Building a mental health startup from personal experience at 23

Executive overview

Most mental health support in Asia comes four to seven years too late — if it arrives at all. Theodoric Chew co-founded Intellect in 2019 to close that gap, starting with radical accessibility and layering in deeper care over time.

He skipped university to learn by doing: first a bootstrapped media platform, then roles at a travel-tech startup and a venture builder, then Intellect. The company now serves 4 million users across 100+ countries and has raised over $30 million.

Ambition plus naivety is what moves founders past the obstacles conventional thinking would block.

Why mental health in Asia

• Personal history: Theodoric experienced chronic anxiety and panic attacks at 16; his first therapy session was transformative.
• A pre-pandemic Singapore survey found a four-to-seven year treatment gap between onset and care.
• Asia's fastest-growing cities carry some of the highest suicide rates globally.
• The regional mental health market is worth tens of billions and growing at double-digit annual rates.
• The problem was clear: people wanted help but didn't know where to start.

How Intellect was built

• Initial hypothesis: make access so simple there's no reason not to use it.
• Launched with self-guided content in multiple languages, then added virtual coaching, clinical care, and crisis support.
• Early validation: spoke with HR professionals, clinicians, and people on the street before writing a line of code.
• First 10 customers were early-stage startups willing to test and give honest feedback.
• Worked from a clear long-term vision while taking small, measurable steps toward it.

Lessons from the journey

• Execution matters more than complete knowledge — you learn by doing, not by waiting until you're ready.
• Spending years working inside fast-growing companies before starting Intellect gave Theodoric skills he lacked at 19.
• Starting in 2019, mental health was a nascent topic; conviction that it was "not an if but a when" carried the early days.
• Naivety is an asset: it lets founders take bold steps that a more cautious calculus would rule out.
• There is no universally right path — university, startups, or both can lead to meaningful outcomes.