Digital health · Mental health services
Kip Health
A San Francisco startup that paired in person therapy with a data tracking app, built by two women who met climbing a telescope in Puerto Rico. Modern Health acquired it in February 2021.
A Google Doc between sessions
Ti Zhao had been in therapy and hit the same wall a lot of patients hit: she was not sure if it was working. “My entire life was happening outside the therapist’s office and yet my therapist had no insight into that,” she said in a 2018 interview. So she and her own therapist hacked together a Google Docs tool to log what happened between sessions.
She and Erin Frey had met years earlier, by Frey’s account, climbing a telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. When they reconnected in San Francisco they found they had both watched friends and family struggle to find care that worked. “It was funny when we talked about starting Kip, Ti literally walked me to my therapist’s office,” Frey recalled. “And the difference between going to that therapist and then, two years later, using Kip and going to a therapist that used evidence-based practices and worked with me between sessions.”
They incorporated Kip Labs, Inc. in Delaware in October 2015 and joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 batch. The first product, Frey said, was “kind of like a chat bot, before chat bots were super cool,” built to collect the same kind of day to day detail Zhao had been logging by hand.
The gap between sessions
Traditional talk therapy runs once a week or every other week, and a therapist sees only what a patient chooses to bring into the room. Kip’s pitch was to widen that view. Patients used a private app to log daily mood and weekly progress against specific goals, and therapists could read that log before each session. “Instead of your therapist every week getting five puzzle pieces, they’re getting 30,” Frey said.
The company built its practice around evidence based, goal oriented approaches, mainly cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy, rather than open ended talk therapy. Sessions cost $165 flat, Kip did not take insurance, and the company kept about 25 percent of each session fee, according to a 2017 CNBC report on the model.
“We’re making therapy better because we’re giving therapists more data,” Zhao told TechCrunch in 2017. Frey put it in similar terms: “Therapists are professional debuggers of your brain. The more info they have, the more they can talk about and the better they can guide a session.”
Two founders, one title
The public record is not fully consistent about who ran the company. A June 2017 Y Combinator blog post describes Erin Frey as “the co-founder and CEO of Kip (YC W16).” A February 2021 California Secretary of State filing snapshot lists Ti Zhao as chief executive officer, secretary and chief financial officer, and every acquisition announcement in 2021 refers to Zhao as “co-founder and CEO.” No source found explains the transition directly, and both women are described as co-founders throughout Kip’s life. What is clear is that Zhao held the CEO title by the time Modern Health bought the company, and moved into Modern Health’s product organization afterward.
Frey had a technical and product background of her own; both founders are described in a 2018 interview as building and coding the product together, with Zhao handling much of the engineering. The company’s clinical leadership, per its own website, included Anja Schmitz as chief clinical officer and Anna Lindberg Cedar as clinical director, alongside Beau Smith in product, design and engineering and Claire Sanguedolce in brand and operations.
A therapist for every founder
Kip found an early niche inside its own investor base. Refactor Capital and Slow Ventures, two of its backers, agreed to pay for their portfolio founders’ first therapy visit through Kip. “This is a low-cost way to ensure you have a high-performing executive team,” Frey told CNBC in 2017. Refactor’s managing director Zal Bilimoria called it “the right thing to do,” and also good business, since “all founders face challenges in building and running their companies.”
The company also ran a public Investor Pledge for Mental Health, asking venture firms to commit to supporting founder mental health. It launched the effort with a joint interview featuring Frey and Y Combinator’s Ben Huh, who talked openly about using both a CEO coach and, through Kip, a personal therapist for the first time.
Care in downtown San Francisco
Kip operated as an in person practice, not a telehealth product. Its own site described meeting a therapist “at one of our nearby locations in downtown San Francisco,” and it staffed the practice through a licensed entity, Kip Therapy Licensed Clinical Social Worker P.C., registered to a San Francisco address. That structure, a professional corporation owned by a licensed clinician, is the standard way a therapy company can employ or contract with clinicians while keeping clinical practice under a license holder’s name, as California and most states require.
