When Alex Katz founded Two chairs in 2017he firmly believed that in-person therapy is most effective for behavioral health.
Two Chairs used technology – a proprietary matching algorithm – to find the best possible therapists for its clients, but treatments took place primarily in one of the startup’s half-dozen sleek clinics in prime locations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
But when COVID-19 broke out and the whole world went online, the company was forced to reconsider its face-to-face approach. While Two Chairs now operates at least one physical location in each of the three states – California, Washington and Florida – that it serves, the majority of the company’s more than 500 therapists treat clients virtually.
Adapting the remote treatment model likely helped the company grow more quickly (and certainly more cheaply) than it would have if it had continued its emphasis on visiting patients in person. Two Chairs says its revenue has increased eightfold over the past three years.
On Tuesday, the company announced $72 million in Series C equity and debt financing led by Amplo and Fifth Down Capital, bringing Two Chairs’ total funding to $103 million. Amplo also led the $22.5 million, Series B in August 2019. The debt part, which represented the minority of the last capital, was provided by Bridge Bank.
Two Chairs is one of the latest therapeutic startups to raise substantial funding rounds. Last week, Grow Therapy, a three-pronged mental health platform for therapists, payers and patients, raised a question $88 million, Series C round led by Sequoia.
Katz says the main difference between his company and other virtual behavioral health platforms, including Talkspace and Teladoc-owned BetterHelp, is that Two Chairs employs the “vast majority” of its therapists while most competitors contract with their clinicians. “This allows us to select therapists who we think are very high quality, and then train them to use metrics-based care,” he explained. Clinicians who use measurement-based care (MBC) could improve outcomes and reduce costs by assessing patients’ progress against standard measures, but only a small portion of therapists use MBC in their practice, according to Katz.
The availability of remote therapies delivered by independent clinicians, established institutions, and startups like Two Chairs has helped address the shortage of mental health professionals in the United States, but Katz says online psychotherapy is not the panacea.
“Although it has become easier to find a therapist thanks to different digital platforms, it is still difficult to find the right therapists and very high quality care, and this is the problem we are trying to solve,” did he declare. “We still have way more demand than we can meet. »
Two Chairs will use its new capital to hire more therapists, expand into new states and improve its technology. The company currently offers its services for a copayment to Aetna and Kaiser Permanente health insurance holders and charges $226 per session for others.
As for whether AI could one day replace mental health professionals, and therefore make a company like Two Chairs even more efficient, Katz wasn’t sure if that would be possible in the near future. “It’s such a human, emotion-driven job, and it’s only possible (to do well) with a great therapist in the room,” he said.
techcrunch
