SecondMuse's digital youth wellbeing program takes its mission to heart by prioritizing the wellness of entrepreneurs
PROGRAM
HEADSTREAM
LOCATION
UNITED STATES
Dani Bicknell, program manager for Headstream at SecondMuse, has a long history of working with social impact-focused startups and business accelerators. But her experience at the digital youth wellbeing program, where she works closely with entrepreneurs in its accelerator, stands out to her as something special. “We practice a sort of radical transparency and authentic relationship building I have never seen anywhere else,” she says.
This month, the Headstream Accelerator welcomed its second cohort of innovators working to make digital places more positive and inclusive for teens. To sustainably scale their apps, devices and other products geared toward youth from communities innovators tend to overlook, they will spend five months working with mentors and experts to finetune their products and business plans. But as they focus on fostering wellbeing for teens and young adults, Dani explains that the accelerator’s unique culture will prioritize their own wellbeing too.

“When I worked in business accelerators before, I felt the MO was that entrepreneurs must always be ‘on,’ and even talking about failures with others must be carefully crafted,” she says. “What was so beautiful about the first cohort is that a lot of entrepreneurs were comfortable speaking openly about their anxiety or insecurity.”COVID hit just as the first accelerator was getting started. The timing caused plenty of anxiety, and prompted the Headstream team to be intentional about addressing founder mental health and wellbeing.
“We took the mission of Headstream and turned it on ourselves,” she says. “If we had a meeting with someone and that person seemed distraught, we would not just push through the discomfort and talk about budget and marketing plans. We spent a lot of time on issues of confidence, insecurity, imposter syndrome.”
It was a natural shift to make, considering Headstream’s larger mission, which is ultimately about improving lives. The SecondMuse program, launched in 2018, is dedicated to improving the lives of every young person in the U.S. It is pursuing this goal by working to understand and shape the burgeoning economy around digital innovation and youth wellbeing.
