Today's episode features Maya McClendon, the Founder of Timeout. Timeout is an app designed to specifically aid athletes and other high pressure performers with tools to aid in bettering mental health. While Timeout is focusing first on athletes, Maya believes expansion into all kinds of competitive areas is going to be critical to Timeout's success. We talk about how to build a business, what it's like to get funding, and the intersection between tech and mental health. Maya teaches me about problem curation: figuring out what the issues actually are is the way to actually solve problems.

Welcome to the meadow woman podcast. We address the

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Thank you so much for supporting the show week after week

listening to my voice. And for all the new listeners. Welcome.

I hope you enjoy I hope you'll continue listening to me. I'm so

excited to introduce today's guests because when we first met

and spoke there was just such a joyous energy radiating from

her. We have a lot in common as former college athletes. And so

I definitely might be a little biased when I when I talk about

the energy coming from her. But I truly believe she's just a

wonderful and very light filled person I have on today, Maya

McClendon, she's the founder of Timeout. Timeout is an app

designed to specifically aid athletes and other high pressure

performers, with tools to aid in bettering their mental health. I

know she started with traditional athletics and is

looking to move into esports athletes. And I think we all

know what a competitive environment that is. So we'll

definitely talk about that. But Maya, welcome to the show.

Please introduce yourself, give the audience a bit of your

backstory fill in anything that I might have missed? Absolutely.

Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me, I really

look up to you and what you're doing in the space. I've

listened to a couple of of the past episodes and just I'm so

proud of the conversations that are going on. But yeah, you

know, I, you kind of mentioned, I'm a former student athlete, I

come from a family of athletes. My sister is a professional

volleyball player, my dad played a little pro basketball and I

have two younger brothers who are fantastic. I love to

compete, I probably have played seven different sports since the

age of two, I was in ballet, I played soccer, I, you know,

played lacrosse in high school, just you know, loved to really

enjoy my my art form of expressing myself through play,

which ultimately led me to get a scholarship at the University of

Louisville. And then transfer to Arizona State. I say I am an

athlete, but I'm also a huge nerd.

pre med psych, absolutely loved research and just diving into

the minds and bodies of people just to really, you know, harp

on one of my, my self proclaimed skills of, of just deep,

unapologetic empathy, trying to understand how to heal those

around me and really, you know, create a safe space for people

to express themselves. So started off with the need to be

a doctor, right that this deep urge to be a doctor after my

post collegiate career. And that transformed after a tragedy into

what I'm doing now, which you know, was the death of a

teammate. And I'm sure we'll go deeper into that. But yeah,

that's that's a little bit of a background about about me. With

that in mind, let's get into and you've already mentioned this a

little bit, but why you create a timeout and how it actually

works. Absolutely. So like I said, I was pre med Psych.

That's what I got my degree in and at the University of

Louisville. What led me to transfer was a personal mental

health crisis that I really hid from a lot of people. I was

starter, I was a captain and you know, an upperclassman and just

really navigated that space on my own. And when I transferred,

changing my major to psychology from biology, really opened my

eyes to the power of understanding basics, the basics

of psychology, bio psychosocial study, and it really helped me

emerge out of that dark place. But you know, a year later, as I

was sending for the MCAT, you know, my friend taking her life

just made me realize that I was lucky to have had that

education. And I was thinking, you know, what would the sports

world look like if we had just the fundamentals, right? If we

just sort of calling ourselves weak or crazy, we could think,

oh, you know, I just have this background or element or risk

factor that I can't overcome, just like, you know, weak ankles

or weak means or other genetic factors. I really couldn't move

forward with med school. I was stuck talking to other friends

who had competed and are still professional athletes. And I

said, you know, I wish I just had an app. Like, I just wish I

had something in my hand, that I could pull up any time and no

one would know. And it was just something that I could always go

back to on my own time. And I started drawing the wireframes

downloaded every single mental health app that was out there in

2017 and came up with the name Timeout.

