Celebrating One Year

Join us for a special one-year anniversary episode of Theralinq as we celebrate our journey, reflect on the challenges and triumphs of being first-time founders in the HealthTech space, and share what we've learned along the way. We'll dive into how our vision for the future of business has evolved, the progress we've made, and the goals we're setting our sights on. This episode is not just a look back—it's a look forward, filled with insights, hopes, and plans for what's next. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a healthcare professional, or passionate about healthcare equity, this is an episode you won't want to miss!

Transcript:

Bethany Darragh   

Today on Theralinq podcast, we're celebrating our one year anniversary as a company, and we are bringing in another member of the Theralinq team, Jenna Houchins, who serves as our policy analyst. Hi, Jenna.

Jenna Houchins   

Hi. Thank you for having me. 

Bethany Darragh 

Yes. And so today, Jenna is going to kind of take the driver's seat and lead the discussion, and Brennan and I will get to answer the questions.

Jenna Houchins   

Great. Thanks, Bethany. Welcome to the special one year anniversary episode of Theralinq. Theralinq, co-founded by Brennan Barber and Bethany Darragh, is developing a comprehensive pediatric therapy monitoring platform. The mobile app enables therapists to assign customized at home exercises and create a reusable resource library for caregivers. It centralizes all providers and offers a schedule, direct messaging, and video sharing.  Ensuring safe and confident at home. Therapy. To date, Thearlinq has received the NCIDEA 10k micro grant and participated in CED grow incubator spring 2024. Brennan and Bethany before we dive in, can you give us both a short introduction?

Brennan Barber   

Sure, I can kick it off. So, yeah, so Brennan Barber, I think folks who've listened to the podcast are probably familiar with my voice. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Theralinq.  My background, I have about 20 plus years of experience in corporate sales. I have a business degree from Duke University and my MBA, and I'm a parent of a seven year old with cerebral palsy, so I have lived experience as a parent going through this journey and Bethany is somebody that my family connected with close to six years ago now, when she was my son's first occupational therapist.

Bethany Darragh   

Yes, I'm Bethany Darragh and I am the resident therapist of Theralinq, I am an Occupational Therapist. I've been licensed and practicing for 14 years, and mostly pediatrics, but I like to jump around and do a lot of different things, so I've done a number of adult facilities as well.

Jenna Houchins   

Great. Thank you both for sharing. So I guess to kick it off, first of all, congratulations to you both making it to the one year mark, and entrepreneurship is a huge milestone. So how are you both feeling about it?

Brennan Barber   

Feel great. I mean, really excited about all the progress we've made to date. And you know, I would say excited about the future. We've got a lot of big milestones ahead, and we're, you know, actively working towards those, and really excited to share what should be a product here with you know, our customers here soon.

Bethany Darragh  

Um, I feel great. I would say that over the year, my feelings about it have ranged from shocked and confused and tired because I had no experience in business or entrepreneurship before this, so everything has been a whole new world.

Jenna Houchins   

Well, those emotions that you shared sound like a true entrepreneur. So sounds like par for the course and building off that, Can you tell us a little bit more about where the idea of Theralinq stems from?

Brennan Barber  

Sure? So it was about three years ago, you know, my wife and I had really mapped out like a handwritten chart for all the therapies that my son was receiving. And just like realizing that there had to be a better way, you know, and we would talk about coming home from appointments at the clinic, and there would be exercises that we would need to do at home, because therapy doesn't end when the clinical sessions end. And you know, I mean, therapists had best intentions, but it's typically verbal instructions or handwritten notes or paper handouts of what we should be working on, and we just felt that it was a really inefficient way of tracking what we needed to do. So I've been fortunate enough in that my work experience has been in the startup world, working with tech and biotech companies. Obviously, with my business school background, I had an entrepreneurship focus. Always felt like I wanted to start something of my own. And as I was kind of living this challenge personally, it really prompted me to, you know, start thinking about building a product that could address this. And was able to get a very rough, minimal, minimum viable product built at that point in time, was able to do some just, you know, minor user testing with some therapists that we were seeing at the time, and getting some survey feedback. And felt that there really was a need there, and there really was interest.  The engineering help that I had at the time went away at that point, it was pro bono help that, you know, like all pro bono help, it has a shelf life. So the idea kind of sat for a little while, and then it was little over a year ago now that had the itch to really get it going again, and had spoken with a couple of attorneys, you know, started to map out a strategy for launching the business. And, you know, really felt like having a medical co founder would be really important as we launch this to help validate the idea more and and that's when I reached out to Bethany, and I think we had, like, a 15 minute conversation about it. Bethany was in and brought her on this wild journey. 

