Healify

The mental health technology industry was poised for disruption. Rising demand for services driven by the COVID-19 pandemic was coupled with a decreasing supply of therapists and a need for faster, more effective therapy. We dug into research and interviewed clients and therapists to identify one of the biggest problems in healthcare. We developed a unique solution to care delivery that drove higher user engagement and 260% better recovery outcomes.

Sometimes it pays to get a bit scrappy. With a few starter ideas in need of feedback from people with mental health needs, we took a page out of the guerrilla market research handbook. We did user interviews at a train station with a cardboard cutout evocative of Peanuts. It was nuts… and, informative.

Our research produced a compelling idea: a search engine for proven providers. So I gave myself an absurd challenge: build it in a single day. It felt impossible until I realized that I could hack Shopify's liquid template engine to turn product search into therapy search. 3 hours later, a prototype was born.

We needed providers for our search engine so surveyed over 1,000 therapists and spoke with a dozen to gauge their interest. Therapists were intrigued, but less than 5% of them measured client progress. When they shared their reasons why, we realized we needed a radically different approach.

We entered a Y Combinator startup kickstart competition as a means to focus and deliver a rapid proof of concept to market. Over the course of a one month contest, we designed and built a client-centered mobile web app. We got our first 40 users and 200 surveys, which showed promise for a consumer pivot.

Armed with an effective consumer story, we turned again to the provider side of the ecosystem and created a free offering for therapists. In effect, this gave us a free sales channel for our freemium consumer product. Our solution gained traction and improved therapeutic outcomes by 260%.