On the Social Currency podcast with Sammi Cohen, Slingshot co-founder Neil Parikh shared surprising data on Ash's users: they open up far faster than in traditional therapy, the base skews 35 to 65, and about 40% are men, far more than most mental health services.
On Sammi Cohen's Social Currency podcast, Slingshot AI co-founder Neil Parikh shared what has surprised him most about how people use Ash. Users open up far faster than in traditional therapy, often within the first few minutes; the base skews 35 to 65 rather than young; and about 40% are men, compared with roughly 10% for most mental health services. Parikh described Ash as trained on one of the world's largest datasets of psychotherapy and built to challenge users rather than simply validate them, guided by self-determination theory's pillars of autonomy, competency, and relatedness. He framed the company around a stark access gap, roughly 10,000 people seeking care for every therapist, and a "designed to be deleted" philosophy aimed at helping people and then stepping back. Slingshot has raised $93 million from mission-aligned investors including a16z, Radical, and Forerunner.
