How did COVID impact your growth?

The pandemic has obviously affected a lot of people in many different ways, mostly negative, but fortunately we have been on the right side of the crisis. The need for mental health has accelerated and expanded much more than in previous years. Prior to the pandemic, we were focused primarily on B2C. Targeting consumers with a pay-as-you-go model, with therapists charging anywhere between £50 - £200. However, we realised that the biggest barrier to therapy was affordability, so in response to COVID-19 we changed our pricing to a subscription-based model, which has allowed us to drop our prices to as low as £35 per session, making us one of the most cost-effective services in the UK. We also started to focus on B2B, and are now partners with Gym Pass, Tesco, and HSBC to name a few. ‍

What is the grand vision behind Healing Clouds?‍

Ultimately what we really want to do is make mental health services affordable and accessible. A lot of people haven’t tried therapy because they can't afford it, so we are trying to allow people to view mental health in the same way they view physical health. ‍

What made you build Healing Clouds? ‍

My mother suffered from severe depression and stress due to a failed marriage and it was horrible, not only on her but on us as kids as well. Through therapy, she completely changed her life around, but she didn’t stop there. She became a therapist herself, and because of that I was exposed to the whole mental space, and from an early age we understood the importance of addressing your mental health because we saw her change, and we saw her clients change. I knew that I wanted to do something in that space, and I knew that I also wanted to accelerate her vision of impacting people's lives through the use of technology. I started to see there were platforms which would connect you with GPs, doctors and specialists but the mental health space wasn’t as robust as it is today. So we started developing the platform, launched in 2018, and the rest is history.  ‍

What were your biggest learnings since launching?‍

I learned the hard way that you should launch as soon as possible, don't overthink. We probably launched at least a year later than we should have done, if not more, simply because I was trying to ‘perfect’ the product. Now, it's all about speed for us. Launching fast and failing fast. When you're creating something and you’re so emotionally and personally attached to it, you have this idea of perfection in your mind. However, at the end of the day it’s your customers who will tell you if the product is perfect or not, and ultimately your product should never be perfect. It should always be a work in progress, because once you’ve hit that perfection then what? How do you grow from that? ‍

What are your goals for this year? ‍

We’ve grown immensely since the start of 2020, going from four to fifteen people, and we want to continue expanding the team. Our user base has also grown about 50%, and our traction has grown 800%, and our focus is to continue accelerating our growth and also starting to heavily focus and invest in growing our therapist-led online courses. Our aim is to become the largest provider of therapist-led online courses in the world by the end of the year.