New York-based Mindset Care, which has built a digital platform to help Americans apply for Social Security disability benefits, has raised $13 million in a funding round led by Santa Monica, Calif.-based Science.
Other participating firms include New York’s Wellington and LivEdge Capital; Jim Sorenson’s Enable Ventures, based in Alexandria, Va.; and XYZ Venture Capital and Tubbs Ventures, both of California, CEO Darren Webb said in a LinkedIn post.
‘TurboTax’ for Claims
“As a caregiver for a loved one with schizophrenia, I’ve been through the process of applying for disability benefits multiple times and have dealt with the extreme friction involved,” Webb, who studied information technology at Old Dominion University, wrote on the networking platform.
“Frustrated with the experience, Nathaniel Arzu and I launched Mindset last year to assist those with a mental illness and their caregivers in applying for Social Security Disability benefits,” he added. Arzu, a former Grubhub engineer, serves as Mindset’s chief technology officer and works out of Philadelphia.
Advancements in AI and custom-built large language models, or LLMs, have helped Mindset “scale and interact with claimants in a safe, swift and efficient manner,” Webb said. Mindset has “truly ‘TurboTaxed’ the disability application process,” allowing anyone to apply for disability benefits within one hour, versus the days or weeks it could take for individuals, even with the help of a local disability representative, he said.
Free Upfront
Webb said the company’s technology platform will in the future “onboard and introduce millions of Americans to the Social Security Disability program, which is so vital to local communities which many rely.”
Mindset uses advanced software and a full-time team of over 90 “empathetic and compassionate individuals” to ease the application process, which in some cases can still take up to 24 months. The company does not charge an upfront fee for filing claims, and collects a 25% fee of an individual’s awarded backpay only after successfully processing their claim. According to Webb, Mindset has enough funds to operate for 24 months, and expects to turn profitable in 2025.
According to Axios, the Social Security Administration has a backlog of more than 1 million applications. “Millions of people need access to these programs, [which have] very complicated government processes,” Science’s managing director Mike Jones told the publication.
Targeting Disability ‘Wealth Gap’
Enable Ventures is a relatively new fund focusing exclusively on the disability “wealth gap” while aiming for competitive returns. It was started by civil rights leader Regina “Gina” Kline, with support from Sorenson. Enable Ventures contends that less than 1% of microfinance funds go to the disabled, and a whopping $1.9 trillion is lost globally because of the exclusion of differently abled from the workforce.
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Kline serves as managing partner of Enable Ventures. As a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, she fought for workers with disabilities, bringing over 11,000 workers to competitive integrated employment, with significant pay raises to boot. She served the Obama administration as senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice.
Sorenson also runs a foundation that operates a center at the University of Utah, serving as a “think and do tank” focused on social impact and policy.
Enable Ventures’ portfolio companies included Inclusively and Daivergent, which runs an AI-powered tech platform that maximizes job-readiness for the disability and autism communities.
