Albert Azout

I’m thrilled to announce defy.vc’s investment in Birches Health as part of their $20M combined Seed and Series A funding round, alongside incredible partners like AlleyCorp, General Catalyst, Will Ventures, and others. As someone deeply passionate about backing companies that tackle important problems for our society, I couldn’t be more excited about what Birches is building—a national virtual clinic dedicated to treating gambling addiction and related behavioral disorders like gaming, sex, porn, and internet addictions. What excites me most is Birches’ innovative health assurance model: proactive, accessible, and affordable care that’s evidence-based and delivered right at home. With the explosion of legal sports betting—think nearly $1.5 billion wagered on this year’s Super Bowl alone—we’re staring down a looming public health emergency. Traditional options like hotlines or generic therapy fall short for this high-acuity issue, but Birches changes that by offering specialized therapy from trained clinicians, multimodal treatment, and peer support, all covered by major insurers like United Healthcare, Cigna, Aetna, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. It’s available in all 50 states, breaking down geographical and financial barriers that have left so many without help. The impact is already profound: 96% of patients report an improved quality of life, and 94% give Birches a 5/5 rating. By partnering with state governments, payors, and policymakers, Birches is pushing gambling addiction into the spotlight of behavioral health conversations, where it’s been neglected for too long—often leading to shame, worsened outcomes, and higher suicidality risks. This funding will supercharge their growth: expanding the provider network, boosting clinical excellence, scaling infrastructure, and deepening insurance and state partnerships to meet surging demand. Very excited to partner with Elliott Rapaport and the entire Birches team! See more about our POV in the blog post linked in the comments. #GamblingAddiction #BehavioralHealth #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation

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Big milestone for Doppler Finance: Doppler just raised a $3M seed round led by Reforge, with participation from DCG, Maven 11, HashKey Capital, GSR, CMCC Global and others. Their goal? Unlock institutional-grade yield infrastructure on the XRP Ledger, something that’s been missing since day one. Here’s the opportunity: -> XRP’s ~$200B market cap has less than 0.1% in DeFi. -> Ethereum, by comparison, has ~20% of its market cap active on-chain. That’s hundreds of billions in idle XRP and Doppler is building the rails to activate it. With custody integrations (Fireblocks, Copper, Bitgo), verifiable proof-of-reserves, and plug-and-play APIs for wallets/custodians, they’re building for regulated capital but with open access. Their $500M+ capital pipeline speaks volumes. This is a major unlock for #XRPFi and one of the most promising attempts to bridge compliant yield infra with an underserved but globally significant asset. Excited to see how this one plays out.

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Excited to talk AI in GTM tomorrow at Clay's Sculpt conference. Mark Lail & I will be covering in detail the approach we've taken at Vanta, which has been tackled in three primary phases: 1. Identify opportunities to eliminate busywork through a field time study 2. Democratize great performance by automating top rep plays 3. Empower the field by enabling them to become builders This framework can be applied in any organization at scale, and it's been transformative in ours. We'll be spilling all the spicy deets tomorrow on stage!

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