Business Plan Mental Health Forum Application

Created by: Akamai Cloud Team Members: Jessica Chen, Katherine Ge, Nena Kotsalidis, Sarisha Ray

Table of Contents

I. Executive Summary…………………………………………………………2

II. Company Description……………………………………………………… 5

III. Product and Services……………...…………………………………….…...8

IV. Current Stage of Product Development……………………..………………9

V. Competitive Analysis………………………………….………………… .11

VI. Branding and Market Plan……………………………………………...…..13

VII. Financial Plan and Projections…………………………………………..…15

VIII. Appendices…………………………………………………………………17

IX. Sources……………………………………….…………...………………..19

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I. Executive Summary The Problem Mental health is a big part of our daily lives, yet mental health issues are often stigmatized and

silenced. For students in the communities surrounding Boston, the burdening pressure of

competing with peers and high expectations of success is increasingly unbearable. Three years

ago, three students from Newton died by suicide. Their deaths brought forth a conversation on a

problem that should have happened while they were alive.2,3 Perhaps just to name a few: the

burdening pressure of maintaining perfect grades and busy schedules, the lack of strong personal

relationships or a cohesive community, or feeling suffocated by the competitive and elitist

environment of high school. The surrounding suburbs, Lexington, Cambridge and

Acton-Boxborough, have also experienced their own tragedies. Our company members have all

seen their fellow peers struggle with different mental health problems, and we know it is a

problem that extends far beyond our own experiences.4

Our app focuses on the prevalent, yet seldom discussed issue of mental health. According to the

National Alliance on Mental Illness, approximately 1 in 5 youth aged 13–18 (21.4%) experience

severe mental disorder at some point during their life. However, only about 50% ever receive the

help they needed.1

Erica Taylor, a recent graduate of Acton-Boxborough High School, demanded her community

for accountability when she wrote a scathing post titled “The Illusion of Community” following

the suicides of Acton-Boxborough students. Despite seeing her community coming together in

support, she pointedly states that under the image of their primed successful peers, for another

vast majority of students, the Acton-Boxborough environment “shaped us into suicidal balls of

self-hatred who turn to drugs or other forms of self-destruction to cope with how we didn’t turn

out as great as the rest of you”. While inflammatory, her remarks revealed an important message

for her community: they had failed their students. No matter how much support they gave now,

rampant mental health problems were still being ignored.5

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Mental health is something we should all be talking about. That is why we founded our company

and created the app MindCloud. MindCloud connects people together to talk about mental health

issues in their community. We emphasize the importance of community and connecting with

other people, because this is not a struggle anyone should face alone. We want people to talk

about all of their experiences (if they are willing to), from the great to the horrible. We hope

MindCloud serves as a catalyst for communities to have much needed conversations on mental

health.

1“NAMI.” NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness, National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2Burge, Kathleen. “Newton Mobilizing after Suicides of Teens - The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com, Boston

Globe, 2 Mar. 2014, 3Bacigalupe, Gonzalo. “Newton Suicides: Is High-Achiever School Culture Breaking Our Kids?” Newton Suicides:

Is High-Achiever School Culture Breaking Our Kids? | CommonHealth, 17 Feb. 2014, 4Spencer, Kyle. “It Takes a Suburb: A Town Struggles to Ease Student Stress.” The New York Times, The New York

Times, 5 Apr. 2017, 5Taylor, Erica. “The Illusion of Community.” The Writings of Erica Taylor, 28 Sept. 2016, App Overview We believe when talking about health, mental health should be just as relevant as our physical

health. In hopes of providing an a venue for those who struggle with mental health, we have

developed an app to foster conversations and combat the stigma surrounding mental illnesses.

MindCloud is a community forum that generates mental health related questions and discussions.

Users create a profile where they select topics they want to talk about. Our app then generates a

personalized Q&A feed of discussions. Users can join discussions or ask their own questions,

receiving insight from other people as well as sharing some of their own story.

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Our app emphasizes the importance of connecting people. We do not provide formal treatment or

medical help. Our app fits a different niche, one that is more community focused and personable.

Sometimes formal treatment isn’t accessible or comfortable for a person to reach out to. In

MindCloud, anyone can talk about their story or join the conversations of other people they

relate to. When creating a profile, users can choose to be anonymous or public. While using the

app, users can click on profiles with similar topics of interest to make one-on-one connections.

Bringing people together to spark conversations that anyone can hear and be a part of is valuable

to supporting teen’s struggles and fighting the mental health stigma. These conversations are

what we hope to give to the people who join the MindCloud community.

