Tennis superstar Serena Williams backs Houston startup's innovative new couple's therapy platform

A Houston startup that's re-imagining mental health treatment and counseling has emerged from stealth, announcing financial support from seed investors including tennis legend and venture capital investor Serena Williams.

Targeting the $5 trillion health and wellness market, OURS is founded by family therapist and author Liz Earnshaw, as well as Adam Putterman and Jessica Holton.

“We’re excited to take this first step in shifting the way we think about relationship health. We are building for a world that treats relationship health with equal importance as physical, mental and emotional health. We want working on your relationships to be an everyday experience, accessible to all,” says Holton, who serves as co-CEO, in a news release.

The company has raised nearly $5 million pre-seed and seed round from investors including TMV, Serena Ventures, Lakehouse Ventures, Collaborative Fund, GreyMatter, and pioneering angel investors such as Andy Dunn.

“Research shows that relationships are the most important factor to our overall health and wellbeing, which is an area that I'm hyper-focused on in my personal life,” says Williams, managing partner of San Francisco-based Serena Ventures, in the release. “When I learned about what the team was doing, I knew this was something we needed to support.

"OURS offers a reimagined and preventative solution to relationship wellness that's not only experiential and research-backed, but memorable and fun," she continues. "We're proud to be early investors in a brand that is making relationship health accessible to couples everywhere and play an integral part of the larger OURS mission.”

The company launched its beta in 2020 and has already worked with thousands of customers and has an engaged community of couples across its platforms.

The OURS founders were inspired by their own experiences with couples counseling and created a technology-enabled platform based of expert and data-backed research.

“As it stands, the current mental health and wellness space is largely geared towards individuals, yet nearly 50 percent of couples have either participated in, or have sought out solutions, to foster stronger romantic partnerships,” says Soraya Darabi, co-founder and general partner at TMV, in the release. “However, a lack of therapists — until now — or confused perception of couples counseling leave needs unmet.”

Initially targeting romantic partners, the platform costs $400 for a four-week program that includes six personalized interactive sessions with an OURS guide at the helm of the experience. These one-hour technology-powered sessions are based around an innovative new technology, called Loveware, and include dynamic and meaningful conversations between a couple that are built around the magic that comes from being in the room with an expert.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, InnovationMap.