Bethany Darragh   

Yeah, I would say my story probably even starts before that, because I can remember, I was doing home visits, and I was entering the Barber home every week. But I was entering lots of homes, and I was like, getting to know lots of families. And every family has their own little like thing that they chitchat about while you're working with their child. And at the Barber house, it was always like ideas. It was like, “what if we did this? What if we did that? What if we built this chair that went here? What if we built this attachment that would go here and help him do this? What if we took this toy and we moved it here and we did this?” It was always like the idea house, and Brennan was getting his MBA, and I was like, they're gonna do something. Is it going to be cool and they're going to do something? But then I stopped doing home visits and moved into the schools, and we parted ways from that kind of relationship, but we did maintain a friendship, because our kids were the same age, and they really enjoy hanging out with Eliot, so we stayed in touch. But when Brennan was including me in one of the ideas, I was like, Uh, yeah, for sure.  And, um, I was excited about, you know, what it was, and saw a lot of potential right out right immediately when he was explaining it. So yeah. I mean, I really did not know what I was saying yes to.  I will say that.

Jenna Houchins  

That's awesome. And Bethany, a follow up question for you. So you currently work in schools as well. Can you comment a little bit on what that contrast is like working with children in school and then startup side?

Bethany Darragh   

Yeah. I mean, it's, there's literally nothing the same about it. It's, yes, it's, it's very, very, very different. I think I've always been someone that needs, like, an extra project. I love working with kids, and I love I think it's very stimulating, but it does get to a point where it becomes, I've just, I've done it, I've done it all. Not to say I've done it all, but like most kids, I've like, oh yeah, I've seen another kid like that. I know what to do, you know, it's just not, I'm not able to think really creatively. And I've always had to do some sort of project this really, you know, scratches that itch of like being able to have that project. But I've also found, what's surprising is that it's I was worried it would make me a worse therapist, because I would be distracted. But this year, I mean, as I was sending out my welcome letters to all my families and getting it back in, I was like, Okay, we're all doing home exercise programs this year. This is really important. Everyone's doing it. Here's yours, here's yours, you know, here's how we're going to keep up with it. You know, thinking like, I cannot wait till this app is on the app store, so we can just use that, but it's definitely made me think more about, like, Okay, what will really maximize everybody? And so I do feel like it hasn't taken away from my job at the school. It's just kind of reinforced what's going to make a big difference, and kind of helped with that need to always be like thinking creatively, creating something, you know, really, you know, stretching my mental capacity. Because sometimes, when you've seen, I see anywhere between 50 to 80 kids are my caseload at a time, and so I do a lot of playing. And, you know, there's, I'm thinking about, like, what this kid needs and what that kid needs, but a lot of the times I'm sitting and building blocks with children, you know, so sometimes it can get a little bit not very mentally stimulating. So it's been a good compliment, actually, I think. 

Jenna Houchins   

I guess building off the idea of developing Theralinq, what made you both decide to continue to develop it here in the triangle, compared to some historically larger startup markets like San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta,

Brennan Barber   

Yeah, I think, I mean, in a lot of ways, it was circumstantial. I mean, the fact that we're both from this area, you know, lived in this area for I've been, I've been in the triangle for over a decade now. I think Bethany, you're about the same, right?

Bethany Darragh   

14 years. 

