Rally | Lucia Huang and the Mental Health Renaissance
Gold House Ventures Celebrates APAHM, the Tribeca Film Festival, and more!
RALLY with Gold House Ventures is excited to spotlight exceptional Asian Pacific founders and investors through a biweekly feed of stories, funding opportunities, portfolio news, career opportunities, and events. If you are an entrepreneur looking to meet with Gold House Ventures or an investor looking to get more involved with Gold House’s Venture Network, please reach out to investments@goldhouse.org.
Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and particularly to our RALLY community! We are honored to experience special moments with our community all month long, from lighting up the Empire State Building in New York City to ringing the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange Closing Bells to celebrating our A100 honorees at the annual Gold Gala (aka Asian Pacific Met Gala) in Los Angeles. From coast to coast, we are working with our partners to amplify API trailblazers, visionaries, and leaders. We are so proud to be on this journey with you! Thank you for joining us.
Below, please find our latest Gold House founder spotlight, upcoming opportunities, and wins to celebrate. As always, let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions for what you would like to hear from us in the coming weeks and months ahead! Looking forward to RALLYing together.
Founder Spotlight: Lucia Huang
We are thrilled to spotlight Lucia Huang, the CEO and co-founder of Osmind. Before leading Osmind, Lucia spearheaded business and operations at Verge Genomics, focused on leveraging AI to treat diseases like ALS and Parkinsons. Lucia is an investor turned founder – she previously was a growth investor at Warburg Pincus before becoming an operator and a founder.
Tell us about Osmind. What makes Osmind unique?
Osmind’s mission is to empower clinicians and researchers to bring innovative mental health treatments to patients who need it most.
Currently, clinicians spend as much time on admin and documentation as they do on patient care. Osmind’s software is used by clinicians to safely administer, monitor, and analyze the use of psychiatric treatments. We use anonymized, aggregate data collected via our software for good: contributing to real-world studies with researchers, clinicians, and clinician-scientists to progress research, push forward the bounds of what we understand about brain health, and ultimately, create better treatments and patient outcomes.
Our vision is to build a platform that brings forth a mental health renaissance to this $6 trillion dollar problem: every single person with mental health conditions can find a treatment that works for them. We are trying to solve the root of the problem.
What is your advice for founders looking to fundraise, particularly those who may be raising for the first time? What specific challenges did you experience? What kinds of investors do you like working with?
Fundraising is a trying experience for any founder, even when it’s going well. I try to remember to have grace for myself because fundraising is incredibly vulnerable. The power dynamics can be challenging, and it can feel very personal to hear negative feedback. Have some compassion for yourself during this process and know that most founders feel this way! I try to use the “no’s” as inspiration and motivation to prove people wrong.
When selecting investors at the early stage, two things are most important: 1) brand and 2) help. In the absence of other cues (e.g., prior experience working with a fund), Brand is important because having the VC’s name on your cap table can differentiate you versus the myriad other startups out there – this is important for hiring, customer acquisition, and more.
Help is important because operational expertise has an outsized impact early on, especially for first-time founders. Having folks with relevant experience (e.g., scaling similar sized companies, having a background in similar industries) will help them make relevant customer introductions and help you navigate existential challenges early on. This suggests bringing on at least one well-known fund for the brand, plus value-add angels or operators-turned-investors to fill out the round.
Why is representation in startup leadership important to you? Why might Gold House Ventures be an impactful fund in the ecosystem?
Representation is incredibly important – I believe in self-fulfilling prophecies. If you don’t believe you can, you won’t, so if we don’t have more examples of successful Asian leaders out there, it will be hard to grow more.
I’ve had the fortune of being inspired by Asian women who have excelled in their professional careers, from my own mother to leaders like Deb Liu, founder of Ancestry, who is an advisor to myself and Osmind.
A seemingly trivial example is how young children form their mental models based on what they see as societal norms. One of my hobbies is surfing, a sport which is very male-dominated. A few weeks ago, I was at the parking lot at the beach, getting ready to surf, and I heard a little kid asking his mom and pointing at me “Mom, girls can surf too?
This example extends to adults, too – representation matters. Gold House’s work is critical in elevating Asian leaders and helping to inspire the next generation.
Upcoming Gold House Network Opportunities
Tribeca Film Festival: Interested in watching KILL at the Tribeca Film Festival? Use code GOLDHOUSE for 20% off tickets.
