By Riley Kaminer
In an industry where human interaction is at the core, the idea of integrating AI into therapy might raise some eyebrows.
But for Mike Reider, the co-founder and CEO of Yung Sidekick, it’s about making therapy better – not replacing therapists with robots. It’s a personal journey that led Reider from Moldova to management consulting and ultimately to the world of tech-driven mental health innovation.
After a successful career in consulting and a stint at Uber, Reider’s interest in startups took over, guiding him toward an unexpected yet crucial pain point for therapists: note-taking.
“We talked to therapists, and they all hated the time-consuming process of writing notes after each session,” Reider told Refresh Miami. “It creates anxiety for them during the session because they want to be fully present with their client, but they also worry about forgetting key details.” This problem became the foundation for Yung Sidekick’s mission: to automate these administrative burdens and free up therapists to focus on what truly matters – their clients.
Launched in late 2023, Yung Sidekick’s AI-powered platform uses advanced technology to automatically transcribe and summarize therapy sessions, allowing therapists to avoid hours of paperwork.
The company recently raised $825,000 in a pre-seed funding round, led by Altair Capital and Ultra.VC. The funding will help the company accelerate product development and introduce new features aimed at making therapists’ workflows more seamless.
The fundraising comes at a time when the demand for mental health services is rising while therapists face increasing administrative strain. A recent American Psychological Association report found that 45% of psychologists are experiencing burnout due to high workloads, with 20% of their time spent on non-clinical tasks like managing electronic health records. Yung Sidekick’s platform aims to help reduce this burden by automatically generating high-quality, EHR-ready progress notes in just a matter of minutes.
Yung Sidekick can also track markers of depression, anxiety, and life satisfaction based on session content – without requiring clients to complete frequent questionnaires. This allows therapists to monitor their clients’ progress in real time, providing a richer understanding of how different therapeutic interventions are working.
“Realistically, you can’t send a depression or anxiety assessment to your client every week. But with our tool, therapists can now track these markers and see, for example, if a certain intervention was effective or not,” Reider explained.
“It’s impossible to remember every single detail from years of therapy sessions, and even session recordings are impractical to go through,” Reider continued. “But this changes everything.”
With HIPAA compliance at its core, Yung Sidekick ensures that all data remains anonymous and secure. For example, therapists can label clients anonymously, and even if sensitive information such as a Social Security number is mentioned during a session, it is immediately scrubbed from the records.
Reider co-founded the company alongside Alexander Anastasin (formerly of Groupon) and Stanley Efrem, a psychotherapist and mental health counselor.
While Yung Sidekick is headquartered in Miami, its team is spread across the globe. Reider asserted that the company chose Miami as its base because of the city’s burgeoning tech scene, which offered a more affordable and less saturated environment compared to California and New York.
The company has already processed over 30,000 therapy sessions and currently serves more than 100 mental health professionals. Looking ahead, Yung Sidekick plans to use its recent funding to develop new patient-facing features, such as a secure portal where clients can review their session summaries and track their own progress. Reider envisions a future where therapy becomes more accessible and effective, with AI providing a supportive role for both therapists and their clients.
“Every minute spent on paperwork is a minute taken away from patient care,” Efrem said in a statement. “Our mission is to empower mental health professionals to dedicate more time to meaningful client interactions by reducing administrative overload.”
Photo at top of post: From left to right, Yung Sidekick co-founders Alexander Anastasin, Mike Reider, Stanley Efrem.
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