Startup story #4 - Go Healthy and Co.

Patients often drop psychotherapy due to high costs and long treatment times. However, reducing inefficiencies and providing mental health professionals with digital tools to enhance their interaction with clients can strengthen the therapeutic alliance and ultimately improve the treatment outcomes. In this interview, Joy Bordini, CEO and founder of Go Healthy & Co., talks about how her team aims to make this a reality thanks to their innovative solution in the mental health space.

How did the project start?
I started to build this startup because I’ve been through psychotherapy myself and, as a patient, I noticed many pain points. I could not believe that there were no better solutions, and I wanted to change that. Our goal is to give superpowers to psychotherapists. To achieve this, we designed a digital toolbox for mental health professionals comprising a patient mobile app synced with a dashboard. The app engages patients, collecting and organizing their behavioural data for therapists. The dashboard offers visual summaries and integrates patient data with standard therapy manuals to personalise therapy and track patients' responses and engagement, enhancing the therapeutic process. 

Previously, you worked at another startup, and now you are an entrepreneur yourself. What have you learned on this journey?
My passion for startups started a long time ago, and before launching my own company, I decided to gain some experience by joining an existing project. This allowed me to learn a lot, especially about the importance of talking to potential clients early on and making sure you are building a solution that somebody wants to buy and use, but also about the importance of choosing the right investors, and managing the expectations of different stakeholders.

You touched upon customer validation, which is a very important point. What did you do to verify that what you want to build is actually needed?
It was not easy. We spent almost a year talking to psychologists and psychotherapists in Italy and in Switzerland to understand their needs, their language and their priorities. We also interviewed more than 400 patients and potential patients and talked to different mental health services and specialised clinics. We ran the first user tests with a chatbot on Telegram. All this allowed us to gather the necessary knowledge before starting to actually build a product.

What have you achieved so far, and what are the next milestones?
We ran a randomised non-clinical study with over 500 participants to understand the impact of our solution on patient engagement and did a preliminary validation of our content profiling and recommendation model through an Innovation cheque from Innosuisse in collaboration with the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence USI-SUPSI (IDSIA). In March 2024, we secured initial funding through a pre-seed angel round. We are now focusing on refining our solutions and on acquiring first customers after the initial pilot tests with potential clients. 

3 quick questions to wrap it up:

• How do you recharge the batteries? – I run in the mornings to clear up my head and prepare for the day
• What advice would you give other founders? – Surround yourself with allies and find people who can support and guide you on this journey through different entrepreneurial communities or mentoring programmes
• Which skill any founder should master? – Listening and taking feedback