As the first pediatric mental health company to provide tools and treatment for young children ages 0-14 and their families, we know that today’s families need more than daycare and diapers.

Little Otter is proud to announce a major step forward in our journey to bring on-demand, family-centered mental health and wellness to every family: we’ve raised $22M in Series A funding! We’re enthusiastic that this capital will enable us to combat the mental health crisis facing today’s children and families.

We’ll be using this funding to scale our services nationwide by 2023, and to invest heavily in our state-of-the-art tech and data platform, with plans to become an in-network benefit.

This means more families will have access to crucial mental health care from the comfort of home, with quick appointment scheduling and no waitlists.

Founded in May 2020 by mother-daughter team Rebecca Egger and Dr. Helen Egger, Little Otter is based on the principle that we can only address the children’s mental health crisis by treating the whole family through scalable, precision technology available to everyone. Our mission is to break down existing barriers to high-quality services and bring expert mental health care to every home.

As a mental health startup, we provide a full umbrella of services - including tele-therapy, tele-psychiatry, and digital assessments - via our family-focused child mental health app. Our model is based on co-founder Dr. Helen Egger’s 30 years of clinical experience.

Little Otter families experience virtual, on-demand and integrated care with parenting specialists, early childhood trained therapists, couples therapists, and pediatric psychiatrists. Our holistic approach that addresses not only limited to just a single child’s mental health, but also that of the whole family. This ensures that the entire family’s mental health and wellbeing is cared for through Little Otter’s proprietary assessments and quarterly mental health check-ups for each child and caregiver. 

“We were in a pediatric mental health crisis before the pandemic. Now, the crisis is much worse,” said Dr. Helen Egger. “We found that the stresses of the COVID pandemic have increased children’s risk for mental health challenges. In our study of kids 2-12 years old, we found that 80% of the children were at increased risk for anxiety and depression. And almost 60% were at risk of problems in their social skills. Parent mental health has a big impact on child mental health, which is why there is a need for our family-centered care model.”  

Our expanding leadership team, including Max Helzberg, Chief Operating Officer, Sandhya Padmanabhan, Chief Marketing Officer, and Jim Inoue, Chief Technology Officer, will be charged with taking Little Otter to the next stage of growth. Our all-female board of directors, now including Kristin Baker Spohn of CRV, alongside Katie Reiner of Torch Capital, will continue to provide guidance and insights.

“We created Little Otter to bring mental health and wellness to every family,” said Rebecca Egger, CEO and co-founder of Little Otter. “Simply training more providers cannot address the children’s mental health crisis, and that’s why we have built a one-of-a-kind model and team with expertise from child mental health and the best minds in product, engineering, and machine learning to create a platform and build a brand that grows with families over time.” 

Our data-backed approach to online mental health care for families works:

• Since launch, Little Otter has seen 45 percent month-over-month growth, reflecting the unprecedented demand among families at this time.

• Further, 85 percent of families using Little Otter have reached clinical improvements within just six sessions.

Learn more about Little Otter’s expert team and approach to care here. When you’re ready, register to join Little Otter here.