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II. Company Description Akamai Cloud is a social enterprise situated in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Our company was

founded by a group of young passionate students hoping to make a difference in the mental

health community. Akamai Cloud is comprised of four members, Nena Kotsalidis, Jessica Chen,

Katherine Ge, and Sarisha Ray. Our team met through the organization Science Club for Girls,

which connects tech savvy girls to pursue their interests in STEM together. With a shared

interest in STEM and mental health activism, each of our individuals bring valuable personal

experiences and skills to the creation of MindCloud.

Team Members:

Jessica Chen is our UI Designer and Branding Executive. She has a background in computer

science and graphic design, and is especially interested in seeing her interests in technology and

art combine. In her personal life as a high school student, she has struggled with mental health

problems and has met a diverse community of other kids in treatment programs around Boston.

She strongly values the importance of bringing together a community to have conversations on

mental health, and wants to give a voice to the student body at her own school, Newton North

High, where mental health is a prevalent issue, but isn’t at the forefront of administration or

student activism.

Nena Kotsalidis is our Business Management Executive. As a student at Boston Latin School,

she understands the need for relieving stress and anxiety for high school students. As a member

of multiple extracurricular activities in and outside of school, she understands the importance of

balancing the workload of school, activities and the importance of making time for mental

health.

Katherine is our Marketing Executive and Outreach Coordinator. She is originally from

Shanghai, China, but currently she lives in Newton and attends the British International School

of Boston. Concurrently, she is working on a project to discuss mental health in China with her

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school. She is passionate about reaching out to her community, and is an active mental health

activist in her school and beyond.

Sarisha is our Software Developer. She attends Cambridge Street Upper School and brings a

fresh, young perspective to the complex topic of mental health. She was a strong interest in

computer programming and strives to pursue app development in the future, working on products

she believes are important to the communities she is apart of.

Although each company member took on a different role in the creation of our final product, we

all worked closely together in programming the app as well as writing the business plan to create

a cohesive product that fulfills our company’s mission.

Mission Statement:

The goal of our company is to strengthen the mental health community and generate more

mental health related discussions. We want to combat the stigma of mental health by working

within communities to create an open Q&A platform to talk about prevalent mental health

experiences. Our app can be a resource for people who are not connected with professional

mental health services or a complement to the mainstream treatment of mental health. We are not

only a technology company, but also an activist organization here to support those struggling

with mental health and to make a difference in the mission to humanize mental health problems.

Revenue Plan:

Our app is free to download and our services do not cost any money. We hope that our app can

reach a wide basis of users from any socioeconomic background. MindCloud generates revenue

through sponsorships from advertisements in our app for stress relieving products and services.

We plan on partnering with companies to mutually market out products. An expanded online

community in MindCloud also helps generate more advertisement funds to support our business.

In the future we hope to incorporate direct connections to services in our app through a resources

page.

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Outreach Plan:

We plan on launching our app for a student body audience by demonstrating our app at local

schools and mental health programs for teens. As high school students ourselves, we currently

experience first hand the pressures of school and the struggles of maturing and changing. We

want to build a strong community of high school students in the Boston area and eventually

expand out of the district and state. Our online market is comprised of daily users who can log

on, scroll through, and message on the app, making it a social market as well.

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III. Product and Services MindCloud aims to give students a voice. We want students to share their personal stories and

give their insights so that others may be exposed to and join their dialogue. We conducted a

survey in which we asked students ages 13 to 18 about their experiences with mental health. Our

results show that over 60% of those surveyed believe that people should talk about mental health

issues more. Additionally, over 80% of those surveyed wished or maybe wished they were more

connected with people who had similar struggles and concerns as them.

Do you wish more people talked about mental health problems?

Appendix B: Mental Health Survey Responses

MindCloud users create a customized profile where they select topics they’ve experienced and

want to talk about. MindCloud then generates a personal Q&A feed of discussions based on their

profile. Users can join discussions or ask their own questions, receiving insight from other

people as well as sharing some of their own story. MindCloud then suggests one-on-one

connections between users with similar experiences/struggles. Through our app we are able to

generate an online community where people who struggle with mental health problems can talk

anonymously on an issue that is normally difficult to speak about in public day to day life.

There are a number of apps out on the market that address mental health issues. Other products,

however, focus on providing treatment suggestions to mental health struggles. Our product

focuses on connecting people to a community. We work within communities to reveal the mental

health experiences of each individual so that those within the community can see a collective

balance of stories from the people around them. Our platform gives anyone the visibility and

exposure to listen to and speak on mental health issues.

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IV. Current Stage of Product Development App Features:

● Users can create a profile on MindCloud.

● After creating a profile, users can select topics they want to talk about to add to their

profile.

● Based on their selected topics, MindCloud generates a feed of discussions they can join.

Users can add new discussion questions, with topics of interest tagged to them.

● Users can make one of one connections by clicking other profiles, based on the topics of

interests and discussions users share.

