HERNÁN BARIJHOFF

I've experienced first hand the transformative power of therapy, but I've known so many people who didn't have the same experience, or didn't even try it because of bias or stigma. This frustrated me, and I started to wonder, what was wrong? The therapists' abilities? The process itself? Access? Society?

While researching societal problems, I came across the EA movement, and in particular, the work of a philosopher, Michael Plant, who proposes that happiness should be the metric we should strive for, not 'years-lived' or 'lives-saved'. What's the point of a life saved but riddled with suffering?

At the same time, I've always wanted to build a startup, because I think it has the biggest impact of any endeavor you could pursue, if you can actually pull it off.

My gut feeling was that it was worth diving deep into Mental Health, specifically facilitating access to quality therapy. That's how my current project MindApp started. I've learned things you can only learn by doing: how to balance patient needs with business sustainability, how edge cases reveal gaps in your initial thinking, when automated systems should escalate to human judgment. Being a founder taught me many different things — about people, product, frustration, and purpose. Invaluable learnings. The most meaningful moments for me have been when a patient says 'thank you, you’ve helped me a lot .'

Technology for me was always a means to an end. I studied and worked in AI because I understood early on that it was one of the most powerful tools for creating real change in people's lives. Before MindApp, I spent years in the startup ecosystem, learning as much as I could, including time at an early-stage YC company (EmiLabsYC19) building NLP chatbots to improve job access for frontline workers.

That's also why I'm following AGI progress closely and participating in AI safety community events in Buenos Aires. The timeline for world-changing AI is shorter than most people assume, and Mental Health will be among the domains deeply reshaped—whether through AI-assisted therapy, companionship relationships, or risks we're only beginning to understand. I want to help ensure that transformation improves rather than undermines human wellbeing.