Founders Stories: Meet the Brit and the Dane putting a physio in everyone’s pocket
Welcome to the latest edition of Founders Stories, a video series where we sit down with our portfolio co-founders to talk about how they became entrepreneurs, what problem they’re solving and why it matters.
If serendipity is said to play a big role in success, then it’s fitting that Ronni Scott’s basement jazz club in Soho, London, is the unlikely place that the story of the world’s first 100% online physiotherapy app Reach begins.
That’s where James Read, a Brit living in Copenhagen back home for the weekend, got talking to a Dane about his idea to create a digital physiotherapy service that could help millions of people in pain get back to doing what they love.
James previously co-founded London food delivery startup Dish Next Door.
A lifelong athlete, he had become more and more frustrated with his experience of the slow, variable and expensive process of getting physiotherapy treatment. Clocking up months on waiting lists after successive injury setbacks, he began to obsess over what a better process could look like.
He kept coming back to the same issue: needing to go see someone in person for the initial assessment was causing a bottleneck in the journey to recovery.
He became more and more convinced that technology could eliminate the waiting time for an appointment, which is still only the first step toward recovery, and radically improve millions of people’s experience of physiotherapy.
Next he needed to find people as excited about solving the issue as he was. One of them, Mathias Iversen, was introduced to him by the fellow Dane he talked to at Ronni Scott’s that night.
Mathias, who had been running his own app company for six years, didn’t immediately bite.
But the vision of a health tech product that could help everyday people suffering from pain get back to the things they love struck a chord and he ended up getting back in touch with James to pick up the conversation they started.
Fast forward a year and a half and today Reach is the world’s first 100% online physiotherapy service, currently offering assessments and personalised treatment plans in Denmark and the UK for neck and back pain.
Reach users report an average pain improvement of 65% after only two months of using the app. Reflecting the success of the treatment plans, the app has scored 98% five-star reviews.
“Our vision is to empower people when their active best is under threat,” says James.
“When we say ‘active best’ we aren’t necessarily talking about people who do elite sport or people who do sport,” adds Mathias.
“We talk a lot about the everyday moments. The dad who throws his kids up in the air, the mother who takes the roller coaster with the kids and the ability to be active like that.”
“When you use Reach, you remove the focus from the initial phase where you see the doctor and see the physio,” says Mathias. “We focus on the exercise part because it is actually when people do their exercises that they get better — not when you see the expert.”
“We’re making it massively more accessible to start your exercises quicker. You haven’t got to leave work, drop the kids off, cancel appointments for a session. Lots of people don’t even start,” says James.
“The other big thing we tackle is motivation. We help people stick to their recovery.”
It’s a huge problem globally. “Musculoskeletal pain, which is what we concentrate on, is a silent epidemic,” says James.
“One in three people have suffered from musculoskeletal pain in the last seven days, which is just a crazy number. It’s also the second biggest contributor to disability, globally, in the world.”
With long waiting lists, little support between sessions and high overhead costs for in-person sessions, the physiotherapy space is ripe for the advantages that technology are already beginning to deliver to the health care industry.
Watch our video interview [or read the transcript below] as we talk to James and Mathias about their team’s mission to become the global online recovery brand, why Reach is so revolutionary and and their take on the biggest trends shaping the healthcare industry.
Q&A transcript with James and Mathias
S: Let’s start off by you just introducing yourselves…
M: My name is Mathias and I am 36 years old and I am an engineer. I’m probably a quite unusual engineer. Would you say so? Okay. James thinks that too. I have this whole interest in tech but I also have like a lot of interest in spirituality and probably I’m a bit more emotional than most other engineers. Yeah! That’s a few things about me.
S: And what’s your background, what were you doing before this?
J: I’ve done lots of different things. I’ve done management consultancy, been suited and booted, I’ve done digital development, I’ve done brand and advertising. Most recently I was CEO of a startup called Dish Next Door, which was a food tech business and my first foray into startups.
S: Mathias can you talk a little bit about your background?
M: Before Reach I had an app company where we built apps for other clients but we also built a couple of startups within that app company. I did that for roughly six years until I met James and he lured me out of that.
S: What might surprise people about Reach?
J: In terms of the business, the number one thing people ask is how you can treat people without seeing them? Like how do you manually touch them and feel them? But you don’t need to. That’s the biggest surprise. You can do it remotely.
S: What about you guys as co-founders?
J: I don’t think anything would surprise people about how we got here because I had like a mixed background and tried lots of different things. And you were already doing startup stuff.