● User can send mobile text messages to personal connections.

● On their profile, users can change their privacy settings, notification settings, and access a

preliminary resources page.

App Platform: MIT App Inventor 2

Shipping our App: Through connections with schools and mental health programs, we can

present MindCloud and reach an audience of teens and young adults. We also expect that the

online community of MindCloud can expand among teenagers and friends. We will partner with

stress-relieving products and services to mutually market our products with advertisements. We

also plan on making connections with mental health activists and professionals to speak about

our app and our company’s mission.

Future research and development:

● Currently, our app creates a feed for the user based on their selected topics of interest. In

the future, we hope to develop a smart algorithm for suggesting new discussions for our

users, possibly integrating artificial intelligence algorithms like other forum-based

applications.

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● With more connections, MindCloud hopes to include a resources page that can connect

users to resources in their providence based on their location, such as counseling clinics,

support groups, hospital programs, or therapists.

MIT App Inventor: Prototype Screenshots

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V. Competitive Analysis

The main users of our app include teenagers to young adults who suffer from mental health

problems as well as people who are interested in joining the conversation about mental health.

Our app is especially focused on communities where the stigma surrounding mental illness

strongly affects the community members. In the future we hope to expand our market to middle

and high schools around the globe as well as college campuses.

Some of our key competitors include: Pacifica, PureMind, Happify, Calm, and Headspace. We

believe our app stands out from the competition because it focuses on having meaningful

discussions about mental health and making a difference by connecting a community.

MindCloud also suggests one-on-one connections for its users, a unique feature differentiating us

from our competitors.

Capability MindCloud Headspace Pacifica Happify Puremind Calm

Community Forum Ê ✖ Ê Ê ✖ ✖

Personalized Profile Ê ✖ Ê Ê Ê ✖

Forum for one-on-one conversations

Ê ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖

Customizable feed Ê Ê Ê Ê Ê ✖

Ability to search for topics and questions

Ê ✖ Ê ✖ ✖ ✖

Ability to search and connect with other people

Ê Ê ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖

Competitive Analysis Chart

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While other apps focus on providing treatment suggestions, such as guided meditation or health

and habit tracking, our app does not aim to be a self-help tool. We want to emphasize to our

users the important of community. We don’t want them to struggle alone, we want to connect

them to the real life stories and advice of all the people around them whom they’ve never had the

fortune to talk to. Our app connects people and encourages them to have hard real conversations.

We don’t emphasize positivity, we emphasize an exploration of every perspective. We want our

content to be generated by the efforts of a community, where the collective stories of it’s

individuals create an experience in of itself for our users. In this way, we are very different from

other apps on the market.

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VI. Branding and Marketing Plan  In order to reach our consumers, we plan on first reaching out to local therapist offices, where

therapists would recommend our app to their patients/clients. Considering our app is targeted

towards school-aged individuals, we plan on advertising our app at local schools. In schools, we

would be able to partner with the schools’ guidance departments as well as the nurse’s offices.

We also plan on advertising our app at local therapy groups for teenagers.

MindCloud will be free to download through the Google Play as well as the App Store. Our app

will also include upgrades such as using a resources page to connect to resources around the user

based on their location.

In terms of how the company will function, the designs will be put into production by our

programmers. After the first prototype is made, it will be tested, evaluated, and modified again,

enhancing our consumer experiences. We are a social enterprise focusing on creating a free

platform for mental health related discussions. We hope to help teenagers with mental health

issues, and moreover to spread more conversations to rid our communities of the stigma

surrounding mental health. We want to aid those who feel isolated and misunderstood by

themselves and the environment around them.

Employee Breakdown:

● 1 Programmer (developing the app and put it into action) at the beginning, as our app

expands and receives more users in the future, more errors will be found and need to be

fixed and new functions will need to be introduced according to our customers’

responses. Therefore, the focus of our programmers will shift from developing and

building on the prototype to expanding our app and include more functions. The number

of programmers employed will be flexible because it will change according to the

financial standing of our company, however, we are aiming to increase the number of

programmers employed by 1 every year at the beginning of our first 5 years.

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● 2 Market managers (analysis user responses and make adjustments to better serve our

users) The market manager will not only receive responses from our own users through

surveys, but conduct market researches to find potential users in our local community.

We believe the satisfaction of our customers lies in the heart of our company and

knowing what our users think of our product ensures our app is actually useful and

thereby attracts more users in the future. As the number of our users increase, more data

will need to be analyzed and more users to reach, so we are aiming to increase the

number of market managers by 1 to 2 every year.