Timeout, take a timeout for mental health. And what

originally started off as just a mental health app for athletes

has transformed into something bigger today, those original

features that were made

had to overcome the barriers of help seeking and reduce stigma

and suicide risk factors. You know, we understood that there's

a whole sports athletic ecosystem. And it's not just

athletes in it, it's the licensed providers, it's the

coaches. So we also developed another application for licensed

providers. And those two applications communicate to each

other in real time, while sending data to a dashboard that

only the timeout team can access. So that is a little bit

about, you know, what timeout is, right now we're focused on

college athletics. But like you said, you know, we're really

expanding our network, getting into the in person components of

this holistic approach to mental health. And I'd love to talk to

you, just because this is a podcast that definitely focuses

a bit on gaming. But I would love to talk to you how you're

planning to expand into other high pressure environments in

general. And if you thought about working with esports,

athletes, or kind of anything that you might have learned from

seeing different competitive environments like esports,

compared to traditional sports environments, I guess, like how

are you planning on using your knowledge and expertise in newer

environments, particularly ones that might be more on the tech

video game kind of side of things, in terms of expanding

into other environments, there are two different approaches

that we've been planning and really working on the first

component is with our content, original content. And this is

something that we're working on, we're beta testing, and hasn't

been as much in the public, essentially, on the athlete app

side, the first thing yet you would do is take a really brief

survey and have your background information to understand what

type of athletes that you are, including your sport, whether

you're, you know, an esports, or if you know, you're in the

different fields. And that survey really sparks the

algorithm for the recommended resources, right? We're taking a

bunch of data that exists already. And in terms of

personality type risk factors, and we're recommending an array

of different tools. And one of those is content that we're

creating. And we're starting with a pathway or playbook for

specific instances, specific mental health barriers, like

depression, anxiety, eating disorders. And those are the

tools that are being recommended to each individual. So as we've

done our research, so far, different sports typically

experience different rates of different mental health crises.

So for example, track athletes have high rates of eating

disorders. And when you look at your gaming, those individuals

have high rates of suicide and depression, right because of

certain factors. So depending on what they're inputting in that

first triage process, we're recommending pathways for them.

And that really includes you know, that content, as well as

those in person resources. And that leads to the second thing,

you know, that one of the pillars at timeout is our

timeout community where we're talking to high performing

individuals from all different fields who want to represent our

brand, and come together and speak about their mental health

journeys and finding specific communities. And I guess, elite

faces spokespeople in their field to say, hey, this was my

journey, you know, this is something recommended in our

timeout community, it kind of mirrors the process of group

therapy without calling it group therapy, where you can find your

community, and then talk about those those common mental health

barriers together, but it is recommended to you to get you to

the right place. So part of this, I'm going to circle back

to something that I've heard you mentioned a couple times now,

but clinical research has seems like a huge part of the

strategy. And I am I'm a big research junkie, I actually also

switched out of biology into a major called decision science,

which was very much about neurology, and decision making

and psychology kind of all mixed up with stats. So decision trees

and decision pathways are something I'm super familiar

with. I love it. And so what it sounded like to me is you're

taking your time kind of building up something where

people can have a very individualized experience based

on the content that you're actually putting on the

platform. I'm very familiar with the like, move fast and break

things in tech. This seems like a very different approach.

