Founder Corner
Pre-SeedTherapy built for founders
Mental health community providing proactive therapy designed exclusively for startup founders.
About
Founder Corner is an online therapy community built exclusively for high-functioning startup founders. The platform matches founders with therapists who specialize in the unique pressures of building startups — from fundraising stress and hiring decisions to subconscious biases that affect leadership. Founded by Gaurav Maken, a former Instacart early employee and YC founder, and Ryan Schwartz, creator of Mental Health Match, the company was born when Maken offered free therapy sessions to YC founders who were shutting down their companies and witnessed firsthand how transformative proactive mental health support could be. Founder Corner positions therapy not as a reactive crisis tool but as a performance-enhancing practice that helps founders unlock their full potential. Sessions run at $300 for 50 minutes with therapists who understand the founder journey.
DailyDropout Take
Founder Corner stood out as a rare founder-market fit story in mental health — Gaurav Maken lived the founder burnout cycle firsthand and saw how therapy transformed struggling YC founders. Pairing his operator credibility with Ryan Schwartz's therapist-matching expertise, they built a community that treats mental health as a founder superpower, not a stigma.
Discovery signal: Strong founder-market fit (YC founder who experienced the problem firsthand), organic growth through tight-knit founder communities, addressing a massively underserved niche.
What Makes Them Unique
Founder Corner is the only mental health community focused exclusively on startup founders, pairing them with therapists who understand the unique pressures of building companies — not generic coaching or corporate wellness, but specialized therapy from practitioners who speak the founder language.
Hundreds
Founders Served
$300 / 50 min
Session Price
Target Markets
Founders
Gaurav Maken
Co-Founder
Former early employee at Instacart and YC founder. After closing his first company, he offered free therapy to YC founders shutting down their businesses and saw how transformative it was — inspiring him to build Founder Corner.
Ryan Schwartz
Co-Founder
Founder of Mental Health Match, a platform that simplifies finding the right therapist. Brings deep expertise in therapist-patient matching and mental health technology.