See the 10-slide presentation a hot mental-health startup used to win over Cigna Ventures and raise $34 million

In a brutal time to raise money from investors, the mental-health startup NOCD, which provides care for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, just raised $34 million. 

Cigna Ventures, the health-insurance giant's venture-capital arm, and 7wireVentures, a prominent healthtech venture-capital firm, co-led the round, bringing NOCD's total funding to $84 million.

The financing boosted the Chicago-based NOCD's valuation compared to the last time it raised funds, and didn't include any out-of-the-ordinary terms that favored investors, Stephen Smith, the CEO of NOCD, told Insider. Smith declined to provide NOCD's valuation. That's unusual these days, as digital-health investors are growing more skeptical, and previously high-flying startups are bending over backwards to win them over. 

NOCD has been exceeding its financial targets like revenue, which is increasingly rare in this environment, according to Alyssa Jaffee, a partner at 7wire and an NOCD board member.

"It's been amazing to watch what this business has accomplished," she told Insider. "They're a rocket ship."

Smith said NOCD's growth stems from its outreach strategy, homemade technology, and clinical results that showed improvement in patients' OCD symptoms through NOCD's treatment model.

NOCD gets a lot of patients from the internet. Rather than relying on extremely expensive ads to pique their interest, NOCD has a collection of blogs that explain OCD symptoms, which hundreds of thousands of people find on their own each month from Google searches, Smith said. 

From there, many download the app, where they can engage in NOCD's social-media-like community and sign up for therapy, according to Smith. 

The company also finished building its own electronic medical record, which in the last year has allowed NOCD to make its processes smoother. Now members can reschedule their therapy more easily, and departments can make faster decisions about care, Smith said.

NOCD got its start in 2018, renting out a corner of an office in Chicago that 7wireVentures and Livongo, a health startup that famously sold for $13.9 billion in 2020, shared. 

Smith, who has OCD, moved to Chicago as a college grad to start the company after several years of misdiagnoses and reckoning with his condition. 

"That's partially why we've grown quickly is because we've made a very personalized solution for folks in a very large and misunderstood population," he said. 

NOCD shared with Insider the presentation that helped it land $34 million from Cigna Ventures and 7wireVentures. The startup said it removed three slides related to its finances and strategy.

Here's the deck NOCD used to raise $34 million from top investors.

NOCD works through an app, where patients can sign up for virtual therapy and group sessions with providers who specialize in treating OCD. There are also free self-help tools and feeds where people talk about their conditions.

NOCD

OCD, which can manifest as intrusive thoughts about the future, is commonly misunderstood and misdiagnosed. Patients can be afraid of discussing their symptoms with their providers, or providers might think they just have anxiety, for example, Smith said.

NOCD

"We identify folks who are suffering with OCD in silence, who oftentimes don't even realize what they're going through is OCD yet," Smith said.

A 2021 review of OCD studies showed that people with OCD commonly experience symptoms of the disorder for 10 years or longer before receiving a diagnosis.

With NOCD, patients can sign up for "exposure and response prevention therapy," more commonly known as exposure therapy, which is considered first-line treatment for OCD. Smith said NOCD patients tend to report improved symptoms with 12 to 14 hours of therapy per year.

NOCD

Exposure and response-prevention therapy helps people with OCD learn to cope with their triggers by exposing them to situations that provoke their obsessive behaviors and teaching them how to prevent the resulting compulsions.

Other forms of therapy can actually be harmful for OCD patients, in part because they encourage patients to dig into their thoughts, which can exacerbate OCD.

Smith, who has OCD, was misdiagnosed five or six times in college. He ended up housebound, he said. After finally starting exposure and response-prevention therapy, Smith was able to return to college, finishing his degree and football career. Meanwhile, he was piloting early versions of NOCD.

NOCD

"In that process I realized, 'Wow, this isn't a clinical issue, treating OCD. This is really an operational issue,'" Smith said. "We're not doing a good enough job identifying folks."

NOCD treated more than 10,000 therapy members in the second quarter of 2022. It declined to disclose today's patient population.

NOCD

NOCD says it has the largest network of providers who specialize in OCD.

NOCD

Therapists, who the startup trains and supervises, are a mix of full-time workers and contractors, Smith said. NOCD wants to double the size of the network in the next 24 months, he said.

Patients can book care with the startup after a 15-minute phone call, and typically wait less than seven days to start, Smith said. About 80% of them use insurance to pay, whereas 20% pay with cash.

NOCD

A mother with postpartum OCD might find NOCD by searching online about the symptoms she's afraid to tell her doctor about, such as recurring thoughts about harming her newborn, Smith said. Search results are likely to turn up a blog by NOCD discussing her exact symptoms.

NOCD

That mother could then download NOCD's app, where people are posting and commenting about their questions and experiences on the social tab. Different areas of the app let people sign up for therapy or start exercises on their own.

NOCD

Besides Smith, NOCD has three other cofounders: Larry Trusky, the chief operating officer, Anil Vaitla, the chief technology officer, and Ilyas Patanam, the chief growth officer. Many members of NOCD's team have OCD or have professionally treated it, Smith said.

NOCD

Smith himself is a NOCD therapy member, he said.