That's like very do the research first and kind of move forward

in that. How has that been kind of from the tech startup angle

building a tech company with this sort of really heavy

clinical research background? Have you found that partnerships

collaborations are willing to kind of jump on for the long

haul? And they see the long term vision? Are you finding it sort

of difficult to explain, hey, we're taking our time and doing

the clinical research part, like what has it been like being in

kind of this tech startup mental health overlap Venn diagram

world, but doing it in a way that's very opposite of how tech

companies are kind of typically grown? Yeah, yeah, that's a fair

antastic question and something that we really talked a lot

about as a team. At the beginning of this right, we

realized, you know, this is a huge idea coming from so much so

much research, it's going to take a while to create something

that's beautiful. And on top of that, this isn't like another

DoorDash. Right? This is Mental Health, where it lives can be at

risk. So talking about this holistic strategy, we really

broke up the services that we can offer that will lead into a

phased approach to our technology and our research. One

of the services we offer, which we've launched and are working

on with one university is called our program evaluations, I

watched a lot of master classes, I love that platform, and I

can't remember his name, but he talks about sales, right? When

you go to a customer or patient or client, the first step isn't

problem solving. It's problem curation, asking the right

questions coming from a third party, that's non bias to

understand where our people are starting the system holistically

is the first step. While we're developing the technology, this

research approach, we are working on a year long research

tread study with version one and getting an idea about version

two, right? That takes time, that takes energy that takes

resources, and it's in a way is this fast, iterative approach,

but not in terms of launching to the public. So while we're

working on the services that we can offer, building the

community, getting feedback on the ground, we're also

developing the technology in the background, and building those

relationships with those universities. So you know, we're

going to be testing with Arizona State, that's a huge university

for an entire year, you know, we get an idea of, you know, what

that looks like in a controlled environment. So that when we do

release certain features, it kind of is that, you know,

testing outside of the controlled environment, you

know, it will take a while. And because this is so new, you

know, we're willing to take that time, when you talk about those

partnerships, they understand the investment, right, they

understand that what they're doing right now isn't working.

And it's going to take, you know, really investing time and

energy and finding out what works in those environments, and

taking a risk on the companies that, you know, sincerely have

their best interests in mind. And I think that's, you know,

where they're coming from is some things can happen

immediately, like the services and then some things we'll have

to take our time with. This is so interesting from the

university perspective, because I don't typically have people

who run startups who are going kind of this route, when it

comes to funding and partnerships, that tends to be a

lot of kind of VC investments and, and more of that fast

moving energy and environment. And it's very refreshing to have

someone who is still moving fast, but also balancing that

with moving with intention and taking the time to properly

research. So I think it's, it's kind of a good balance, because

I don't want to discount the fact that you're also at the

same time building and launching and testing an app. But that

you're able to kind of counterbalance that with doing

loads of clinical research to try to improve the product as

it's coming out. Absolutely. When it comes to that

development process, definitely parallels between what you're

doing at timeout. And in game development. One of those big

parallels is in the platform you chose and you've already

mentioned that you wanted something on the phone, just to

be able to constantly have it by to to pull it up in private when

you have a moment to do so. And obviously, the time we spend on

our phones, whether it's mobile gaming, whether it's social

media, it's just increasing and increasing, we all have this

thing called screen time. Now, two questions. The first, why

did you choose the mobile platform? Obviously,

accessibility is one of the huge reasons. But like I said, as we

balance that with, we need less screen time. How are you

thinking about using that mobile platform? And then the second

is, tell me about the benefits that kind of keep you on mobile.

So as you move forward and more research, what are you seeing

about using a phone app that has been encouraging and exciting?

