Investing into Arli Health

Meet Lived (fmr. Arli), the company building the world’s largest ecosystem of support to give every person fighting addiction a pathway to purpose.

Arli is transforming the way people living with addiction access and experience support. When we first met Sally Krebs (CEO and founder) in February 2020, we were so drawn to her hyper-clear vision of how Arli’s product could improve access to treatment and support for people living with addiction, that we wrote a pre-seed cheque in a matter of weeks.

The fact that Sally had grown up within a family struggling with addiction, meant that she had first-hand experience with the challenges and failures of the existing web of support and policy around addiction, and the very real efforts of counsellors and services trying to deliver support but without the ability to scale.

Fast forward 12 months, and Folklore is proud to be making our second investment and leading Arli’s $2.5M seed round.

Advancing addiction recovery

In making our follow-on investment, we continue to back a new vision for addiction recovery and the boundless opportunity ahead of Arli.

Addiction is omnipresent and a growing psychological behaviour impacting millions globally, and manifests in many forms — it is emerging as the great scourge of modern society.

Millions of Australians suffer from one form of addiction or another, and rarely these manifest as being helpful to the individual. While drugs, alcohol, and smoking are the most commonly experienced forms of addiction, we believe “newer” forms of recognised addiction disorders are emerging that Arli may help to solve over time, including pharmaceuticals, gambling, porn, sex, foods, computer gaming, social media, and screen addiction — not to mention what we can’t see.

At a greater scale, addiction has the capacity to bring down geographic regions and neuter the potential of whole generations — as the US has witnessed more recently with their catastrophic opioid crisis. And whilst some of these impacts can be managed through governments and policy, it is families, counselors, workmates, schools, and those suffering addiction who bear the brunt of these impacts — and have to learn to manage the recovery journey.

The treatment costs of addiction are spiralling, and this expense makes it difficult for governments to tackle without the enablement that technology can bring, and its ability to bridge the gaps between connection, treatment, and credible support accessibility.

Arli is that technology. At its core, it matches people who are on the same addiction recovery journey, so that peer group support can be provided to people whenever and wherever they are in the world. Research supports this peer-based model in advancing recovery goals, and Arli is able to deliver this at a globally scalable level.

The power of a diverse team

Because addiction is a problem that touches every part of society — Arli is building a team that is just as diverse as the people affected by addiction. Over the last year, we have witnessed exceptional execution capability as they rapidly build, test, and released products to gain user feedback to optimise the Arli experience.

Our investment allows the company to continue its mission of creating a safe, secure, and private digital ecosystem that enables instant connection and support for people at any stage of their recovery journey. Alongside hiring outstanding people, the team has also established partnerships with treatment services and counselling networks that help the company refine its product and to support a growing user base who need the product the most.

Folklore believes in Arli’s vision of an inevitable future where anyone with addiction of any kind can get the right support when and where they need it.

We’re proud to be on this journey with Arli, partnering with them to become one of the great success stories of our time!