Become an expert in VC? We are honored that Ilya Strebulaev, award-winning Professor of Venture Capital at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), founder of Stanford’s Venture Capital Initiative, and Gold House Ventures GP Megan’s favorite professor has recently released a seminal book for founders, investors, and innovators: "The Venture Mindset."
Professor Strebulaev has generously offered to support our community with $15 off any book pre-order made on Amazon by May 21. Forward your Amazon order confirmation to team@thevcmindset.com with subject line “GOLD HOUSE” to receive a $15 Amazon gift card for each book purchased, up to $30 per account. You’ll also be invited to a webinar called “Secrets of Fundraising” based on Professor Strebulaev’s oversubscribed Stanford VC class and receive a special Unicorn Report.
Join our Gold House Futures Network – a curated community of the most promising next-gen API creatives, entrepreneurs, and social impact leaders! By being part of the network, founders receive:
Amplification: Members of the Futures Network receive resources from Gold House’s corporate and cultural leadership network to accelerate their ambitions.
Collaboration: From business partnerships to soundtrack inclusion, Futures gain access to collaboration opportunities both within the network and with industry leaders.
Community: Exclusive events and curated programming cultivate a community of founders and creators.
Our recent survey found that 94% of founders were likely to recommend the Futures Network to other founders citing a supportive API community and expansive network. Apply to join our Futures Network here!
RestorAsian Scholarship Fund: Last year, Anise Health launched the RestorAsian Scholarship, dedicated to making mental health services more accessible. Based on the demand of applicants, Anise Health is working with Asian Mental Health Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit to renew this scholarship. Help them raise $20,000 to launch the next cohort of RestorAsian Scholarship in May 2024 here.
Thinking about your next move?
Osmind is hiring software engineers and account executives to join their team building the digital infrastructure for the next era of mental health. Email lucia@osmind.org for more info.
Recent Gold Wins
Gold Gala in LA celebrated our A100 honorees, New Gold honorees, and our Legends. We also convened creative and business leaders across industries at this landmark event. Following the Gala, we partnered with Billboard to host the first ever Billboard Founders Party. We had a karaoke room, a special performance from RuPaul Drag Race winner Nymphia Wind, late night eats sponsored by Panda Express, and Steve Aoki and DJ Hu Dat rocking some beats for the event. You can check out Gold Gala highlights @goldhouseco on Instagram!
Gold House partnered with NASDAQ on April 30th, 2024, to kick off Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. The gathering included the inaugural Gold Power Summit and celebrated the 2024 A100 List, honoring impactful leaders in our community across culture and society. Gold House rang the Closing Bell as a part of the celebration too.
Gold House was at the New York Stock Exchange on May 10th to ring the closing bell in honor of the APAHM. We co-hosted programming throughout the day in the lead up to the closing bell ceremony.
Gold House announced the official A100 List on May 1st, 2024. Please learn more about the visionary leaders and trailblazers we honored here.
Gold House partnered with the Empire State Building on May 3rd to shine gold in celebration of APAHM. This is a part of the Gold Lights initiative, where we are lighting up iconic towers and landmarks across the world in the US, Canada, and Korea. This is an inaugural initiative. The initiative is a vehicle to inspire, as we are elevating API leadership across industries.
Gold House Ventures Banquet this past weekend in LA was delighted to host Academy Award winning actor Riz Ahmed and Kleiner Perkins Managing Partner Mamoon Hamid in front of an audience of our founders, VC partners, and LPs.
Gold House hosted a Gold Women Breakfast in LA this past weekend, focused on convening, uniting, and connecting API women and nonbinary founders.
Please check out the trailer for Didi, a film releasing on July 26th. Didi was one of our first investments with the Creative Equity Fund at Gold House.
What’s Popping?
🌟 M13 x Gold House Ventures x Gunderson AAPI Founder Happy Hour: Celebrate AANHPI Heritage Month with M13, GHV, and Gunderson at Gunderson’s offices in LA on May 16th. Space is limited; email megan@goldhouse.org for more info.
🍎 NYC Tech Week: We're taking over the entire Google Chelsea Store and have a fun evening of music and side activations planned, including a fireside chat with General Catalyst’s Niko Bonatsos, presentations by Gold House Ventures companies, a live performance, and a dance floor for a bit of our Gold House flair. Register here!
Ideas? Questions?
Let us know in the comments below!