By Jackie Davalos and Caleb Melby
An online provider of ADHD treatment, Ahead, is shutting down, its top investor said Thursday.
The company will immediately stop taking new patients and will continue to provide current patients with care through June 24, said the chief executive officer of Ahead backer Truepill, Sid Viswanathan. As Truepill has shifted its focus to serving corporate and business customers, “we made the difficult decision to no longer invest in Ahead,” Viswanathan wrote in an email to Bloomberg.
Ahead, a subscription-based startup, was one of several that began prescribing controlled drugs online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Founded in 2019, Ahead was jump-started with a US$9 million investment led by Truepill, which provides online health services including a digital pharmacy. Ahead customers pay US$150 for their first month of service, including an initial evaluation, and US$75 in subsequent months.
Ahead has 44 employees, according to LinkedIn. The startup competed with other companies such as Done Health — backed by Craft Ventures, Offline Ventures and former quarterback Joe Montana — and Cerebral Inc., which garnered a US$4.8 billion valuation after SoftBank Group Corp. and other investors plowed US$300 million into the company in December.
The companies’ rise is closely linked with a boom in sales of amphetamine medications, Bloomberg reported last month, and has been helped along by a 2020 rollback of rules governing prescribing addictive medications.
Ahead recently saw a spate of executive departures. Co-founder Emile Barraza left last year and his fellow co-founder Andy Rink, who also served as a senior vice president at Truepill, left both companies this month according to Rink’s LinkedIn profile.
Truepill, Ahead’s biggest backer, offers telehealth and prescription delivery services. The startup was valued at US$1.6 billion after raising US$142 million in October, according to PitchBook. Investors include Initialized Capital, Optum Ventures and Social Capital.
“We are impressed by the practice they built and are grateful to the dedicated, passionate team that made Ahead a reality,” Viswanathan said.
