May 31, 2022
Launched just in time for Mental Health Awareness Month, Chill Pill is a mental health support community for female-identifying and non-binary teens. Last summer, the company raised more than $2 million in pre-product capital based largely on a proof-of-concept and founder Hayley Caddes’s personal story. Here, Caddes discusses how she built the Chill Pill community, her plans for the company’s immediate future, and the most important lessons she’s learned working with Expa.
Name
Hayley Caddes, CEO and founder
Company
Chill Pill
Product launched
May 10, 2022
What’s your elevator pitch?
Chill Pill is a new social mental health app built by, for, and alongside Gen Z womxn. We give each other a safe, welcoming space to vent and work on our mental health together through anonymous, community-led audio support groups and chat rooms.
What is your proudest accomplishment to date?
Exactly one year ago, I started fundraising for Chill Pill while working full time at my other job. Within a year, I hired eight full-time employees who built and launched this app with the help of our original community of 100 teen girls. Leading up to launch, these girls ran over 7,000 minutes of support groups for each other. It’s been incredible building alongside our community.
What is your most immediate challenge, and how will you tackle it?
Finding our viral loop. Our current members love Chill Pill, but because many of them joined because they can’t talk to their friends IRL about their mental health struggles, it can be tricky for them to tell their friends about it. So we’re rapidly building and testing different fun types of content and interactions that foster connections that they’d want to share with their friends in their group chat.
What are your top three goals for the next six months?
- Find our viral loop
- Increase the number of our members who lead support groups
- Grow
What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned from the Expa team and/or community?
It’s been great working with Roberto and Kristin! I’m a first-time founder without a co-founder, so their support has been invaluable. They pushed me to get the product out there and to build it with our users, even if it’s not perfect yet, and that’s led to over 70% of our new users posting on our feed or attending a support group in the first week after launch!
How can we help spread the word?
🦋 if you’re a female or non binary identifying teen you can download the chill pill on the app store
💌 share chill pill with your network and any female or non-binary identifying teens you know
Recent news