By early 2019 the company had also taken on Jumpstart Foundry as an investor and continued operating under the Kip and Kip Health names, with hellokip.com as its site.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Incorporation | Kip Labs, Inc., a Delaware stock corporation, registered with the California Secretary of State on Oct 23, 2015. Principal address 1300 22nd Street Unit 314, San Francisco. | Public record |
| Accelerator | Y Combinator, Winter 2016 batch, per the company’s own YC profile. | YC data |
| SEC Form D | No Form D found under Kip Labs, Inc. or any name containing Kip in SEC EDGAR’s company search, as of Sep 25, 2026. | Not found |
| Investors named | Slow Ventures, Refactor Capital, Jumpstart (Foundry), Great Oaks Venture Capital, and Y Combinator. No round sizes or dates disclosed by the company or in press coverage. | Company and partner stated |
| Third party funding data | A funding aggregator lists two seed rounds totaling roughly $120K, but its detail figures for valuation and other investors are internally inconsistent and appear to be placeholder or paywalled data, not verified numbers. | Unreliable |
| Clinical licensure entity | Kip Therapy Licensed Clinical Social Worker P.C. listed as a San Francisco clinic in provider directories, consistent with a licensed professional corporation structure for the practice. | Directory listing |
| Acquisition | Modern Health announced the acquisition of Kip on Feb 1, 2021. Terms were not disclosed in the press release or in independent coverage. | Company release |
Read plainly: Kip left a solid trail of press coverage and founder interviews but almost no public financial record. No Form D was ever filed, funding amounts were never disclosed by the company, and the one third party source with dollar figures does not hold up to scrutiny. The clearest facts are the ones with the least ambiguity: it was founded in 2015, went through YC, operated as an in person practice in San Francisco, and was bought by Modern Health in 2021 for an undisclosed sum.
What to watch
- Whether the Kip brand or its tools resurfaced inside Modern Health’s product beyond the initial integration announced in 2021.
- Any disclosure of acquisition terms, which has not happened in the years since the deal closed.
- Confirmation of which co-founder held the CEO title at which point in the company’s six year run.
In their words
“My entire life was happening outside the therapist’s office and yet my therapist had no insight into that.”
Ti Zhao, co-founder, Medium interview, 2018 · Interview
“It was funny when we talked about starting Kip, Ti literally walked me to my therapist’s office.”
Erin Frey, co-founder, Medium interview, 2018 · Interview
“We’re making therapy better because we’re giving therapists more data.”
Ti Zhao, to TechCrunch, 2017 · Independent
“Therapists are professional debuggers of your brain.”
Erin Frey, to TechCrunch, 2017 · Independent
“This is a low-cost way to ensure you have a high-performing executive team.”
Erin Frey, to CNBC, 2017 · Independent
“The missions of Kip and Modern Health are closely aligned: bring high-quality, data-driven mental health care to as many people as possible.”
Ti Zhao, co-founder and CEO, acquisition announcement, Feb 2021 · Company release
“Tracking mental health outcomes is a longstanding challenge.”
Alyson Watson, Modern Health founder and CEO, acquisition announcement, Feb 2021 · Company release
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordKip Labs, Inc. California business filing information
- Public recordSEC EDGAR company search, results for company name Kip
- YC dataKip Health company profile
- IndependentKip is using data to make therapy better for both patients and therapists
- IndependentSome venture capitalists are prioritizing mental health, and are willing to pay for therapy
- InterviewKip’s Investor Pledge for Mental Health
- InterviewFounder Calls: Erin and Ti of Kip
- IndependentModern Health buys fellow digital mental health startup Kip
- IndependentModern Health buys mental health startup Kip
- IndependentModern Health Acquires Digital Mental Health Startup Kip
- Public recordKip acquired by Modern Health, acquisition record
- CompanyModern Health Acquires Mental Health Startup Kip
- CompanyAbout Us, Kip
- CompanyKip homepage
- Directory listingKip Therapy Licensed Clinical Social Worker P.C., clinic listing
- Public recordKip Labs, Inc. company profile
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