Brennan Barber  

So, you know, I think fortunate enough to be in this region to start, you know, when I first moved to the triangle, a lot of people talk about it as being the Silicon Valley of the East Coast. And I think at that point in time, maybe that was a bit of a stretch. I think where we stand now as this region, like we are, you could certainly make a strong argument for that with the tech talent that's here, you know, the life science community that's here, universities, and just all the talent that's moving to this region so, and not to mention the capital that's here as well. And you know, proximity wise, we're close to other hubs. So the triangle is a great place to grow and build a business. And I think, you know, again, just going back to some of the circumstantial pieces of it, you know, I mean, for my family, you know, obviously connections to Duke have been incredibly beneficial for us, but also the Duke Health System, you know, my as a part of that health system, and we have some of the world's best doctors. We have some of his, you know, his team is, I don't know that we could find a better team to be working with him. So, you know, it's just so many ways, like, it's very serendipitous that we are here, you know that being said too. I think from like, just a market strength perspective, you know, I think as we build a health tech company, you know, having that access to world class hospital systems, you know that, frankly, cost of living in the triangle is less than you would find in the Bay Area or Boston, you know, probably somewhat comparable to Atlanta. But, you know, I think there are so many resources here that, you know, just truly make the triangle a great place to have a startup. 

Jenna Houchins  

And so Brennan, I think you touched on this a little bit earlier, but would love to hear from both you and Bethany on this. But what do you see as some of the key milestones and Theralinq’s development over the last year?

Brennan Barber   

Yeah, so, you know, I think for us in particular, you know, we made quick progress. You know, when we first launched the company, we quickly were able to. We've been a very resourceful company to date, and we've been able to find the right resources that we needed to help us get each little step along the way to make, I think, pretty significant progress. We're able to work with some student engineers initially, that helped us kind of reshape that initial MVP that we had and during that point in time, we brought on Matt McDonnell, who's our CTO. And Matt's been on the podcast before as well. Matt really helped to steer that project to conclusion. We were able to get our MVP live on test flight in the Apple Store. So for beta testing, and we, you know, got to a point where we've had, want to say, 20 plus, ultimately, beta users of our products were able to get some great validating feedback from therapists, from parent users. And by going through those processes, we were able to also, you know, start to articulate our way toward funding. So we applied for grant money, and we were fortunate enough to be an NC idea grant winner. We were accepted into CED, which is council for entrepreneurial developments, grow incubator. So we did a 12 week business incubator. As part of that, we were able to have a fantastic coach and mentor through that incubator and through NC idea programming, just we were able to have a number of touch points with other like really valuable resources in this market that helped kind of steer our direction as we move forward. So, you know, all these have been kind of really great milestones that we've made along the way. Now, from a product side, we're at a point where we're very close to having a commercial ready product. With our grant money, we were able to hire a product developer to help give Matt some additional bandwidth, and yeah, we were, we contracted with somebody that updated our website and have a little bit of a brand refresh. So those are kind of like the fluffier fun things, but they're awesome nonetheless. And yeah and yeah. So now as we look to launch a commercial ready product and have what hopefully our first paying customers by the end of the calendar year. We're also at a point where we're seeking some additional funding, so we're starting to speak with VCs, and we're also exploring additional grant opportunities as well. And yeah, applied for a number of pitch competitions, hoping to be at South by Southwest in March. So yeah, we'll keep our fingers crossed.

Jenna Houchins   

Yeah, wow. A very eventful year.

Bethany Darragh   

I'll say one of the biggest milestones for me is not like a business milestone, it is more of a creative milestone,for me personally, when we started the Gro incubator, and I got to start learning different things about how to start a business,  it really helped me see we kind of pivoted from trying to create a product that could help therapists to really focusing on creating a product that would help families. And I think for me, that was a huge momentum shift, because I feel like I went from being a bystander or a sidekick in the business to like a creator. And I got really excited about what we were making, and we got some really cute kids together and filmed a bunch of really fun exercise videos, and really started building something that I could see a family using and being immediately helpful. And I got very passionate.  I can see how this whole process can be addicting and exciting and make you want to kind of do the next thing and the next thing, but that was a big shift for me.

