LYRA HEALTH

David Ebersman was CFO of Genentech during its biotech golden era, then CFO of Facebook through its IPO and early public years. After leaving Facebook in 2014, he didn't retire.

He looked at mental health care and saw a system that made no sense. Employee Assistance Programs — the standard benefit employers offered — had utilization rates around 5% because they were terrible.

Therapists were hard to find, quality was uneven, and nobody measured outcomes. Ebersman started Lyra Health in 2015 with a radically simple idea: build a mental health benefit that employees actually use by making care easy to access, clinically excellent, and outcomes-tracked.

He brought Silicon Valley's obsession with data and measurement to a field that had been operating on vibes and good intentions.

B2B — Lyra sells to employers as a mental health benefit. Companies pay Lyra a per-employee-per-month fee to provide their workforce with mental health care.

Employees get access to Lyra's curated therapist network, self-guided digital programs, and coaching. Lyra vets and credentials every provider in its network, requiring evidence-based practices like CBT and DBT rather than whatever approach a therapist happens to prefer.

The company tracks clinical outcomes using standardized measures and reports aggregate data back to employers showing ROI — reduced absenteeism, lower disability claims, improved retention. This is not wellness fluff.

It's clinical care with business metrics attached.

Lyra Care — access to a vetted network of therapists and coaches, all trained in evidence-based methods, available for video or in-person sessions. Digital self-care programs using CBT-based lessons for mild symptoms that don't need a therapist.

Blended care model combining digital tools with live therapy for moderate cases. Medication management through Lyra's psychiatric providers.

Workforce mental health analytics dashboard showing employers utilization rates, clinical improvement scores, and cost savings. Family care extending coverage to dependents and children.

Critical incident support for workplace crises.

Enterprise sales to large employers — Fortune 500 companies, tech companies, and healthcare systems. Lyra's pitch is built on data: publish outcomes showing clinical improvement rates above 80%, share case studies showing ROI, and let HR leaders calculate the cost of not providing good mental health care.

Early wins with marquee tech companies (Facebook, Starbucks, eBay, Morgan Stanley, Zoom) created credibility that opened doors to every other industry. International expansion into Europe and Asia to serve global workforces.

Strategic partnerships with health plans to embed Lyra as the behavioral health carve-out. Acquisition strategy — bought Togetherall (online peer support community) to add lower-cost tier of care.

Proving that clinical outcomes translate to business ROI is an ongoing challenge because employers want hard numbers and mental health improvement is inherently hard to quantify in dollar terms. Therapist recruitment and retention in a market where every mental health startup is competing for the same limited supply of licensed providers.

Enterprise sales cycles are 6 to 12 months and require navigating benefits consultants, HR leaders, and CFOs who all have different priorities. The stigma problem — even with great benefits, many employees still won't use mental health services, so utilization rates are everything.

And price sensitivity: employers want better care but they also want it cheaper than the last contract, and margins matter when you've raised nearly a billion dollars at a $4.6 billion valuation.

Investors include Greylock Partners, IVP, Adams Street Partners, Coatue Management, and Dragoneer Investment Group. Series F in 2022 valued the company at $4.6 billion.