We were thinking at the beginning of this, why not a web

based platform, you know, what, what is the best window to

capture our audience and make sure that, you know, we're

creating an experience that is not just you know, clinically

helpful, but also visually stimulating and brings that

level of comfort, right? And just thinking about the younger

generations looking to your phone for resources is an

instinct, right? That instinct is okay, like, I can grab my

phone and I so much comes up. But the key is finding something

that's trustworthy and reliable. When you look at you know, React

Native and iOS apps. It allows us to do a ton on the cyber

cybersecurity side and within our own control, right. I know

you mentioned screentime. And that was actually one of my

first I guess, barriers that I had to overcome, especially when

pitching to schools and investors and grants. However,

our approach and what we're encouraging

Athletes and high performers to do is to use the app to overcome

the barriers so that they can get in person, you can't have a

mental health app where there's no human element, I truly

believe that just from the nature of, of psychology, right,

especially with CBT, DBT, IPT, those deeper levels of

intervention, they need to happen with a professional where

there's human interaction. And there was a ton of research over

COVID, where providers were talking about the benefits of

teletherapy. But also how certain social cues you just

can't pick up like, even right now you can't see my hands, if

my legs were shaking, you wouldn't be able to see those,

those details. So the whole purpose of the application is to

say, Hey, we've done this survey this this program evaluation

with a report to say, for some reason you have providers, you

have programs, but but the athletes aren't seeing the

providers in person, why not? Is it the scheduling process? Is it

the communication process? Is it the in person process, like what

elements are providing or are prohibiting them from help

seeking and what are contributing to suicidal risk

factors. And ultimately, after they go through that journey,

they will have the education of what to do next. So maybe I do

join group therapy that's offered at my school, or maybe I

do see this nutritionist that has their office at this

location, or maybe I find someone else in a different

network. So I think, you know, those are the benefits, it opens

the door for, you know, in person interactions by

overcoming those things that are digital or not digital that are

difficult to get through right now. So it sounds like the

approach here is kind of twofold. And I would I just want

to make sure I'm getting this right. So the first is to have

something that's kind of an immediate, not necessarily for

when you're in crisis, but what for when you're in a down

moment. And you need something to immediately flick through to

help to maybe open up a tool or learn a tool or refresh yourself

on a tool that helps you in that moment kind of recover and be

able to move on in moments that, again, are not crisis moments.

And then the second part of it is learning your habits,

patterns and behaviors and connecting you to the

specialists that can actually help in the long term and

consistently improve or help address with the root causes of

those habits and behaviors. Is that accurate? Yeah. Yeah. And

again, that is that's a piece of it, for sure. And when we talk

about the athletes app, at least, we're calling ourselves a

digital health health platform, we're not teletherapy, right,

that's not our goal, our goal is to take a system and in be a

medical device, quote, unquote, medical device, into the system

itself. And again, this is very early stages on what we've

developed up to date, and we have version three in our minds

that we still want to test. So, you know, if we look at the

range of risks from that first survey, you know, green, yellow,

orange and red, depending on those risk factors, where do we

place people? And how do we communicate that within you

know, their system? So if you are, you know, green, you know,

you have passed the checklist, and it's a way to check in to

see how you can become more mentally resilient. And that's

where we're really trying to get people there are no suicide risk

factors, people have been on a great trajectory, how can they

continue to relish in that maintenance phase, and then you

get to yellow where, you know, there are some precursors, so

what elements on the application can help you are specialized for

you to be able to build up those tools to be able to help

yourself in those moments. And then when you get into orange

and red, that's when Hey, you may need to be referred to a

licensed provider application. Or you can hit the timeout

button, which is crisis intervention, it's a range of

different resources in the touch of a button where you don't have

to guess for yourself, you kind of have an indication of, okay,

you may need to be led in one direction versus the other. I

like that crisis intervention is also a priority. One of the

biggest issues with surveys is that people tend to not

necessarily be honest with themselves and self

identification is really, really tough. So we're talking about

the these buckets and kind of different risk factors and

different risk levels. And I know that this isn't as a

simplistic process as it sounds. So I don't want people to get

the idea that you know, it's five questions in your bucket

and right away like this is not a Buzzfeed quiz. There's,

there's clinical research behind it when you're actually getting

put into these buckets. And I know that that's going to be an

ever evolving process. But how do you contend with the known

fact that people tend to not self select yourself identify on

surveys with with patterns that they actually have? You know,

one thing is the the inspiration for the survey is actually

inspired by the International Olympic Committee. These are

tools that are being used at the highest level already, and we're

taking it and we're proud

serving it but also adding other safety nets and other validity

skills because no one wants to take a 50 question survey on an

app that has all those validity skills built in. Right? Unless

it's telling me like how my horoscope relates to like,

what's happening when Mercury Mercury's in retrograde, and

like what friends charactering

Exactly which Harry Potter house I'm in

the importance.

Right, all of the above?

There are a couple of ways we're looking at this. And we're

actually testing this right now for risk analysis, right?

