Looking for tech co-founder for mental health startup.
Hey! I am the founder of Airapy (airapycare.com). I would love to find a technical co-founder. I'm based in Philly but being local is not a requirement. Right now I have 100% equity.
Airapy is an online marketplace where patients can book with therapists for meet-anywhere appointments. Therapy takes place in mutually agreeable public locations such as parks and coffee shops, and booking is made simple and transparent through our online booking calendar. Taking therapy out of the traditional office setting saves money on overhead and makes therapy more affordable, accessible, and easier to book.
Looking for someone to help me develop a more robust marketplace with search/filter and map view more like zocdoc.com. Thanks for considering. Please email me if interested (link in profile).
This looks great, Rachel! There are plenty of options for building marketplaces, I built mine from the ground up with no-code using Webflow, Airtable, and Zapier. There is also a great company called Sharetribe that's the leader in terms of marketplace SaaS. They have a solid product called 'Sharetribe Go' that requires no-code (I'm not in love with the UI) and a more robust offering called Sharetribe Flex, that requires code, but still saves a lot of resources.
I'd recommend checking out Makerpad Marketplace tutorials as well, https://www.makerpad.co/use-case/marketplaces.
Best of luck on your startup journey! Let me know if you need any help along the way. I have a couple mentors in my network that could be super helpful.
Cheers!
I looked at Sharetribe a LOT. And spoke to them a few times. They didn't have any decent-looking service-based template. So I would have been stuck with a huge $$ development cost PLUS having to pay their subscription rate. The UI was not impressive. I will look at makerpad though.
But a lot of IHers have emailed me with interest in helping me build this. So excited!!!
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Send me an email kenny@kennyhanson.com
Hi Rachel J.Cox, I have found this post today while scrolling old posts. I hope you have found one technical co-founder yet as I am late though, but I'll love to help with it as I have worked on mental health listing just like Zocdoc recently (all the features of a robust marketplace with Telehealth option/Virtual therapy in it).
Here is the site www.dilkibaat.ca
Hi! That's a wonderful site. I did find a co-founder on here, and we built an amazing marketplace together ( @alfonsojimenez ) but we could not get it off the ground! Now I have switched to a squarespace site to reduce costs : airapy.io . And we are working on a different business model: airapyconcierge.com
That's great. hope it will proceed in a successful way.
Hi Rachel, I had a similar Capstone project like yours. Our team made a scheduling app for mental health patients in Canada. I had the same idea like yours to scale it and help other people. Would love to chat with you.
Please email me through my profile! Did you build it??? Would love to see it! Wondering if Canada has a HIPAA-equivalent...
Just like what @emmetgibney said Canada does not HIPAA equivalent. Our sponsor was Canadian Mental Health Association. Our app was just to help connect the users and their employees(Practical Support Workers). I dont think they are Licensed therapist. It's a scheduling app and I dont think they already launched it. We already turned over the project to them so I can't provide a link as it is under their control already.
I previously ran a healthcare startup in Canada: Canada does not have a federal privacy law like HIPAA, but rather has provincial legislation in each province that is quite similar. These laws vary by province, but are overwhelmingly similar. Canada tends to be a bit more sticky around privacy law than the US in general, and jurisdiction of data storage is a big issue. Most hospitals we dealt with we uncomfortable with the cloud, and wanted to store data on their own servers. They were very uncomfortable with us using US based cloud services, even if they were HIPAA specialized providers. Things may be better now as that was a few years ago. We mostly looked at the US market as a result of Canada's shyness around cloud and privacy etc.
For your use case HIPAA is only really going to be an issue if the therapists are storing notes from their sessions in your app. If you can structure your application in such a way that HIPAA doesn't apply to you that would be best as it becomes a real pain once you head down that route. The overhead of compliance is really burdensome on a startup.
If all you're doing is helping to facilitate sessions between people seeking a therapy session, and a therapist, then you can probably avoid a lot of HIPAA overhead. If you do decide to go down the HIPAA route I can put you in touch with a great consultant that we used to help us set up all of our policies and procedures around HIPAA.
Please email me I'd love to see the app. No, it doesn't have to be HIPAA compliant. I was just curious. Further down the road we would eventually need HIPAA compliance for progress notes. Otherwise the therapists have to use other HIPAA-compliant practice mgmt software or keep handwritten notes locked in their house somewhere.
Interested! Just sent you an email
I wonder if there might be an opportunity to combine this with a shared rental model on traditional offices. Most therapist offices seem to be groups of loosely related independent practitioners anyway (I own a couple of office condos that are rented by therapist groups). Having an easy way for them to expand the usage of their office to other practitioners would probably be appealing. Your model is interesting and I'll be following.
I have a connection who has a friend in North Carolina who is a therapist and she rents a multi-office suite and rents out the separate offices by the hour using this app, which she highly recommends: https://www.nexudus.com/en
The idea definitely has lots of potential.. ideally I would have to do a lot of research into what the specific needs are for therapists. Is it enough to be near public transportation and have fully private offices? What other amenities would we need to provide? Which is all why I want to save this expansion until I figure out all the other stuff first...
Hey Rachel,
I can offer some technical guidance, but I would love to be involved in the sales and marketing aspect.
Any interest?
Yes! Those are also parts I am struggling with. Email me.
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Fixed, thanks. I'm too trusting!