As child mental health reaches crisis levels and public funding dries up, a new wave of parent-led innovation is stepping in to close the gap. Rebecca Egger, a former Chan Zuckerberg Initiative leader, co-founded Little Otter in 2021 with her mother, renowned child psychiatrist Dr. Helen Egger. Backed by investors including Torch Capital and Pivotal Ventures, the startup represents a growing trend of parents turning lived experience into venture-backed solutions. With $1 billion in federal mental health funding recently cut, their mission feels more urgent than ever, and as we mark Mother’s Day 2025, even more resonant.
When Egger decided to leave her role to launch a company with her mom, she knew she was taking a risk. “I don’t know if you could run a company with your mom,” she laughs. “But people either say, ‘Oh, I wish I could do that,’ or ‘No way. I love my mom, but I could never work with her.” For Egger, though, it felt inevitable.
Their journey didn’t just combine science and strategy. It fused generational insight and a sense of personal urgency. Dr. Helen Egger had spent decades leading research on early childhood mental health, revealing that children under seven experience mental health challenges at the same rate as adolescents, challenging assumptions long shaping pediatric care.
Rebecca, who shares that she has ADD and experienced severe anxiety as a child, credits her early access to care to her mother’s expertise and network. However she knew that most children aren’t so lucky. “We were having the same conversation repeatedly,” she says. “Eventually, I just said, we must stop talking about this and actually try to build it.” That conversation became Little Otter: a digital mental health platform offering virtual care to families with young children offering personalized treatment plans that support both kids and their families. Today, the company operates in all 50 states with over 200 providers. As mental health challenges among children continue to rise, Little Otter’s work serves as both a warning and a call to action, underscoring the urgent need for solutions that meet families where they are, outside the constraints of a broken traditional system.
I spoke with Rebecca Egger about addressing child mental health, the power of lived experience in building impactful solutions, and what it takes to convince investors that tantrums are worth funding.
Child Mental Health: The Investment Gap
Like many female founders, Rebecca faced skepticism when pitching her vision. “I had multiple male VCs tell me they asked their wives about the product and she loved it, but they still didn’t think the market was big enough,” she recalls, “it was mostly female investors who saw the potential. Torch Capital, which led our seed round, had done its own research and backed Little Otter before pediatric mental health was seen as a serious opportunity.
The company has since raised $36.35 million from investors including Torch, Springbank, CRV, and Melinda Gates’s Pivotal Ventures and actively raising their Series B.
From Data Scientist to Founder: A Family Tackles Child Mental Health
Before founding Little Otter, Rebecca Egger had built an impressive resume bridging the gap between data and real-world impacts. She earned her computer science degree from the University of North Carolina, worked at Palantir, and later at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, where she built an open-source platform for tracking infectious disease outbreaks. Her mother, Dr. Helen Egger, has risen to become a leading figure in child psychiatry. Among her most infamous works is groundbreaking research revealing how children under age five experience significant mental health challenges at rates comparable to adolescence, fundamentally challenging assumptions long shaping clinical care.
Yet despite its profound implications, Egger says there’s still a troubling gap between what we know and how we care for children. This disconnect, she argues, is fueling what’s now widely recognized as a full-blown child mental health crisis. The numbers are stark: 10% of children ages 3 to 17 have diagnosed anxiety, 7% have behavior disorders, and 4% have depression. It’s a crisis that has drawn national attention. The U.S. Surgeon General has called youth mental health a national emergency, emphasizing not only the urgency of the crisis but also the need for stronger support systems for parents. Rebecca shares that this is precisely the gap Little Otter aims to fill, offering care models that treat the entire family, not just the child.
What the Data Reveals About America’s Youngest Mental Health Patients
Little Otter’s own clinical data is even more sobering. “Our average age of suicide ideation is 10. The youngest age we’ve seen is five,” Rebecca shares. “And it’s a third of our population.” She shares that their data presents balanced findings across genders: “There is an even split between girls and boys seeking care, though the presentation often differs. Younger boys with ADHD or anxiety are often more disruptive, so parents come in sooner. Girls mask and slide under the radar,” she explains, highlighting that some patterns persist across environments and generations.
A Broken System and a Parental Push for Change
So while the announcement of a $1 billion budget cut to school mental health programs dominated headlines, for the Eggers, it is just the latest setback in a system that has long been fragmented, underfunded, and slow to adapt. They are instead directing their hope for change to the rise of consumer-first healthcare. “Parents are demanding better options. They’re speaking with their dollars, and that pressure can drive real change faster than traditional systems,” Rebecca says.
Little Otter is their answer to that demand. Egger sees the company as a response to a cultural shift that calls for new approaches to early intervention and a more expansive view of mental health care.
“One of Little Otter’s core beliefs is that treating a child’s mental health means treating the whole family,” she explains. “Who needs the most help in this system right now? Sometimes it’s the child. Sometimes it’s the mom who’s battling anxiety. Sometimes it’s the dad, or a school refusal issue affecting everyone.”
Their vision is clear: to be the first place parents turn when they need support, for their child and for themselves. “Because when one family member begins to heal,” Egger says, “the entire family starts to heal too.”