S: So what is Reach?
M: We want to help people that are in pain. To do that we’re building an app where instead of going to physio, you have your physio in your pocket. We help you to assess your pain and we will help you to to recover in a very convenient way rather than going to the physio.
S: What’s the one-liner?
J: Reach is physiotherapy at the touch of a button.
S: Could you talk a little bit about the problem you’re solving?
J: Musculoskeletal pain, which is what we concentrate on, is what they call a silent epidemic. One in three people have suffered from musculoskeletal pain the last seven days, which is just a crazy number. It’s also the second biggest contributor to disability, globally, in the world.
S: What is the biggest problem you’re solving for people?
M: When you use Reach, you remove the focus on the initial phase where you see the doctor and see the physio. We focus on the exercise part. Because it is actually when people do their exercises that they get better — not when you see the expert.
J: We are making it massively more accessible to start exercises quicker, to make sure you haven’t got to leave work, drop the kids off, cancel appointments. Lots of people don’t start because it’s inaccessible. The other big thing is motivation. So once they go in, we help people stick to their recovery.
S: Mathias, why do you care about this personally?
M: Why I care about Reach is because what we are doing is helping people in pain, people who are being held back by pain. You don’t necessarily see that these people are in pain but there are a lot of people that are daily being held back from the activities they love.
J: For me it’s really important because of two things. One is that personally being active, being able to do what I really want to do makes me tick. If I can’t do certain things like rock climbing I love at the moment, or running, then I get really frustrated. the second thing is that generally I think if you can help people be their best, everyone’s trying to strive I believe to be their best, it makes their lives a bit better, and you can make the world a little bit better.
S: Let’s talk a little bit about what makes Reach, Reach.
J: What I love about Reach is its very open and transparent. Team-wise we always talk about everything together. The other thing is that we’re really trying to build and I think we’re doing very well at, is giving people responsibility: empowering people and trusting them to do great stuff with it. They’re two of my favourites.
M: I think one of the things that is very characteristic about our culture and team is the banter that we have. There’s always very good humour in the team. Sometimes I worry that we we need some more introverted people.
J: I love how you got the word banter. That’s very British I think.
M: I’m trying to become more British. I’m kind of halfway between Australian and British.
S: Could you talk very briefly about your mission and vision?
J: Our vision is to empower people when their active best is under threat. That’s what we’re trying to do. In terms of the vision, we want to be the number one global recovery brand. We believe that there needs to be a place that people can go to they can trust that is credible to recover.
M: One of the things that is very important to understand is that when we say active best we aren’t necessarily talking about people who do elite sport or people who do sport. We talk a lot about the everyday moments. The dad who throws his kids in the air, the mother who takes the roller coaster with the kids and the ability to be active like that — not just like doing a marathon.
S: Can you talk briefly about the three biggest trends shaping the physiotherapy space?
M: The number one trend in the entire health area in general is that you are going to be able to to carry your physio or your general practitioner in your pocket.
J: The second trend that is really important to us is that consumers are taking their health into their own hands. More and more people are used to going direct to get their healthcare provision and also pay for it themselves. And the third one is that there is really big pressure on public and private healthcare because of lots of reasons like ageing populations. And because of that there’s a big opportunity for them to use digital solutions.
M: Another trend we see is that there are companies out that are trying to find a balance between using AI and automation but most of them still have the human touch in there. So there’s very little fully automated or fully AI, so they’re trying to find a good balance, which we do in Reach.
S: Can you explain how it works?
J: You download the app and start by taking an eight minute assessment. It’s question based and you don’t see anyone. That replaces going to see a doctor or physio in person. Once you’ve done that we give around 85% of people a plan. And those people that get a plan get daily workouts and education and we progress people through four phases of recovery. That can take for some people a month, some people maybe three or four months.
About Founders
Founders is a company builder and early-stage investor. Together with exceptional entrepreneurs we build products and companies that radically improve how people and organisations work. Our portfolio includes Pleo, Duuoo, Kontist, Son of a Tailor, Maguru, LifeX, Reach, Wonderwerk, Headlight & Donna.
Camera work and editing by the wonderful Jonas Smidt Mogensen!
Sources
1 in 3 Europeans report activity limiting pain in the last 7 days [European Commission report]
1 in 2 Americans have a Musculoskeletal condition
Silent epidemic of chronic pain affects 28 million people in the UK [BMJ Journal]
Musculoskeletal conditions are the second largest contributor to disability worldwide, with low back pain being the single leading cause of disability globally. [WHO]
