Peer support startup Fello is angling to become the “Uber” of mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) support.

The company, led by a former Uber Eats executive, raised $10.4 million earlier this month from investors including 62Ventures, The Capital Factory Fellowship Fund, Katalyst Capital and Offline Ventures.

CEO Alyssa Pollack compared the platform, launched in August 2024, to Uber’s taxi cab app and handyperson finder site TaskRabbit, aiming to make Fello ubiquitous as a peer support platform.

“When you think about TaskRabbit… if it’s something handyperson-related, I’m going to go to TaskRabbit,” Pollack told Behavioral Health Business. “We want Fello to be the destination if you’re feeling stuck, if you’re getting ready to navigate uncharted waters, if you’re navigating a challenge and you’re not sure where to turn, like we want Fello to be that place.”

Chicago, Illinois-based Fello offers virtual, app-based peer support designed to combat the “loneliness epidemic.” The platform is intended for sub-clinical care within special topics, which thus far include relationships, parenting and substance use. The company’s executives plan to expand these verticals in the future, considering topics including grief, caregiving for a person with a mental or physical illness, career shifts and women’s health. 

The app connects users, which it calls “finders,” with peers who have experienced similar life struggles for video calls lasting from 15 minutes to an hour. The most common option is 30 minutes, Pollack said, which costs users $40. Users receive their first 15-minute session for free.

Peers, known as fellows, are contract employees paid based on the services they render, a system Pollack compared to Uber’s relationship with its drivers. If a user opts for an hour-long session, they would pay $80, the peer would receive $56, and the remainder goes to the company.

Peers are interviewed, vetted and background checked by Fello, followed by five to 10 hours of training. They are then listed on the Fello platform and can be matched with a user.

Fello employees are currently manually matching users with peers, searching for a “deeper than surface level match.” Specificity in the peer-user match is one of Fello’s key differentiators, according to Pollack.

In part, Fello plans to use its newly raised funds to automate its matching system, creating an algorithm to automatically match users to peers.

The company is also extremely hands-on in measuring the success of each session.

Users complete reviews after sessions. If a user leaves a negative review, Fello will intervene and redirect the user to a different peer. The CEO herself pours over these reviews.

“I personally, right now, am going in and looking at every single check-in and reading the comments and making sure that the Fello was trained appropriately,” Pollack said. “You can imagine us zooming out a little bit and thinking about, ‘What’s the Net Promoter Score of finders on the platform? How frequently do finders come back to the platform? How satisfied are fellows with their ability to provide service on the platform?”’

In addition to creating a user-matching algorithm, Fello will use its funds to build growth and marketing partnerships, including with a WNBA spokesperson and influencers. Company executives also plan to hire more corporate employees.

During the early fall, pre-presidential election period, investors were “timid and indecisive,” Pollack said, but were eager to get on board with Fello after hearing about the extent of the loneliness epidemic. The need for peer support is so “urgent” that Fello was able to circumvent investor nervousness.

“Everyone that I tell about Fello, investors and otherwise, either think about a time that they could have used it themselves or know a friend or family member who could have used it,” she said. “That addressable market, and thinking about how this can be a product and an offering for so many different kinds of people made our fundraising process much easier. People just got it.”

Pollack has big plans for Fello. The company currently serves users nationwide but could expand internationally within the next decade. The CEO also plans to forge relationships with employers or health plans to include Fello in a broad mental health care package. Fello is already in talks with a few such entities with plans to have several pilots underway in the second half of 2025.

For Pollack, Fello’s care model will only continue to grow in relevance.

“Peers are critical,” she said. “There’s a gap in the supply of mental health providers and the demand for support like that. I would argue that the demand will grow as we continue to destigmatize getting help for these types of challenges.”