Founder
Elliott Rapaport
Description
America’s leading provider of gambling addiction treatment
We’re excited to announce our investment in Birches Health, leading the company’s $10M Series A along with General Catalyst and Will Ventures, which brings its total funding to $20M. Since 2023, Birches has built America’s leading digital health platform for the growing number of individuals and families struggling with gambling addiction and other emerging behavioral health disorders.
Birches exemplifies the transformative change we back at AlleyCorp Economic Infrastructure: gambling addiction is a public health crisis unraveling before our eyes and Birches brings the ambition, clinical excellence, and fundamental empathy to match the scale of the problem.
When we sat down with Birches’ founder and CEO, Elliott Rapaport, for the first time, it was evident then what is very evident to us now: Elliott works with the speed, urgency, and conviction of someone on a mission. As an early executive at Elemy, witnessing first-hand the pace, complexity, and execution of a VC-backed digital health startup serving a vulnerable population, Elliott is a proven operator – but it was the empathy, and direct connections to the problems of gambling, that blew us away and showed his conviction.
Elliott spent most of our breakfast talking about the friends in college who, a decade earlier, had lost all of their money on gambling, whether it was via traditional casino games or emerging online sports betting platforms. He talked about classmates who would search for care in zipcodes across Western Massachusetts that had no providers capable of treating gambling addiction. And he talked about what he learned attending gambler’s anonymous meetings across New York City, in church basements and community centers: individuals and families who suffered silently through the financial, psychological, and interpersonal crises that their addiction brought.
Elliott’s observations are not simply anecdotes: for him, this problem is personal and represents the reality of millions of Americans. With the proliferation of digital and mobile-first gambling, especially on sports and live events, we’re now seeing a generation of addictive, vulnerable, and financially worse-off individuals and families emerge – without much of any real safeguards in place. While individuals used to need to go to physical betting locations to make bets or pull slots, today apps like FanDuel, DraftKings, Polymarket, and Coinbase enable convenient, gamified, and highly addictive betting and speculation on sports, politics, and random events. The scope of the problem is widening: 39 states have operational sports betting, with Americans placing $150B in sports bets annually, a figure set to double in less than 5 years. According to the American Psychiatric Association, 28% of adults have a daily habit of gambling online, yet our understanding of the depth of the problem and how to clinically address it is only just taking shape. What’s clear is families suffer as a result: those with gambling disorders incur on average between $50K-$100K in debt, have 3-4X increased risk of suicide, and experience high rates of co-occurrence with other disorders (alcohol, opioid, mood, severe mental illness).
We knew a differentiated clinical model and way of reaching people was necessary for tackling this problem, and that’s where Birches came in. Birches Health partners with 18+ state governments that have legalized sports betting and 100+ national insurance plans to deliver virtual care to people who need it by specialists trained in treating gambling and other behavioral addictions. Rather than relying solely on digital ads or word-of-mouth, Birches leverages these trusted relationships with motivated partners to reach and serve high-need populations. The platform:
- Delivers clinical assessments to people who are struggling with gambling addiction to verify their state and severity (billed to government or insurance)
- Delivers 1v1 clinical sessions with a therapist on an ongoing basis
- Delivers group sessions where 5-6 patients see a single therapist (not currently monetized)
- Refers patients out to additional services (e.g. alcohol, substance use, financial counseling)
- Trains and upskills therapists and psychologists specifically to handle gambling disorders
- 19 states require special certification and licensure today for therapists to get reimbursed through their own public funds; private payors don’t require it but prefer it because it drives higher quality and interest from employers
- Birches offers a 30-hour asynchronous training program to meet this
The outcomes have been staggering: Birches patients experience an 81% decrease in problem behaviors after 9 appointments and a 98% decrease in gambling’s interference with normal activities upon graduation from the program. This Series A funding will accelerate the team’s investments in clinical excellence, expanding the provider network, growing insurance and state government partnerships, and scaling the infrastructure to meet the growing demand for specialized treatment. Birches will also begin to treat adjacent digital disorders such gaming, pornography and internet and online addictions.
We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Elliott and the Birches team as they tackle one of America’s fastest-growing and most pernicious public health problems. If you are a government leader, health insurance executive, or someone passionate about tackling gambling disorder, we’d love to hear from you at youssef@alleycorp.com or bircheshealth.com.