● 1 Social media manager, (maintain public image of our app as well as online

advertisement) our app will have social media accounts and they need to be maintained

and regularly updated to build up our brand image. This would help us reach our target

users because most of them are teenagers and internet users. Social media managers will

also be responsible to reply to comments in our social media account. We are planning on

keeping the number of social media managers constant for the first few years.

We identify as both a tech company as well as a social enterprise focused on combating the

mental health stigma. As mention in our future developments plan, we plan on partnering with

schools and mental health organizations like Sources of Strength, Minding your Mind, Active

Minds or other initiatives for student mental health in the future. We will promote their services

in our app, and we hope they will promote our app to a larger national audiences.

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VII. Financial Plan and Projections We plan on crowdfunding a starting investment for MindCloud by asking mental health

organizations and professionals for funds to support our app to help the mental health community

and the well being of students. Our company has low cost operating costs because we have a

small dedicated team and plan on launching our app in local communities.

Our projected market size for our first year is 5 high schools in the Boston Area with an average

of 1000 students per school and we predict a 60% user uptake in reference to the result of our

survey. With a 60% user uptake of 3,000 users, the cost for advertisement per year for our first

year will be $10 each, assuming the number of advertisement uptake will be 50*. There will be

no costs during our first year of operation because everything will be operated collectively in our

homes and during our own time. The registration fee will be free on the Android system.

After the results from our first year of business, we will expand our markets to 15 high schools in

the Boston area and the assumption of a 60% uptake thereby predicts a 9,000 user uptake in our

second year, which will be twice the amount of our first year’s estimation at the very least

(excluding the increase in customers through other increased numbers of personal user

connections and publicity by other mediums). Along with the increase in the popularity of our

app, we will increase the cost per advertisement to $30 to accommodate our growing demand.

This will lead to an increase in our revenue to $4500. However, as our population increase, the

business will need to hire professionals to help with management and regulating users.

Therefore, the cost for our second year of operation will be $500 dollars to hire professional

programmers and market researchers and we will provide constant new features and updates to

ensure users are not lost in the long run as well as aligning our services to the customer's needs.

We will also spend $400 on promotions. This will leave us with $3,600 of profit for our second

year of operation*.

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Our projected market size for our third year will be 21 high schools* along with our assumption

of 60% uptake which will give us an estimate of 12,600 users. We will also increase the cost per

advertisement to $40, boosting our revenue to $8,000. As our business expands, the cost for

maintenance will increase proportionally,

During the Fourth year of operation, we will increase our market size to 40 schools, this will give

us an estimated revenue of $32,000 if the cost per advertisement increases to $80. The cost for

maintenance will increase to 1,000 whereas promotion will remain at $400. This will leave us

with $30,600 of profit and $41,550 over the course of 4 years.

*These are conservative estimations based solely on the information we are certain and confident

about, excluding potential users from other schools or community. We expect that, outside of our

direct outreach efforts, part of the schools we reach promote our app to other connected schools

and the community of users at each school bring some of their own personal connections to our

app.

Analysis of Financial Projections

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VIII. Appendices Appendix A: Mental Health Survey We conducted a survey on mental health which received around 150 reponses. We asked students about their experiences, what they saw in their school communities, and how they believe mental health can be addressed.

Appendix B: Interview Response Statistics 1. Do you know people who also suffer from mental health problems?

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2. Do you wish people talked about mental health issues more?

3. Do you wish you were more connected with people with who have similar struggles/experiences as you?

4. Are you willing to share your struggles/experiences with others?

5. Do you believe hearing other people talk about their struggles/experiences would help you?

Appendix C: Interviews Interview #1: Gabriella Hernandez, Mental Health Professional at the British International

School of Boston. Interview #2: Wendy Li, Student at Newton North High School.

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IX. Sources “NAMI.” NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness, National Alliance on Mental Illness, www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-by-the-numbers. “Mental Illness.” National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Nov. 2017, www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness.shtml. Burge, Kathleen. “Newton Mobilizing after Suicides of Teens-The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com, Boston Globe, 2 Mar. 2014, www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/03/02/newton-mobilizing-after-suicides-teens/ddoqf9XlrCPhEl6fbd2KYI/story.html. Bacigalupe, Gonzalo. “Newton Suicides: Is High-Achiever School Culture Breaking Our Kids?” Newton Suicides: Is High-Achiever School Culture Breaking Our Kids? | CommonHealth, 17 Feb. 2014, www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2014/02/17/newton-suicide-stress. Spencer, Kyle. “It Takes a Suburb: A Town Struggles to Ease Student Stress.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Apr. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/education/edlife/overachievers-student-stress-in-high-school-.html. Taylor, Erica. “The Illusion of Community.” The Writings of Erica Taylor, 28 Sept. 2016, www.ericataylorr13.wordpress.com/2016/09/22/the-illusion-of-community/.

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