When Alexander Anastasin left his career in venture capital and corporate leadership at Groupon, he wasn’t sure what would come next. He’d built businesses before, but they were always “opportunistic,” he said, not driven by purpose.
That changed after a conversation with his longtime friend and now co-founder Mike Reider, when the two decided to stop chasing margins and start building something meaningful. That decision gave birth to Yung, the original iteration of what’s now Yung Sidekick, an AI-first mental health platform.
“We wanted to do something we really cared about – something that could help people heal and grow,” Anastasin [pictured above] told Refresh Miami. Anastasin and Reider are building the startup alongside co-founder Stanley Efrem, a psychotherapist and mental health counselor.
Since launching in early 2021, Yung Sidekick has grown from a solo therapist’s AI notetaking assistant into a robust B2B SaaS platform used by group practices and clinics across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. “Back in October, we were still focused mostly on solo practitioners,” Anastasin said. “Now, we’re working with large clinics. The product had to evolve quickly, and it did.”
One of the biggest leaps came with the development of their custom note builder. Rather than simply offering templates for popular therapy modalities like CBT or EMDR, the platform lets clinicians describe their preferred note style in natural language. The AI builds it in minutes, tailored to the practitioner’s own style, specialty, and needs.
“That feature alone was a game changer,” Anastasin said. “We wanted to give them tools that truly felt like an extension of their clinical voice.”
Over 135,000 therapy sessions have been processed on the platform. And the company recently released results from a peer-reviewed study, the first of its kind for an AI note assistant in mental health. The findings are striking: clinicians using Yung Sidekick saw documentation time reduced by over 55%, and their patients were more likely to stick to treatment plans.
It’s the kind of clinical validation that matters in a field like mental health, where new tools are often met with hesitation. But things are changing fast.
“There’s been more movement in AI adoption in mental health over the past two years than we saw in the last two decades,” Anastasin asserted. “Even historically conservative players are moving now.”
Yung Sidekick has integrated with major EHR providers like Healthie (in the U.S.) and WriteUp (in the U.K.), and they’re in conversations about even deeper integrations that could reshape how mental health tools plug into broader healthcare systems.
And while the platform started by focusing on clinicians, the next big shift will bring patients into the fold. “We’re building a bridge,” Anastasin shared. “We already help providers work more efficiently. Now we want to help patients get better, faster.”
The team has already launched a progress-tracking tool that offers therapists deeper insights between sessions. Soon, they’ll roll out a patient-facing app that includes AI-powered, self-guided therapy exercises, based on real data from sessions and tailored to each individual.
The end goal? A full ecosystem. “We imagine a suite of AI tools: one helps clinicians take notes, another helps them track outcomes, another supports patients between sessions,” Anastasin explained. “You can choose the tools you need, like picking from a set of smart agents.”
He sees a future where Yung Sidekick isn’t just saving time, but actively improving therapy outcomes, all while lowering costs across the board. That’s where insurance companies come in. “They’re looking for ways to optimize care and improve efficiency,” Anastasin said. “If we can help patients improve faster while reducing the burden on clinicians, that’s a win for everyone.”
What’s striking about Anastasin’s vision isn’t the technology, it’s the clarity of purpose. “Mental health care is broken in a lot of ways,” he said. “Therapists are burned out. Patients can’t get access. Insurers are struggling with costs. We believe AI, done right, can make things better for all three.”
He’s quick to point out they’re not the only ones building in this space, but that’s part of what excites him. “There’s a revolution happening in mental health,” he said. “And it’s just getting started.”
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