avatarUluc Aydemir

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PENIA

Unorthodox Nonprofit for Mental Healthcare

Have you ever searched for suicide online and seen the suicide prevention websites? Hope you’re not, unfortunately I have… And the results were far from being helpful. Actually they were complete opposite of what you want to see when you feel yourself depressed…

This is how Penia started… I just thought that we are in 2020 and suicide.org or any other nonprofit organization about mental healthcare or about anything else; must provide better services, better solutions and at least better website than local repair shop whose website design hasn’t change since 2000.

Nonprofit doesn’t mean mediocre services whether you like it or not. For me, nonprofit means best services for people who can not afford best services.

Nonprofits must have great web and mobile applications with great user experience. Nonprofits must hire best talents in their area. Nonprofits must have best metrics in terms of retention, customer satisfaction, customer acquisition cost -yep heard that right- and churn rate like they are new hot startup everbody’s talking about.

What Penia Want to Achieve?

I just started Penia for those who suffers from severe depression in the world we live in today.

We want to provide best online mental healthcare services in the world, whether you can afford it or not.

We want to be Toms Shoes for mental health. We want to offer free therapy sessions for every patient who paid theirs.

We also want to offer income share agreements for those who suffers from work related burnout. Thus, you can find the second chance in life you’ve been looking for a long time…

I strongly believe that there are incredible people out there suffering mentally just because they couldn't find their purpose in life or found it already, but believing that they can’t make it happen which they really can. That’s why we are offering ISAs. It’s not additional benefit, this is the core business for us.

If I believed that this won’t help you, I will not suggesting to you because I know what you need to do and how much pain you need to deal to make it work. But it really is worth trying.

How Penia Want to Achieve?

First, let’s start with why we choose to be nonprofit organization rather than a startup for profit. I think that I am not good at asking things for myself. It has been always like this since my childhood. But I am comfortable to ask anything for others and for better good. Founder or CEO of any organization should be comfortable to ask for things which can help that organization to growth, change, thrive…

I can deal with injustice done to me but I can’t stand an injustice done to someone else. I remember it like yesterday; I was in the middle school and it was history lesson. Teacher for history was also the principal. He caught me speaking with my friend and called me to come forward and slapped me in the face. Everyone in the class was speaking but he picked me, it didn’t bother me too much. Of course I was embrassed to slap in front of the whole class but yes I was chit chatting with my friend and it wasn’t a big deal. But I totally lost it when he asked about what my dad is doing for living, because when he heard the answer his whole attitude changed 180 degree and almost apologized for what he did in front of the whole class. And now I started to cry like I won’t ever stop again because instantly I imagined myself as the other kid whose father was not “important” enough, so principal think that he can beat out of him. I was disgusted by how people can think like that. If you wanna slap the kid in the face it’s OK with me go ahead, but if you think that you can slap the kid in the face because his father was not important to you, now we have a big problem buddy.

Long story short I will be demanding for others, fight for others but not so much for myself. So asking money for my privately held company even if I am trying to help those who deals with mental health problems does not sound nice to me. It made me uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong if we can manage to do this right and become very successful about helping people; then every professional who works in this organization including me will receive one of the most competitive salary and compensation packages according to their roles. But the money I mentioned here which makes me uncomfortable to ask is investor money (VC, Angel, etc.) for a profit organization. I mean the money for seed funding, for series A, B, C and so forth. The money they want a specific return, the money they are giving me personally for my company as an investment not a donation or philanthropic contribution to those who suffers from mental health issues.

It All Starts With The Vision

When I quit my job back in 2018 and decided to become an entrepreneur; I thought that dreaming big or small takes the same amount of effort mentally, so I might as well do it big. This idea stuck with me and since then I’m dreaming big whatever the dream is.

First, it was selling t-shirts and hoodies with motivational prints on it to help people express themselves and inspire others. Now helping people overcome their depression and find peace in their life.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver

I thought about this question for a long time and realized that life is too short to be happy with your belongings, your money, your cars and your house. One can only be happy in this life, if he can make others happy.

With that in mind , we came up with our vision statement. It’s about why we are nonprofit rather than for-profit. It’s about why we should help our patients to find fulfillment in their life. It’s about why we should provide most competitive salary and benefit packages to our employees. It’s not about what we do, but about why we do it.

Our vision is bring peace and happiness to everyone who suffers.

I am aware that this vision statement is, to put it mildly, naïve. But I think that to be an entrepreneur you must be fool enough to believe fairy tales. You must be ready to change the world in your own way.

Penia exists to serve people who suffers most. This doesn’t mean we only plan to serve people with depression and anxiety, but instead everyone who wants to find their purpose in life and wants to be best version of themselves.

What’s Next?

We launched our website and working on our mobile apps. We applied to Y Combinator and waiting to hear from them soon. We are planning to offer free online therapy sessions and income share agreements in 2021.

We can’t wait to see the impact Penia will have elevating for mental healthcare and for nonprofits in general. You can visit our website here to learn more and support us. You can also share this story with your friends who is therapist, engineer or designer and love to work for nonprofit like us. They can send their resumes to our email; [email protected]

Thanks,

Uluc

Mental Health
Depression
Nonprofit
Ycombinator
Burnout
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