Because that's really the biggest question. First is, it's

not that I want to admit, we can't help everybody. But if we

look at what's being done right now, at least for me, I never

took a mental health survey the entire time I was at either

universities, right? It's gotten better. But compared to what we

have now, even asking the questions is better than where

we're starting. So we realize we're not going to get the 100%

truth out of people. It's not a lie detector test, it's really

there for them, when they want to get the benefits out of it.

We can't, you know, force them to be honest, all the time. And

we write that in our studies, right? You know, these are

qualitative, you know, surveys where we're not going to really

know the truth no matter what. But over time, and the more data

we do get, you know, the more that we can kind of wrap things

up and make better recommendations. The second

thing is making sure that when every user logs in, there is a

process on privacy and data sharing, right, we have a

message that says, you know, this is not going to be shared

with anyone, you don't want to see this, this is for you, this

is 100% for you to get the value, and understanding how you

can be more mentally resilient, and more mentally, quote

unquote, tough saying that on the front end, and making them

aware of like, okay, we're going to use your input for research,

and you know, that it's going to be for research, and this is

going to be for you. So that's really where we are right now,

as we continue to grow and, you know, obtain more participants

and users will get an idea of how to better ask these

questions in how to encourage them to open up about, you know,

how they're really feeling. But there's so much work to do in

general with surveys and assessments, right? Like, this

could happen in a doctor's office, it does happen in

doctor's offices, but that's why we've built in other safety nets

and other ways to get to that piece of the algorithm, you

know, that they really need to end up in, I actually recently

read a paper on, I wish I could remember the new form of survey,

but it was essentially, to try and to get people more more

honest, on political surveys, questions were framed in a much

different way. Like anyone who knows a Likert scale out there,

the ones that are five, not applicable, fully applicable

scale. So anyways, yeah, you're totally right. That's, you're

totally speaking my language, my undergrad language here. So this

body of knowledge, I clearly you have this great body of

knowledge on psychology and psychological research that is

going into this app, which is awesome. But I want to also, and

we talked about this a little bit, but I want to talk about

the technical side, because also, at the end of the day,

you're thinking about coding an app for felons,

which is again, not necessarily an easy feat very different than

the research portion. But what has surprised you about building

up the tech side of this in terms of like, actually

physically building the app? Please feel free to correct me

if I'm wrong, I'm assuming you work with someone who codes it.

If you also code it yourself, I'll be supremely floored. Just

because

just because that is again, as someone who has a psych

background was never necessarily my jam. But you could be a woman

who does both and I just wouldn't know. But what has that

technical development process been like for you? Especially

since we seem to be like minded on this, like psychological very

research heavy kind of clinical side? Yeah, absolutely. I do not

code. I wish I did. I have I downloaded some of the apps like

for like, getting your own academy?

Yeah, exactly. I'm on it. I haven't had I opened in a while.

It's been a bit. Yeah, I'm still a millennial. So I was coding in

for my space.

Right. Like, where?

But yeah, you know, to be so transparent, the app development

piece has been really, really difficult. I do have a business

partner who you know, was part of the original team of hinge

and understood at least the baseline of what it looks like

and what you know, I was able to really utilize his services for

the advice but in terms of assembling the team, putting

everyone together, taking you know, my original frames and

boiling it down into it and acceptance criteria.

Yeah, understanding which features to start out with what

to build from scratch, what to kind of take off the shelf,

those are a lot of things to consider and questions to ask.

