Daring voices: Kerstyn Comley and Suzi Godson
Welcome to Daring Voices, our series spotlighting the founders in the Daring Capital community. In each edition, we sit down with a founder to hear their journey in their own words: from their origin story, to the challenges they’ve faced, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.
This week, we talk to Kerstyn Comley and Suzi Godson, founders of TellMi.
What problem is your business solving, and what inspired you to tackle it?
Every year, over a million young people in the UK are referred to CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services), but the system can't cope. One-third of those referred don’t meet the threshold for treatment, and another third wait over a year for help. The current one-to-one counseling model simply isn’t scalable. We built TellMi, a safe, anonymous, and fully moderated digital peer support platform that empowers young people to share experiences and support one another. It’s scalable, cost-effective, and therapeutic for both the helper and the helped. What sets us apart is our hybrid approach: clinical risk management with real-time moderation alongside authentic, human connection.
Why does solving this problem matter to you personally?
We’ve both had personal experiences—through our own teenage years and through raising our children—that made us aware of how universal and urgent mental health issues are. Everyone knows someone struggling. This isn’t abstract. It’s in our homes and communities. That lived experience, plus our roles as mothers, gives us a deep emotional investment. And the more we heard from young people using TellMi, especially those feeling unseen or excluded, the more committed we became.
Why is now the right time to solve this problem?
Because the mental health crisis among young people is exploding and traditional systems cannot keep up. At the same time, young people are digital natives. They need services that meet them where they are: on mobile, instantly accessible, anonymous, and peer-driven. TellMi is also uniquely suited to the moment because society is becoming more open to neurodiversity, mental health awareness, and digital support. Plus, we now have the tech and safeguarding systems to do this safely and effectively at scale.
How does your solution stand out from existing alternatives?
We’re probably the world leader in digital peer support. TellMi is not just a forum it’s fully human-moderated, risk assessed, and seamlessly integrates clinical triage when necessary. Young people say the authenticity, safety, and inclusivity are unmatched. We provide an autism filter, where autistic users can connect directly to others with similar experiences something not available anywhere else. We’ve also worked closely with research teams like Cambridge’s Simon Baron-Cohen's group, gathering rich data that informs how we design and evolve the platform.
What does success look like to you—not just financially, but in terms of impact?
We’ve already impacted thousands of young lives. For example, our annual user surveys show that:
32% of users are from racially minoritized backgrounds,
18% are autistic (vs. ~2% of the population),
4.5% are in care,
19% are young carers.
These are the most excluded and underserved youth—and they are using TellMi because they trust it. Financially, we’ve also demonstrated that TellMi saves the NHS money by reducing demand for A&E visits, GP consultations, and other crisis interventions. That’s real, systemic impact.
Have you ever had to choose between your mission and making a profit?
Yes and we don’t separate the two anymore. We started this as an altruistic project, but quickly realized that without a sustainable business model, there would be no lasting impact. We reject the idea that profit is "dirty." Profit enables sustainability, growth, and more support for more young people. The challenge is doing it ethically—making “enough” without exploiting. We don’t aim for islands; we aim for scale and real-world change.
What’s been your biggest challenge so far, and how did you get through it?
Raising enough money to build a digital product that would meet the expectations of the most digitally savvy users on the planet—teenagers—was a huge challenge. Competing with TikTok and Instagram in terms of UX, while embedding safeguarding and clinical standards, required substantial investment. Also, working with the NHS has been slow and complex—“like pushing mud uphill.” We had to educate the system that peer support is valid and effective. But we kept going. We found champions, like Jam (an advisor/investor), who believed in us, and we stayed relentlessly focused on impact.
What achievement are you most proud of to date?
There are many, but one stands out: a 15-year-old boy told us TellMi saved his life. He had been suicidal, with an eating disorder and family trauma. He later did work experience with us. Stories like his are why we exist.
Also, seeing autistic young people—especially undiagnosed girls—join group workshops after saying they never thought they’d be able to speak in a group is incredibly powerful. We didn’t just create an app—we created belonging.
What’s your long-term vision for the business and the change you want to create?
We want TellMi to be the first place young people turn to for mental health support, long before they reach crisis. Our vision is to normalise digital peer support as an accepted—and expected—part of national mental health infrastructure. Long-term, we want to shift the system from reactive to preventative care, and to challenge the narrow definition of support as just "six sessions of CBT."
What challenges have you faced raising investment, and how have you navigated them?
We’re women in tech and social impact that alone makes it harder. Most VCs don’t understand our model: our users are not our payers. We’ve also had to explain why we’re not a charity, why social impact can still be investable, and why small returns shouldn’t be a dealbreaker. We’ve been underestimated, ghosted, and misunderstood. But we’ve learned to read the room and avoid wasting energy on the wrong investors. Some of our best breaks came from people who saw the value and helped bridge the gap between founders and funders.
What advice would you give to other underrepresented founders just starting their fundraising journey?
Don’t pay for anything you can get for free the startup world is full of people trying to sell to founders.
Pick the right accelerator at the right time. We did some too early and missed the value. Do your homework.
Be careful with equity deals we narrowly avoided giving away too much too soon.
Don’t be discouraged by rejection. We've had rounds where we were rejected, then got in later and were grateful for the delay.
Persistence, community, and timing matter. And if you’re doing something bold, you’ll need a bit of naivety to get started—and a lot of grit to keep going.
What do you think needs to change about the fundraising ecosystem?
We need a mindset shift. Investors should stop chasing only “10x returns” and start funding viable, impactful businesses that might “only” deliver 2-3x but change lives. We also need more philanthropic investment where investors treat their capital as high-impact deployment, knowing they might not get massive returns, but might create massive change.
If you’d like to find out more about TellMi, you can visit their website.
A big thank you to Kerstyn and Suzi for sharing her journey. You can catch the next in the Daring Voices series next week.
Jem
and the team at Daring Capital