Digital health · ADHD support
Shimmer
Weekly one to one ADHD coaching by video, sold straight to consumers. More than 100,000 sessions since 2022, a free AI app launched in January 2026, and no registered trial or peer reviewed paper of its own.
Fifteen minutes, once a week
In late 2022 a software founder in Australia with an ADHD diagnosis signed up for the cheapest plan Shimmer sold: $99 a month for a fifteen minute video call each week. He had been trying to find a psychologist who specialised in ADHD and had not found one.
Eight weeks in, he listed what the calls had covered. Punctuality. Breaking down tasks he kept avoiding. Shutting off work at a reasonable hour. Packing for a trip. Staying present in boring meetings.
“Fifteen minutes is not a lot of time, but it’s been enough for us to focus on one specific issue,” he wrote. The most useful part, he added, was not what the coach told him. It was what he said out loud in answer to her questions.
That is the product. A trained non clinician asks structured questions on a video call, then writes action steps into an app. Four years and 100,000 sessions later, no one has run a controlled trial of it.
The price of a thing insurance does not cover
Christal Wang was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult in 2022. Her psychiatrist wrote a prescription for Adderall, and she went looking for something else first. What she found was a market she could not afford. She posted a question in a group of ADHD coaches asking why coaching cost so much, and more than fifty answered. Her read, told to SUCCESS in 2025: independent coaches spend over half their time selling and on admin, and the hourly price carries all of it.
The numbers back the complaint. Margaret Sibley, a clinical psychologist at the University of Washington and lead author of a 2026 JAMA Network Open survey of the field, told Knowable Magazine that coaches charge about $150 an hour on average, close to what psychologists are reimbursed for therapy, and that coaching is not reimbursable by insurance. Shimmer’s answer was to take the selling and the scheduling away from the coach, and keep the coach as a contractor.
Two founders, a dead company and a waitlist
Wang has an HBA from Ivey Business School and worked at Bain. TechCrunch reported in 2024 that she dropped out of a joint MBA and MPH program at UC Berkeley; her own conference bio says she is on leave from it. Co-founder Vikram Sreedhar is a Stanford graduate. A third co-founder, Jon Wang, was named in 2022 launch coverage and does not appear later.
Shimmer was not the first attempt. Wang had run an earlier company for people with social anxiety. When it ended she went back to the same investors with the ADHD idea, and by her account had a waitlist of more than a thousand before launch. The company went through Y Combinator in the summer of 2021 and launched in October 2022 with $1.3 million.
From 15,000 sessions to 100,000
The session counter is the clearest public record the company keeps. In January 2024, announcing a $2.2 million seed, Shimmer reported more than 15,000 sessions. Business Insider reported that month that it had reached $1 million in annual recurring revenue with two full time employees and contractor coaches. By January 2025 the count was more than 45,000; by January 2026, launching Indy, more than 80,000. The site now says more than 100,000.
The price moved too. The $99 plan gave way to tiers at $140, $230 and $345 a month in 2024, then to one plan at $240 every four weeks with thirty minute sessions.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| FDA status | No 510(k), PMA or De Novo, and none required. FDA’s general wellness guidance, reissued January 2026, covers low risk software unrelated to the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, prevention or treatment of a disease. Competitors took the other road: Akili cleared an over the counter ADHD video game in 2024, Lumos Labs a prescription digital therapeutic in December 2025. | Public record |
| Registered trials | No study naming Shimmer on ClinicalTrials.gov as of September 24, 2026. | Not found |
| Peer reviewed papers | None indexed in PubMed. A search on the company name returns only photonics and materials science, because the name is a common word. | Not found |
| The promised study | The January 2024 release said the money would launch a study of ADHD coaching outcomes under the auspices of leading universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. No registration, publication or named partner has appeared since. The science page describes internal case studies and a Delphi study of its own coaches. | Not found |