Jenna Houchins   

Bethany is on her way to become a serial entrepreneur, and so based off what you all shared, looking back on this year, what is one thing that you would have changed related to their legs journey?

Brennan Barber  

Yeah, it's a great question. I don't know that I would have changed much. Maybe I would have tried to sleep more, balancing work life, family life, all that probably proved a little more challenging than I anticipated. I think we've made a lot of smart moves along the way, you know. And like I said before, we've been pretty resourceful as well. And I think again, fortunate of where we are, like geographically in our network, in the region, yeah, I think you know, if anything started, just some additional funding conversations sooner, and maybe some grant applications sooner, just to kind of help us. Extend some of that runway. You know, I think any entrepreneur you talk with right now will tell you that it's a challenging funding climate, so we're certainly not alone in that category.

Jenna Houchins  

But what was the main reason for holding off a bit longer on funding?

Brennan Barber  

I think it was just because, you know, we were so focused on building the business. And, you know, you talk to there is no right or wrong way to do this, you know, I think I've talked to a lot of founders too, that'll, you know, tell you, you know, the best funding that you can possibly have is building a great product and getting paying customers. And you know, I think that's absolutely true. So Bethany and I are very type A personalities, and we like to move quickly and have things done fast. That's probably why I would like a little bit more of that infusion of capital to help us make this rocket ship take off pretty quickly.

Bethany Darragh   

Yeah, I was going to say my first instinct answer was time and speed that, you know, if only we could have done this faster and then done this and, you know, but, or, you know, our, if only our third iteration of the app had just been our first, you know, like, if there's all these things, but then I think about it in the space between, you Know, iteration one and two, and in the space between applying for this grant and that grant, and that might feel like bedtime, there was reflection. There was just space to, like, think and process. And I think if there hadn't been all that time, we're talking like it's been a year, so like there wasn't that much dead time, right? But if, if it all had been more compacted, would we have even landed where we are? Because we wouldn't have been reflecting and stopping and taking a moment. And I think that's really important. And I think just like how development, like, you just need time sometimes for certain skills to, like, sit in and for your brain and body to move on to the next skill or the next focus area. So the time is necessary. It's just kind of part of it. But that's the first thing that I was like, Oh, if we had just been like, where we are now six months ago then, but that time is necessary.

Jenna Houchins   

Thank you for sharing that. I feel like that's such a good lesson, not just in entrepreneurship, but life as a whole, that, you know, things don't always go our speed, but doesn't mean that we're not moving forward. And I guess thinking about life in a bigger picture, how do you both do it? You both are full time professionals, full time founders and full time parents.

Bethany Darragh   

We don't do all three things well at once. So again, there's moments where you're an entrepreneur, and there's moments where you are your other job, and there's moments for your spouse, so and there's a lot of grace given, and we have really supportive spouses. So that's the big, that's the big key, right there.

Brennan Barber   

Yeah, I think that's, you know, definitely a very important piece of it all. You know, certainly couldn't do this without the support of my wife. And you know, Elliot is, you know, he's, he's seven, so he's super into video games, so I'm up to. But he's, he's got bigger fish to fry, right? He's in his own world. Yeah, yeah, it is a challenge. And thanks, I will say too, like with my full time role right now at CED, you know, in being in the tech community, in the biotech community and startup world, my colleagues are all very much accepting of what I'm doing on the side and very supportive of it, you know. So I couldn't have asked for a better situation from that perspective. And, yeah, you know we were, I think, you know, we're, we're able to really benefit in a lot of ways that I think others trying to start a business and balancing all these things probably wouldn't have had those same, you know, same benefits afforded to them. So I feel very fortunate. On that front, I also don't sleep a lot. I've always kind of been someone who can function on little sleep. So for better or worse, that kind of plays to my favor. I tend to go in spurts that I will admit, like, there are weeks where I will go, you know, all in late nights, do what I need to do, and then I typically have, like, a week where I crash and like, that's my damn week. But I kind of know that about myself, so I try to manage that best I can. Yeah.

