Hopelab

Margaret Laws, President and CEO, leads the organization's strategy including its venture portfolio. Hopelab's investment team evaluates direct equity opportunities in early-stage digital health companies that serve adolescents; the board, chaired by Pam Arlotto, provides fiduciary oversight.

Hopelab sources through direct engagement with the behavioral science and adolescent health research community, its network of co-design partners including university labs, and its own studio pipeline — products incubated internally that may be positioned for external validation. The firm's research publication arm also surfaces founders working on youth mental health.

Hopelab is a 501(c)(3) social innovation lab and direct equity investor structured within the Omidyar Group, the umbrella for Pierre Omidyar's philanthropic and impact activities. It is not a traditional family office focused on wealth preservation; rather it is a mission-driven investment entity that uses capital to advance adolescent mental health. Its investment returns are recycled into the nonprofit.

Hopelab primarily makes direct equity investments in early-stage companies and builds its own digital health products through its internal design studio. It also engages in grantmaking, notably through vehicles like the Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund, which distributes participatory grants to youth-led organizations working on ethical technology.

Hopelab was endowed by Pam and Pierre Omidyar. Pierre Omidyar founded eBay in 1995, and the resulting fortune seeded the Omidyar Group's network of philanthropic and impact investment organizations, of which Hopelab is one distinct entity.

Both are entities within the Omidyar Group, but they have different missions and governance. Omidyar Network is an impact investment firm with a broad mandate across economic advancement, responsible technology, and pluralism. Hopelab is focused exclusively on adolescent mental health, operating with its own CEO, board, and investment team.

Hopelab participates in venture rounds alongside other digital health and edtech investors. Its deployment is concentrated on the US market and it tends to lead with clinical validation and design capability rather than pure financial return, making it an attractive co-investor for firms like Maveron or Learn Capital that are active in the youth digital-health space.