And the app development process has taken a little bit longer

than anticipated, which it always does, right, you know,

there are unexpected bugs and things will happen. And that's

to be expected. In general, I would say the value that even

just a beta brings, when you have the courage to take it to

your customers and run focus groups is so valuable, the

feedback that we're getting, that's usable. So, you know,

it's been a journey for me to manage the expectation in my

mind of what it should look like at this stage. And I think

that's, that's part of the journey, which is understanding

where to go quickly, and where to kind of take your time, one

of our competitive advantages, and I'm kind of getting off the

topic of the actual tech itself, you know, being quote, unquote,

first to market with, you know, this has never been done in this

app development takes a while, we're able to see other ideas

emerge and kind of see where they falter and see how the, you

know, the public responds to certain things. And we've

actually pivoted already in our development based off of, you

know, what people have said about cerebral or, you know,

talkspace, or, or, you know, similar ideas and an

understanding, okay, you know, in this next builds, where do we

want to expand? Where do we want to pivot? And what kind of

feedback are we getting, in terms of the actual UI UX, it's

hard, I will say, it's hard. And it takes a while. And we have

had a lot of supporters. But I think in general, if you want to

develop to apps and an admin dashboard, you may have to

fundraise with VC in order for it to move at the pace that

you'd like. But that's if you prioritize pace over process

that makes perfect sense. That actually leads me into kind of a

different question. Well, it leads me to two different

questions. But I want to start with the question about

competition and what else is out there? Because there is,

obviously a bunch of mental health apps, yours that's

already differentiating itself, because it's for a niche

audience. But what else is something special that you are

finding from your feedback from your users that is really

working about timeout? Yeah, absolutely. So like you said,

there are a ton of mental health apps out there, there are

meditation apps, there are teletherapy apps there, you

know, our sports psychology applications that are out there,

and emerging every day, it feels like but looking at timeout as a

process in a in a platform that's bigger than just the

application, I think is really important and how we present

ourselves and how we differentiate within the market,

which is, we're not just launching a public app out there

and saying, Here you go, where the user logs in, and goes

through one journey, and then it's up to them to decide when

they want to, you know, touch back in and go through, you

know, a process, it's really self guided. And I think that

fundamentally, is the issue with mental health and in Psych

Services already, which is how does the general public without

any previous knowledge, know what to do? What to look up when

to start and where to start? Right? Like, it's so hard unless

you, you know, change your major to psychology, or, you know,

even if you follow the Tiktok pages, like how do you know if

that's right for you, because it's such a subjective field. So

the holistic approach of timeout is the differentiator, it's the

fact that, you know, we're Yes, niche made for athletes, by

athletes, we understand from the higher performer perspective of

how we want this to be framed, because we're not a clinical

tele psych application, we have some liberty to have fun with

some of the language, right, where we can say, you know,

we're not just, you know, put the dark filter on and throw a

bunch of terms at you. And this is what depression is, it's very

much like, hey, like, have you ever been in a situation where,

you know, you're in preseason, and you have nothing left in

your tank, and everyone's crying and crying and complaining? You

know, and using sports metaphors, you know, like, I'm

in that as we speak, actually, thank you for bringing that.

Take is on e and n and using those types of sports metaphors,

and not to be cliche, because that's the name of my other

company. But that is how we can really put the athlete in the

center of the model, and make sure that we're giving them this

circular experience, and not just for the athletes, but for

the entire sports programs. And when I say you know, we're the

quote, unquote, medical device for athletic ecosystems. That's

what I mean, right? It's plugging into the whole system.

It's not just there you go. We've launched this good luck.

That makes sense. Yeah. And I think having that audience in

mind is so important. I want to touch on something else. You

mentioned in that previous answer.

as well about funding and investment, I would love to know

because I know that you've done a lot with education. And part

of this would being sports programs, obviously, things like

the NCAA is huge, professional sports organizations, amateur

sports organizations, one day esports organizations as well.

We're on our way.

But what has your funding strategy been like you don't

have to go, you can go into deep, as detailed as much detail

as you want. But I asked mostly because obviously, we know what

the funding is world is like for women and women of color, it's

even tougher. I have read those statistics on the show a bunch

of times. But what has your experience been? Like? Have you

found I'm making a assumption here, but I'm assuming that

you've gone to both kind of VC and investment firms and then

also gotten the education the university side? What has been

the difference in those two? Are you finding that people are

receptive in in both lanes? Are you finding it difficult to

overcome barriers in either of the lanes? Like, what what has

that been? Like? Yeah, well, I really appreciate this question.