Bethany Darragh   

Yeah, I am a big sleeper, so that is not my tactic. Yeah, I have a just a really good support network and resources as far as, like, you know, counseling and spiritual direction, and people that just really check in on me a lot. And I have those if I'm feeling overwhelmed or guilty about neglecting my children, they are there to, you know, provide that support and guidance. And I think I don't know if this is just a female thing, but that's definitely an important piece for me, is just the emotional health and the spiritual Health and the Mental Health and, you know, all kind of has to come together. And I definitely rely on a lot of people for that. That's not just me digging deep and, like, pulling it out, like, that's leaning on a little huge community of people to help me with that.

Brennan Barber   

Yeah, I think that's kind of a parent thing in a lot of ways, too. I mean, I know, you know, with all that we have going on, you know, I still prioritize Elliot number one, and, you know, making time for him on the weekends and, you know, after school, and just trying to maximize my hour as best I can. And right now that school's back in session again, you know, he's got full days and he's pretty tired, so he'll crash around eight o'clock anyway. So it gives me, you know, maybe another four hours that I can jump on the computer at night and get some things done. 

Bethany Darragh   

Our kids are actually, like, part of our support network too, because they are featured in our videos. They've been working, they've been working too, and they're excited, and they feel invested, you know, they want to see it be successful. 

Jenna Houchins   

So do your children have some equity now in their link after their cameos?

Brennan Barber  

We're not that generous.

Jenna Houchins   

And so thinking about all these various support systems you have, whether your family, your coworkers, Bethany, you talked about your spiritual groups as well, what do you think the best piece of advice you've received regarding entrepreneurship is

Bethany Darragh   

Directly related to entrepreneurship. For me as a clinician, not having any experience in that came from Julia Franklin, who was one of our guests from cephable. You know, in the beginning, when I felt like I don't really have anything to bring, like, I don't really know what I'm doing. She was just really encouraging to, like, know your worth, know what you're here for. You know, you don't have to know every single thing, but you know a lot, you know. And just was really encouraging. So I'm already an expert in one area, and that's enough, and that's really helpful. So that was really good advice, I think, spiritually and like, emotionally. It's good advice if I feel things bubbling up, as far as like panic or stress, I just stop, shut the computer, walk away, go for a walk, lay down and just check myself like, Don't come back until you know you're in a better place. So that would be, you know, business advice, now you're worth spiritual advice, stop and walk away.

Brennan Barber   

No, I think that's right. I think for me, in a lot of ways, it's the best advice has been to pay attention to your personal well being, because it can be all consuming. I mean, there's rarely a moment in the day that I'm, you know, their link isn't on my mind in some way, shape or form. You know, might not be top of mind, but you know, it's certainly, you know, in the back of my mind. And it's, it's, you know, it's almost become like another child in some ways, you know, I care about it. I want to grow. I want it to be successful. So, you know, taking time to, you know, get a workout in, always been pretty physically active. And just, I find that to be very centering. If I can go for runs and to focus on my physical health and well being, you know, I generally feel better than mentally as well.

Jenna Houchins   

So taking all this advice that you both have accumulated throughout your careers and especially over this last year, what is the next year and three years and five years looking like for Theralinq.

Brennan Barber   

Launching commercial ready products. We've got a roadmap to, you know, target number of customers that we want in our first year, two and three, that really puts us in a very sustainable place as a business. So, you know that's important. We've begun conversations with some government agencies, so that provides some additional opportunity for us, as we, you know, begin to reach into some new markets. And you know, ultimately, you know, our goal is to, you know. Serve millions of families that have children with developmental disabilities. One of the things that I think differentiates us from other products that are on the market is many in the Health Tech in healthcare IT space are focused on reimbursement, and you know, our model is very much focused on outcomes for children and their families. So I could go on a whole diatribe about the value in in that mindset and why so many companies seem to have skewed away from it. I'll save that for another podcast, though.