Swell Health

Looking to support our troops? That’s Swell Health’s mission.

It’s a technology company that’s created a marketplace that connects the military community, including active-duty members, veterans, and their families, with licensed therapists. These therapists are trained in areas like cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), psychodynamic therapy, and interpersonal therapy, and can assist patients battling conditions like depression, anxiety, stress, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Swell Health is targeting the fast-growing market for “telehealth,” which involves using technology to help improve access to healthcare services. According to Grand View Research, the U.S. market for telehealth was valued at nearly thirty billion dollars in 2022. And globally, this market is projected to surpass $500 billion by 2030.

Within this market, several companies have achieved notable success — both high-dollar valuations and/or successful “exits.” For example:

• One Medical, a membership-based primary-care practice providing telemedicine services, was acquired by Amazon in 2022 for close to four billion dollars.

• Cerebral, a mental-health subscription platforms that providers access to online therapy and care counseling, raised $300 million in late 2021 at a valuation of nearly five billion dollars.

• And Talkspace, an online-therapy platform, went public in 2021 and has a current market cap of around $400 million (Nasdaq: TALK).

But when it comes to healthcare, military members often face barriers. According to the Military Family Advisory Network’s 2021 results for its family support survey, half of the military community reported not having access to mental-health care. (Notably, of those that did have access, more than thirty percent used telehealth services.)

Meanwhile, compared to civilians, U.S. soldiers are five times more likely to develop major-depressive disorder. And mental-health issues are a foundational contributor to suicide amongst veterans. Even family members are at risk — soldiers’ immediate families are more likely to develop mental-health disorders than civilian families.

Swell Health was founded in 2022 to change the way mental-health care is delivered to service members and their families. Its teletherapy product, Therapy+, connects the military community with licensed therapists. Each fifty-five-minute session is designed specifically to treat the mental conditions military-community members face and provide them with practical, science-backed skills to practice in their daily lives.

Co-founder Rachel Edenfield comes from a military family and experienced first-hand the negative mental-health consequences those in the community face. Along with managing her own experiences, she turned to the internet and discovered the principles of Exposure & Response Prevention Therapy, where she learned about meditation’s positive effects on mental health.

Years before founding Swell Health, Rachel’s social work allowed her to witness how difficult it was for individuals to access mental-health resources. And after she gained tech skills in the area of product development, she decided to start Swell Health.

Compared to traditional therapy, Swell’s licensed therapists provide their patients with app-based modules and daily exercises, designed specifically for each patient. Therapists are also trained to use evidence-based practices that are backed by scientific research in order to provide patients with the best treatment method that fits their unique situation.

While not a licensed healthcare provider, Swell Health can contract with insurance providers since it holds a National Provider Identifier and employs licensed healthcare providers as independent contractors. In doing so, it can bill insurance providers for therapy delivered by its licensed therapists.

On the demand side (patients), Swell collects either cash payments from the patient or reimbursements from a health-insurance provider. Pricing can vary between $0 and thirty-seven dollars per session. If a patient is covered by insurance, Swell will bill the insurer for the cost of the session.

On the supply side (therapists), Swell’s therapists are treated as independent contractors and received sixty-five percent of payments received by the company.

At the moment, Swell Health supports patients based in Tennessee and Kentucky. However, the company aims to expand its reach as it scales.

Future products include a self-guided care program, described as “therapy without the therapist.” Swell will use a combination of Artificial Intelligence-powered text- and video-based learning modules to teach behavioral skills to each user. This is slated to launch in early 2024.

Additionally, the company aims to develop Preventative Care, a product that places an emphasis on preventative mental-health care. This is expected to be developed and launched in 2025. To develop both products, Swell plans to apply for grants from the Department of Defense (DoD) and then seek long-term contracts to provide these products to the military community.

Swell has delivered more than 750 therapy sessions and saw an average monthly growth user rate of about thirty percent during the first three quarters of 2023. Notably, Swell has established contracts with military-community insurance provider TRICARE that serves around ten million beneficiaries, and health-benefits administrator Humana Military. It’s also raised $400,000 from venture-capital groups Defy.VC and Fairwater Labs.

Team Background

Rachel Edenfield - Co-Founder & CEO

As the daughter of a military member, Rachel experienced first-hand how mental healthcare among military members needs to be addressed.

Early in her career, she was a social worker and family-support worker before becoming an account executive with Summit Merchant Solutions, a money-transfer service. After that, she founded Laine Lee Studios, a company helping small businesses save money on credit-card processing fees.

From there, Rachel spent four years at Lyft, a ride-sharing service, where she worked as a technical-program manager and a product lead. While there, she scaled a 200-person public-safety operations team. After that, she was a product lead with Kinsa, a health-and-wellness software platform designed to predict the spread of illness. She then was a product lead with Athos, a similar wellness company that created a human-performance data platform built to increase military readiness.

Jim Hughes - Co-Founder & VP of Engineering

Jim is an experienced engineer, having led teams at Microsoft and Google.

In addition to his role with Swell Health, he is a senior-engineering manager with Google, and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin.

Co-Investors

Fairwater Labs

A San Francisco-based venture firm investing in military- and defense-related startups.

Defy.vc

A venture-capital firm investing in early-stage startups.