A small team,
a big dream.
We’re NICETY NINE COMPANY LIMITED — five people in Bangkok who think mental-health tech should feel less like questionnaire software and more like a friend. So we built one. Her name is HAPPO.
The shorthand on the wall in our Bangkok office. The things we ask of every feature and every conversation before we ship.
A gentle voice does more than a brilliant one.
We’d rather be useful than impressive. HAPPO is built to listen well, not to dazzle.
Privacy is the default, not an enquiry.
If we have to ask permission to be respectful, we’ve already lost. End-to-end, deletable, never sold.
Feelings don’t happen only in context.
The way you speak carries meaning beyond words — because where you grew up makes your words carry more than just meaning.
Never pretend to be a therapist.
HAPPO is a kind friend, not a clinician. She knows when to listen — and when to gently point you toward a real one.
Soft is strong.
The world has enough sharp edges. We choose round corners, kind copy, and the slow path.
We started with one person, one room, one question. Here’s the road from then to now.
The problem.
One of family members’ experiences with depression and Nice’s own struggles with panic and anxiety from being a caregiver led to the realization that mental health support needs to be more accessible and less stigmatized. At that time, Nice started his study on mental health analysis.
A research year.
NICETY NINE COMPANY LIMITED was founded at the end of 2016. In 2017, Nice spent a year talking to 232 volunteers across three regions of Thailand about what they actually want from mental-health tech. The answers: less data-entry burden, slower and not forced, kinder onboarding, and understands local dialects.
A pilot project.
With the help of Prof. Dr Suwanna Arupongpaisan (the Psychiatrist) and Prasrimahabhodi Psychiatric Hospital in Ubon Ratchathani, Nice started building Mindfit on top of the Residual Network (ResNet-50) model for 2-class classification as a pilot project for mental health support in schools.
The alpha.
A closed alpha with 5 schools in Thailand. We learned that our model performance could reach only 73% of Sensitivity and 71% of Accuracy. So, we redesigned the model architecture six times, with help from clinical neurologist Dr Jakkrit Amornvit.
Open-World Deep Learning.
To achieve his goal, Nice started his PhD study at Kasetsart University. And, with the guidance of his supervisor (Assoc. Prof. Dr Nuanwan Soonthornphisaj), who introduced him to Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), he continued to improve his model performance, which led to the use of open-world machine learning in his acoustic analysis problem.
Startup.
Nice started building his startup team with his PhD supervisor, a clinical neurologist, a professional psychiatrist, and a team of software engineers. Winning several awards and grants with the project name "HAPPO".
Rookie year.
HAPPO officially beta launched as a mental health analysis app, focused on analyzing user work performance via chronic-stress assessment. But we lost many users due to the lack of a user-friendly interface and experience. We began revising the UI and UX of the app.
Rocky road.
We faced challenges in user retention and engagement, but we continued to improve the app and expand our user base. Moreover, we started to realise the importance of the issue — the privacy and security of user data. So, we stopped all HAPPO services and redesigned from scratch.
Financial struggle.
We faced financial struggles after we had shut the project down for a while. However, we were able to work on a new version of HAPPO focused on user experience and privacy. At that time, we joined a government funding program (TEDFUND) and got assistance to continue our work.
The beta.
A closed beta with 580 testers in Thailand. We learned that 73% of conversations happen between 8 pm and 2 am. We redesigned night mode three times. And we started to build a new version of the HAPPO model focused on performance improvement without compromising data-owner privacy.
Today.
HAPPO ships at happo.app in 9 languages, on web. iOS and Android are coming soon. We’re only just beginning.
Talk to Dr HAPPO right now.
An anonymous, ephemeral chat. No account, no save, nothing kept. Just a place to talk for a few minutes — in any of nine languages, whenever you need.
Want to write about us?
We’re happy to chat with journalists, researchers, and partners. Drop us a line and someone will get back to you within 48 hours.
Bring HAPPO to your people.
30-day pilots. We’ll help you measure what matters and roll out gently. Three schools already running this term.