in this space, and we hope that our insights and developments could help to improve other networks as well.

Over the next year, we want to

• Positively impact the wellbeing of 25k+ people through our application
• Create a deeper understanding of the wellbeing implications of digital activities and develop a first version of our recommendation system

And we will do that by

• Building strong partnerships with universities, research institutions, non-profit and youth organizations in the regions we serve
• Finalizing our first fundraise, allowing us to build a diverse team and a larger execution capacity

Over the next five years, we want to

• Positively impact the wellbeing of more than 10 Million young people
• Serve not only Europe and North America, but also first regions in Africa and South America
• Build a global exchange and support network of youth & non-profit organizers
• Redirect a sizeable portion of global social media advertising spend towards a healthy alternative

We will do that by

• Leveraging our network, insights and learnings
• Continuing to co-develop our solution with our users and partners
• Building first case studies with interested companies that we can leverage to attract further customers

For now most of the user feedback we gathered has been qualitative, but we are currently developing a quantitative approach including in-app feedback mechanisms that allow users to give direct feedback after completing activities, complemented with more in-depth assessments of brain health and perceived kindness over time. 

We are working with non-profit partners that showcase volunteering activities in our app to get a better understanding of the community and environmental impact generated through those activities.

In discussions with our pilot partners, we are assessing the feasibility of a controlled randomized trial to further quantify the impact of our app use. 

1. By using our platform, young people spend more time in supportive activities & volunteering.
2. These activities have an positive impact on their mental & physical health, along with other factors like increased learning.
3. Continued platform activity will lead to closer social connections and a more supportive, health-positive environment.
4. Close social connections link to long-term increase in overall health and decrease of mortality risk. A health-positive environment diminishes taboos and increases the likelihood of seeking both informal and professional care.
5. Continued platform engagement leads to long term digital behaviour change, freeing up more time for meaningful activities like volunteering.
6. On a community level, this leads to more support for local causes and better support systems. On a personal level, supportive environments and purposeful work experience lead to increased professional opportunities.

For community organizers (for example leaders of student clubs, peer counselors), the exchange with other leaders and counselors forms another layer of peer support, both positively affecting organizers’ mental health and improving the efficiency of their work through exchanging best practices, pooling activities, collaborations etc.

For now, we have built an application (available on Android, iOS and as a simplified web app) that takes into account a large set of insights from behaviour science, neuroscience and medical research in the choices of activities and functionalities that are available within the app.  

Main functionalities  include posting of support offers and requests, collective activities and volunteering opportunities. Acceptance of requests opens a personal chat with audio/ video call functionality, which users also value for identity verification and trust building, along with the facilitation of digital exchanges (for example remote peer counseling sessions). Requests can currently be filtered and will later be directly matched, recommended and shown in order of relevance and positive health impact. This is a Machine Learning component that we will develop after gathering initial insights and data on activities and wellbeing feedback. 

A discussion feed allows for public and anonymous posting and discussion, but without any likes or other measurable signs of support for specific messages that keep users digitally engaged. We have included Machine Learning for detection and alerts about possibly harmful messages towards moderators, and we are including automatic translation. 

As help offers and requests are not a common digital practice among youth, we use gamification mechanisms to nudge people towards digital behaviour change without hindering their intrinsic motivation (and thereby wellbeing benefits of the exchange). We are developing a system of challenges and rewards with the same objective. 

As a German - Moroccan/ French mixed gender founding team, diversity is naturally really important to us. The early supporters that helped us to conceptualize this solution come from 4 continents and cover a large variety of age groups, ethnicities and gender identities. We know and understand that diverse teams build better solutions simply because their perspectives cover a much broader range of references and experiences, and we know how important it is to include this range from the beginning. Our aim is to build a diverse team and an inclusive culture first and foremost through reflecting that same diversity in our leadership. 

We also see it as extremely important to highlight diverse perspectives in our communication, events and marketing. For us, diversity, equity and inclusion starts with the communities, colleges/ universities, non-profit organizations we approach to build our user base, and with the feedback and dialogue we seek with and from those organizations. It continues in our choice of media and communication partners, in where we showcase and place our job opportunities, in how we select our candidates, and in the leadership opportunities we provide to those candidates. It also continues in being aware of & having open conversations about our (unconscious) biases, and in the advisors, partners and investors we choose. We are still early in our journey, but we strive to make conscious and equitable choices on all of these points.

Advertising has been the business model supporting a lot of the freely and broadly accessible solutions of our time, from news media to the internet to social networks. This gives it a key role in creating global equity, knowledge access and opportunity. But increasing data access and tech-based optimization make it also highly invasive and costly in terms of health impact. We have been rethinking that model, answering the question: how can we create equal levels of free access without the harms of advertising optimization in personal spaces? 

Our answer lies in aligning the goals of companies (brand awareness and love) and people (wellbeing and connection): we enable companies to launch health and impact challenges where young people are encouraged to complete healthy and meaningful actions, and get surprise rewards if they do so. 

The assumption is simple: young people that get encouragement and rewards from brands to do something meaningful will really like those brands. We believe that this approach will bring better results for companies than traditional advertising, allowing us to not oversaturate the network and to be selective in who we work with. We will provide a SaaS campaign management solution, ready made challenges and execution support.

At a later stage, the same concept of wellbeing challenges could be really impactful for companies internally (towards employees). The insights and capacity we create in understanding the health impacts of digital activities additionally opens up various opportunities for impact creation and monetization.

We will depend on investment capital to enable our market introduction, further development and growth. 

With a two-sided business model, our initial focus is on the side of non-paying users, as we want to fully validate and understand the health and societal impacts of our solution. After we have reached and onboarded a significant amount of users, we will trial first wellbeing challenges with companies later this year, which is when we expect our first revenue. The case studies and impact assessments of those first trials will serve as a key means to build a broader customer base, and we expect to reach profitability within the next 4 years. We also hope to build a model where some of our generated revenue goes back to the community organizations we work with. 

Further complementary revenue streams include consultancy/ services, the development of in-company SaaS wellbeing solutions, and the integration / tailoring of our wellbeing optimization methodology for other networks and solutions.

As we developed our solution in a bootstrapped manner and are just starting to raise initial capital, our examples are a bit more qualitative and linked to our overall progress and validity.

They include

• Winning project of the EUvsVirus hackathon in 2020 (organized among others by the European Commission) 
• Listed in Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas list 2021 in the wellbeing category
• Partnership with CIDAS, an Italian non-profit cooperative, and the city of Bologna to support a pilot in Bologna, Italy
• Partnership discussions with several US universities
• For business model validation, we discussed and incorporated feedback of 20+ Marketing & CSR decision makers