Because it's kind of one of those topics where unless you go

deep into it, people just kind of assume that it's like been

easy. You know, I don't know, those are the conversations I've

had, where people like,

oh, god

the communities I'm talking to, well, the people who aren't in

it, right. The other other people who are entrepreneur,

entrepreneurs just see the progress and say, Oh, she just

came up with the money somehow. And, you know, I've even heard

the opposite, which some people have said, this is the best time

to be a black female founder, because so much money is being

given away. And I love to get into that conversation, because

we really started off by going after private

grants, and seeing Okay, that's what everyone was telling me.

So, you know, what incubators? Could I get into that we were

non dilutive? And, you know, what are these fantastic grants

that are out and I got to a couple meetings and found a

couple of these websites and for the amount of energy that it

took to go through those programs and get those grants,

they were only like 5010 $1,000 grants that can only get you so

far. And you know, like the big name companies, they're like,

we're gonna give a billion dollars or, you know, $200

million in funding, those grants are really small for a lot of

different people. And that's fine, that's just not

sustainable for a tech company. Right? We need something much

bigger. So, you know, for awhile, you know, we were

getting 25 $50,000 grants through pitch competitions,

which, you know, I had someone on the team just, you know,

sweeping the internet for, you know, mental health specific

grants, you know, black female, founder specific grants and

applying to as many of those as possible, you know, we did have

a couple of friends and family who really, really cared about

this, what I found is, you know, the idea was ahead of the head

of the curve. So when people started talking about mental

health, there were so many people who wanted to invest

their time and energy into what we were doing. So, you know,

that opened up some opportunity to fund some of the app

development, some of the team salaries, which we've been

incredibly lean up to this point, I still own 100% of the

company, which is fantastic. We have kind of paws on our grant

search at SBIR, Small Business Innovation and Research Grant or

STTR, which is small business tech transfer research grants

that something like that, you know, that is a fantastic

opportunity for for profit companies who are in tech and

research. It is a gamble, though, you know, so we are

actually just now starting to look into VC options, just kind

of out of curiosity. I've been talking to VCs for years, just

you know, Hey, are you interested? What would it look

like? We've protected our valuation, it really is to that

point where if we do want to go quickly after this first round

of research, where we have the idea of, Okay, we're good to go

on version three, we just need the the human power to code it.

That's where we'll negotiate with VCs and find a great

partner. But we've been extremely patient on finding a

good fit or dealing with data that's really sensitive and a

community that we really care about. So we want to make sure

that we partner with the VC, their mission and vision

aligned, they can bring people to the table within the

healthcare field and keep the research going. And you know,

they're a long term partner. So we have tried lots of different

routes, we're really, you know, adaptable, and we're very

diligent about how we move forward and how we invest in

this idea. That is such a good holistic answer. I think, like

from from where you started to where you're going, I definitely

want to like, I hope that people out there who are building

companies can take that advice and run with it. Before we get

into our last segment, I want to kind of quickly summarize the

conversation we've had so far. We started out with

Talking about timeout itself, and how it's a tool to go to

when a person may need a break. It started just for athletes.