| Evidence for ADHD coaching | Thin but improving, and none of it is Shimmer’s. Kubik 2010 rated 45 adults before and after coaching, no control group. Ahmann, Saviet and Otto published a single arm study of 12 session manualized coaching in 2026, with medium to large gains in ADHD symptoms, executive functioning and functional impairment, held at six weeks in 42 adults. A 2023 review of 19 randomized trials found effects for behavioral therapy and none for neurofeedback, cognitive training or psychoeducation. | Public record |
| Who ADHD coaches are | The US National Survey on ADHD Coaching reached 481 coaches from October 2024 to April 2025. 85.0% held no professional license and 89.3% no professional background in mental health. The authors conclude that randomized clinical trials are essential to establish the safety and effectiveness of ADHD coaching. | Public record |
| Shimmer’s outcome number | 83% of members reported a better ability to manage their ADHD in six weeks. Self reported, no comparison group, no published method, no sample size. | Company-stated |
| Coach selection | Coaches are 1099 contractors asked for 15 to 20 hours a week. The homepage says 3.7% of applicants get through; the pricing page says the top 4%. The terms say quality review creates no duty to supervise any particular conversation. | Company-stated |
| Are the coaches licensed? | Business Insider wrote in January 2024 that the sessions “are all conducted by licensed professionals.” Shimmer’s terms, updated August 21, 2026, say coaches are not acting as licensed healthcare providers, that some hold clinical licenses but do not act in that capacity, and that Shimmer is not a healthcare provider and not covered by HIPAA. | Differs from the terms |
| Money and reimbursement | No NIH or NSF award under the company name. Not billed to insurance. Sold as HSA, FSA and HRA eligible through Truemed, where a licensed provider reviews a survey after purchase and issues a letter of medical necessity. | Company and partner-stated |
Read plainly: Shimmer has built a real service with real volume, and is careful in the documents that carry legal weight about what it is not. What it has not done is test itself. The best published evidence for adult ADHD coaching covers a different program, and the largest survey of the field ends with a call for randomized trials. A company holding six figures of session data is the obvious candidate to run one.
What to watch
- Any registration or publication of the outcomes study promised in January 2024. Until then the 83% figure is a marketing number.
- Whether Indy stays inside the general wellness boundary as it adds features, or makes claims that pull it toward the device definition.
- The teen program. Members are accepted from age 13 with a guardian accepting the terms, and anyone with suicidal ideation with a plan or intent is excluded. Coaching minors with an unlicensed workforce is where scrutiny lands first.
- Employer and payer contracts, promised since 2024 and still unannounced. The last raise was January 2024.
In their words
“It was proven to be effective, the top experts in the space recommended it as a part of mixed treatment and I strongly resonated with its premise. Yet, it really was too good to be true. It was extremely expensive.”
Christal Wang, co-founder and CEO, to TechCrunch, 2024 · Independent
“We’re excited about our new scientific study which will research what works in ADHD coaching. This is an area that needs more reliable, valid, and evidence-based practices.”
Xenia Angevin, principal coaching psychologist, funding release, January 2024 · Company release
“These are supportive services, not therapy, medical care, or crisis support.”
Shimmer terms of service, updated August 21, 2026 · Company document
“This is similar to reimbursement rates for psychologists for mental health therapy. Except ADHD coaching isn’t reimbursable by insurance at this point so it’s only accessible to those with high financial resources.”
Margaret Sibley, University of Washington, to Knowable Magazine, 2026 · Independent
“Coaching seems to me to be more of a business, and that worries me.”
Stephen Faraone, president, World Federation of ADHD, to Knowable Magazine, 2026 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordDemographics, Services, and Practices in ADHD Coaching in the US
- Public recordCoaching for Adults With ADHD: A Prospective Study
- Public recordCoaching for Adults With ADHD: Gains at a Six-Week Follow-Up
- Public recordGeneral Wellness: Policy for Low Risk Devices
- Public recordClinicalTrials.gov search, no study naming the company
- IndependentLooking for an ADHD coach? Choose carefully
- IndependentShimmer, a platform for 1:1 personalized ADHD coaching, raises $2.2M
- IndependentShimmer is using AI to bring ADHD coaching to adults
- IndependentMy thoughts on Shimmer.care after using it for two months
- CompanyLaunch release with seed investors and pricing
- CompanySeed release with session count and study plan
- CompanyTerms of service, effective May 1, 2022
- CompanyScience, pricing, coaches, providers and teen pages
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
