POV: Building a mental health startup to an 8 figure exit.

Frankie Health was founded in August 2020 by Seb Poole and James McGann. Initially a payment gateway for mental health practices to take digital appointments, it evolved into an employee mental healthcare platform used by Disney and Uber.

In January 2023, Europe's leading enterprise mental health provider, Unmind, acquired Frankie Health for an undisclosed amount. Today, Seb leads the Unmind APAC business.

I wanted to take him back and reflect on how you get started.

Hamish: What did those early ideating conversations look like?

Seb: My Co-founder James and I were stuck at home during COVID, plotting to start a business together.

We would have these digital roundtables, where we went back and forth over what our passions were, where we saw opportunities, and things in the past that didn't work out well.

We went back and forth over business ideas to find the right market to pilot a product.

Hamish: Why did you choose the mental health market?

Seb: I have always been passionate about doing something that intersected societal meaning and impact on individuals, something more than consumerism.

We also shared incredibly poor experiences with employee wellbeing programs during our careers - and with the tailwinds of COVID and the Zoom era, we saw a real opportunity to cross all those boxes.

It was a problem set we were interested in solving and one that I felt proud to stick my name to and put my head on the chopping block for.

Hamish: What happens on the back of that?

Seb: After choosing the industry, we sought the people within it and asked after their problems.

It was probably a three or four-month process of talking to as many people who specialise in the market and hopefully get validation on the idea.

"Word of advice here is that you will be talking to people who have spent years working in the same way. If you are trying to do something different, you should expect to find challengers along the way. Do not treat that as your idea getting shut down - those are the opportunities to exploit."

That evolves into developing the right product and a way to package it up so that you can make enough money to keep the business going.

The next step is figuring out how quickly you can scale it. That was the big question in the early days - how quickly this could become large enough to be seen as moving toward unicorn status.

Hamish: How did the early business strategy take shape?

Seb: For those early conversations, we decided to speak with practice managers and practitioners within the business, not self-employed practitioners.

Winning self-employed practitioners one by one would have been a slog. Winning a practice full of practitioners would get us the correct growth and have a multiplier effect. So that was the right entry point for us.

We started with the largest practice in Dublin because my Co-founder was living there.

"We got our foot in the door through perseverance, trust, and presenting as passionate about solving their problems."

All these businesses were experiencing the pain of digitising their services - we were in the right place at the right time.

Hamish: Did you have a lot of confidence when you started?

Seb: I had run one startup myself - a digital agency, before working at a larger startup in Hong Kong.

After seeing how these things work, you have a lot more confidence that shit will work out.

"The challenges stay the same, and it isn’t necessarily easier - you just know that the challenges stop persisting when you do."

Hamish: Did it feel like it was working early on?

Seb: We did and from both sides. Commercially, we were generating revenue - and the practitioners would tell us we were meeting their needs.

But there were questions at the time about whether or not we stick with the angle of mental health practices - which was working - or if we should expand to solve corporate needs too. 

We planned for this from the start, but you have to ask yourself again because we had made $100k in sales within that first half year by focusing on one customer profile.

We didn't know how it would look as a product for corporates, but we just took it step by step, learning to run as we went.

Hamish: You strike me as someone who is always learning - where would you learn from?

Seb: 100%, I am always learning - all the time.

"I would constantly question my mistakes, and I have some incredible friends in the startup space that would call to talk about the business and other things."

You learn that most things are not overly complex after you look under the hood.

Hamish: And your Co-founder, what did the relationship look like there?

Seb: We were similar in many degrees but also very different - In a complementary way. 

It’s an intense relationship.

"We are best friends, but I have never had more disagreements than we had over that journey, but that is how it should be. You are building a relationship, one that is very honest."

Working in different time zones was also interesting - we would converse as he or I was winding up and the other was winding down. So our input was always quite different, and you need to give space for that and communicate in a way that accommodates it.

"Funnily enough, we ended up having marriage counselling - the two of us, which worked."

Hamish: That’s a big deal.

Seb: I think the fact that we were willing to do that was a sign of the fact that we wanted to learn and for this to work. 

We were always asking how we can better communicate, how we can better understand each other, and best work together.

Hamish: What made last year the right time to sell?

Seb: We were looking at raising our next round, and there was a lot of interest from external parties, but there were also partnerships with the potential to evolve into an acquisition.

We worked with many partners who we knew might be acquirers. It's often the case in partnerships - they start because of some synergy.

As one of those partners evolved into a buyer, we thought about what would be best for the company long-term and our inside force - ultimately, it drove us to be acquired.

Hamish: How does that feel?

Seb: Optimistic from the business perspective - It is flattering and a clear signal that you deliver value that others see.

"But personally, it is challenging, for sure. When you sell a company, there is much you then start to question. You have to work out how this new place works, where you fit, and what your new thing is."

Lot's to go through.

Hamish: What’s next?

Seb: The next venture. And it looks even bigger this time.

I’m excited to see if we can hit these larger targets.