But as you've been working on translating it to bigger

audiences, expanding into other environments, doing the research

that makes that all possible, the first step that you

mentioned, which I really like is problem curation, I think

that's a, that's a very intelligent way of putting it,

you figure out what the issues actually are, it's easier to

solve them. So the starting mark for the app is a survey that

helps put people into different categories depending on where

they're at with their mental health, you're simultaneously

figuring out what the problems that are there to solve, and

conducting in depth research to build up that library and app

content that can immediately help people on the platform. So

it's, it's kind of a self sustaining little ecosystem

there. You know, the more people that come on and add in, the

more pathways that you can create, the more problems you

can help solve and learn about the app is meant to help people

also overcome barriers to connecting to in person

resources. deeper levels of intervention are important. You

mentioned that for people who may be in those green and yellow

buckets, who may be hopefully self identifying accurately as

as being in a kind of good place, they need more kind of

retention, learning how to use the tools that they may already

have, how to highlight them in situations where they need them,

for people in the orange and red categories may need help. First

of all, identifying the barriers to getting in person help and

what those are. And secondly, actually connecting with the

resources that are available to them in their environment, to go

out and seek out the help that they need from in person. So you

offer a range of different resources at the touch of a

button, including crisis management through the timeout

button, which I think is so great, and so needed, the value

that you've had through the beta app. And the feedback that comes

from it has been usable, which is great. I had someone on

recently who said I love failure because you don't learn anything

from success. And I think that's, that's sort of it here

you're looking for the people who say this is this, I don't

like this, or I don't like that, or here's how you can fix this,

or here's how you can fix that. And beta testing and launching

is one great way to do that. actually creating the Tech has

been a slower process than expected, which is also in a way

expected because things do always take longer. And building

an app is hard. So and then we ended up with a little

conversation on funding. When it comes to funding the grant

process wasn't necessarily sustainable, because of the

amounts offered. This is a company that requires software

engineers, larger grants and other programs have made it

possible to build the company, but you are thinking about

entering into a VC strategy in the future to be able to speed

up that build and launch process now that you've been kind of

doing the research and getting everything ready on the back end

for a while now for you finding a VC that's aligned with your

mission is really key. And I think that there's a lot of

lessons to be learned both from the grant process that you

mentioned, and from the VC kind of search process, wage, Wade,

waiting through those options and figuring out which one is

right for you. So with all that in mind, I love to end on what I

call a moment of reflection, it's a chance for you to look

back on what you've done. And think about, you know, what

you've built and what it was like. So what is one thing you

would like to tell your younger self about getting into the tech

industry and being successful? I love this. You know,

it's so interesting that we're doing this podcast right now

because I've given my team August off and tried to give

myself August off, we're taking a timeout as a team. This is

part of my timeout because I get to talk about what I love and

and actually reflect on the progress you know, that I've

been able to make. And for anyone who knows me I'm I'm a

perfectionist. And I don't say that as in a bragging way. It's

been something that's been really hard to navigate since I

was an athlete and younger my never really took the time to

reflect on you know where she's been, she just kind of DiEM

rolls through and just laser focused to the point where she

couldn't take time out all of the money that we've raised and

the products that we're building and the people we've connected

to and the feedback it keeps me going but the thing I'm the most

proud of is walking the walk and saying you know, this is a hard

profession. This takes a lot it takes a lot of time. So it is

okay to set things down and then let the dust settle to

understand where to keep taking steps forward. I'm proud of

that. And I'm proud of my team that I've put together they're

beautiful people.

That's so wonderful. I like to your advice is to take a timeout

I think that that is important and asked thank you so much for

coming on you're having your off month where can people find you

follow you checkout timeout I will plug really quick the

timeout has a really nice website I'm someone who designs

websites for a living so I really liked this one um so

check out the website but tell me everything about where they

can find you follow you learn more all that good stuff.

Absolutely. Well you can always find me on LinkedIn McClendon I

you know have a lot of in my chats but you can actually book

an appointment with me straight through that and I love to

Coffee Chat with anybody

Um, you can follow us at timeout underscore IO on Instagram. And

we have, again, amazing team members who, you know, have the

same same mentality as me and as much to offer. And yeah, you

know, always follow us on our on our website. Now we're

officially launching our services, having a little launch

party in September and then you'll just be able to sign up

for our newsletter and that's the time on app.com. So, looking

forward to connecting with anyone who's interested on this

podcast will actually come out in September so everyone, mark

your calendars for the launch party or check out all the after

materials for all the listeners out there. Also, be sure to

leave five star ratings and reviews. Check out other

holodeck media podcasts, including metal business and

business at esports. I'm on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn

and Lindsey pass and catch me Wednesday afternoons on the

business of esports life after show and you can catch this

podcast in your feed every week. We'll see you next week. Thanks

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