From northern Sweden to Singapore, New York, and back to Stockholm, Erica’s journey has shaped a global perspective on building digital mental healthcare that is both human-centric and scalable. In this conversation, she discusses the discipline of constant change, the role of AI in care delivery, consolidation in Europe, and why access and quality must go hand in hand for long-term impact.
Let’s start somewhere unexpected-what’s the most interesting place you’ve traveled to recently, and what did it teach you?
I did two amazing trips this summer, both to Abisko, and the second was a four-day mountain run with no electricity, no phone, and no social media. Being fully offline gave me clarity after an intense year and reminded me how switching off lets the brain switch on in a different frequency for learning and reflection.
You’ve moved from northern Sweden to Singapore and New York, then back to Stockholm-what shaped your worldview the most?
Singapore opened a gateway to Southeast Asia and a completely different way of living, while New York showed a world of global individuals but with less safety nets and job security, which shapes how people work. In Sweden, stronger safety and fair processes let people be more empathetic, collaborative, and generous, and those contrasts gave vital perspective.
How did working and studying internationally influence how you think about building a global company?
In New York, working with a truly global team forced constant humility-users and patients are as diverse as those teams, and designing products requires accepting that one’s perspective is only one of many, especially if coming from a homogenous context.
Before we go deeper-what’s the ideal Sunday morning?
Up at six, a long run or swimrun in the forest, coffee, waking the kids, hanging out together, then back into nature for active time. It’s simple and restorative.
Your path spans deep-tech, management consulting, and now leading a digital health company-what’s the throughline?
Change and challenge. Saying yes when it feels right and being willing to “kill your darlings” to evolve structures, processes, and skills as the company sheds its skin and is reborn every year.
How do you think about scaling Mindler?
Scaling is loving change. Constantly re-evaluating vision, direction, resources, structure, and communication. What teams need shifts every half-year, and leadership means providing clarity, resources, and tough decisions while staying flexible.
How has your mindset about digital mental health evolved?
Ten years ago mental health “wasn’t a thing,” but now there’s a vocabulary and awareness. Digital care democratizes access - growing up in rural northern Sweden, access would have taken hours and months, while today high-quality support is a phone away.
What does building high-performing teams look like in practice?
It starts with loving the product and mission-serving children, young people, and adults across five markets-then ensuring the right skills, processes, and structures, especially after acquisitions; the CEO’s job is to paint the vision, guide, resource, and run “errands” so teams can perform.
AI and digital mental health together create a big canvas-how do you approach it?
Optimistically, but with intention and safeguards. AI has caused harm providing mental health treatment in some global cases, so regulation and careful deployment are essential. Internally, AI boosts efficiency across marketing, product, clinical ops, HR, and finance, and in our healthcare provision it can help with qualification, measurement, retention, and several parts of treatment enabling patients and clinicians with better tools and support. Providing human-to-human healthcare care remains core for Mindler.
What must society and companies address in the mental health crisis?
Over half of the long-term sick leave in Europe stems from mental illness, so prevention matters. Reimbursement structures must reward both quality, effectiveness and efficiency in mental healthcare. For one of our most important demographic groups, children and young people, we could prevent many mental health problems later in life. This by ensuring education starts early in schools to teach about mental health (not illness!), to navigate emotions, feelings and how to navigate when the need for help arises. In our UK company we have developed a platform specifically for children and young people and work integrated with the public healthcare system (NHS) and schools to provide both preventive help as well as healthcare with fantastic results.
You recently acquired one of the largest digital mental health companies in the UK (Ieso Digital Health) who are a significant provider to the NHS. How do you weigh institutional partnerships versus DTC?
Around 95% of all mental health care is accessed via either public systems or private insurance, meaning this is where scale and impact sits, hence this is where our focus lies. Our vision is to empower the world with better mental health, and to get that job done we need to be where people are.
What does success look like in 3–5 years?
Our north star is improvement of people's lives. How many patients can be empowered with better mental health, cost efficiently and with high measurable quality - in a financially sustainable way. The strategy includes consolidating of the very fragmented European mental healthmarket. We are building an end-to-end delivery platform enabling clinicians to provide and patients to receive treatment over a broad range of modalities and demographies
What advice do you have for founders deciding whether to acquire or be acquired?
Be clear on the vision. Also, on capacity. Acquiring demands resources, structures, integration, synergy realization, and you have a huge responsibility to the acquired team. Sometimes impact can be greater when you become part of something bigger, sometimes when you are the provider of that larger context as the acquirer, but both paths require humility and realism.
How has it been working with Luminar Ventures?
They are very engaged! Board support has been creative and committed, with frequent outreach and helpful connections from multiple partners.
What would surprise the 25-year-old you about who you are today?
Patience with change. Moving 1% daily compounds into remarkable change over months and years, which is a mindset that came with experience.
If readers take one thing away from this conversation, what should it be?
Being human is okay. Seek help when bad days add up, and treat mental health like any essential maintenance in life, worthy of care and support.
What’s next on the horizon for Mindler?
Integration plus continued consolidation, new partners, and both organic and inorganic growth over the next 12 months to expand access, quality, and product breadth across Europe.
Mindler’s next chapter blends consolidation with careful AI adoption to expand access without compromising human connection or quality-because democratizing care at scale requires both empathy and efficiency. We can’t wait to see what’s next!
Stay tuned for more inspiring stories from visionary founders and CEO’s within the Luminar Ventures portfolio, published regularly as part of The Founder Series.