Jake’s inability to find in-network care planted the first seed for Grow. He is passionate about bringing change to our country’s unaffordable and opaque healthcare system and doing so through supporting amazing independent providers. Prior to Grow, Jake was a private equity investor at Blackstone and Apollo. Jake graduated Summa Cum Laude from Duke University, where he met Manoj and Alan, and started his first few small businesses.
What is Grow Therapy all about?
Grow Therapy enables behavioral health providers to seamlessly start/run their own in-network practices through our tech-enabled administration, community, and marketing. Our providers collectively serve as a next-generation behavioral health network to clients, referring partners, and health plans.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your business?
We founded Grow because our friends were struggling with the complexity of starting their own practices, and our loved ones were priced out of care due to a lack of in-network options. I previously worked in private equity where we would expand physician groups by negotiating insurance contracts, streamlining administration, and bringing in the latest technology. Our work at Grow is similar, except we’re proud to be working for our providers – not the other way around. Through self-empowerment, community, and technology, we’ve built one of the largest behavioral health groups in Florida and massively expanded mental healthcare accessibility.
How has the pandemic affected you or your new business?
The pandemic dramatically increased the need for affordable mental healthcare and enabled us to deliver more of it. It has always been difficult to find in-network behavioral health, but the pandemic drove an over 300% increase in rates of anxiety and depression and nearly 15% unemployment. Rapid telemedicine adoption was a rare silver lining. Draconian state and federal laws were relaxed, insurances began to reimburse for telehealth, and providers and clients trying telemedicine for the first time immediately recognized it as an incredibly effective modality for behavioral health. On our end, telehealth removed one of the main structural barriers to starting a practice – office space and local population density – allowing us to enable a larger swath of providers to get off the ground by initially practicing on a remote basis.
What was the biggest problem you encountered starting up and how did you overcome it?
We often ran into difficulties navigating the reimbursement system. We overcame those difficulties by building an amazing advisory network primarily through cold outreach.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
We continue to learn how important it is to ruthlessly prioritize, accurately project resource needs and hire ahead, and consult experts when dealing with workstreams that require a high degree of domain knowledge. Initially, we’d put the cart before the horse, perfecting a tactic before testing if the strategy was viable. We underestimated engineering resource needs. And last, we banged our head against the wall working through the complexity and disorder inherent to our country’s reimbursement system, before finding experts who taught us how best to navigate it.
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
One of the most impactful books I have read is “An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back.” It details the haphazard evolution of our reimbursement system, and the structural causes for many of the most devastating outcomes – which are much more often financial than clinical.
On the startup end, The Hard Thing About Hard Things was illuminating to read as a first-time founder. It provides an authentic, raw look into the most painful aspects of company building, and shows a path to navigate them at least adequately.
Last, I read the High Growth Handbook at the recommendation of a friend & mentor who had already started a few venture-backed companies. It’s an encyclopedia that covers all important topics to being CEO of a growth-stage company. While many of the topics haven’t been relevant yet, I know I will be re-reading them many times in the future.
What was your first business idea and what did you do with it?
I started a cleaning service called Maid My Day in college. It was a simple business but taught me immensely about the challenges, possibilities, and potential contentment inherent to entrepreneurialism. Totally simple things like coming up with a name and hosting a website felt indescribably challenging and monumental. I remember how nervous I was interviewing our first cleaning staff hire. The responsibility I felt for ensuring I could find her and her colleagues sufficient business. The sense of personal failure when we let down a customer. Ultimately, we made it a success, in large part due to the efforts of leaders who I passed the business down to. It is still operating today at Duke, passed down each year to a new student leader.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
We have achieved significant growth through word of mouth. We deeply admire our providers and work hard to win their trust. We count them as our biggest advocates.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
A lot of coffee. I will say that I think design is one of the highest leverage areas to invest in. We’re lucky to work with a world-class designer who has breathed life into all of our assets, from our website to investor decks. However, even if you only have $1,000, you can likely find some pretty solid designers through basic contractor marketplaces who can really augment an even non-existent company’s air of legitimacy, allowing an early-stage founder to have sales and investor conversations that would otherwise be rebuffed.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Building a business is incredibly difficult. Unless you are thinking about your potential startup every morning, evening, shower, run, dream, and nightmare, and the thought of not going for it causes you existential pain, it may not be worth doing. If you pursue your idea, you should find low-cost ways to gauge interest in your theoretical product/service before actually making it. Then you should find a co-founder(s) who you deeply admire and compliment you personally and professionally.
How do you personally overcome fear?
With most fears, I try to push through by rationalizing away my concerns, putting the “worst-case” into a broader perspective, and reminding myself of the cost of backing down – both personally and to my team and constituents.
How can readers get in touch with you?
Please feel free to reach out over LinkedIn, particularly if your work touches mental healthcare!
Entrepreneur Interview: Come Out With Your Whole Truth, with Susan Hum
