Companies to Watch: New York Founders Improving Your Work and Life
As the pandemic approaches its third year — and flexible work becomes mainstream — people are, more than ever, looking for better wellness and productivity habits to adapt to this new day-to-day. From staying on track to meet goals to connecting with peers over shared experiences, New York founders are creating the tools and platforms that can guide us to healthier, happier lives.
To close out the first month of the new year (but hopefully catch you before abandoning your 2022 resolutions), we’re highlighting some of our favorite ideas for leveling up your work and life.
For this month’s Companies to Watch, meet Deep, Balanced, doola, and Chill Pill.
DEEP
What does your company do?
Deep co-founder and CEO Alexander Gould: Deep helps people lead better lives through sleep. We deliver integrated sleep health care targeted toward the 40 million Americans who suffer from insomnia. At the core of our product is a highly effective program of behavior change, which involves 1:1 coaching over text message- and daily exercises and tools -via our mobile app).
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
AG: I’m sure this is a common response (for good reason), but it’s the diversity of perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences that make New York the best place to build a company like ours. While technology is a big part of our product, ultimately, we are building a human solution to a human problem. New York constantly challenges your assumptions about people, which keeps us at Deep on our toes.
It doesn’t hurt that I (and the rest of our New York based team) love living here!
You’ve been part of founding startup teams before Deep, but what prompted you to found a company focused on sleep?
AG: For me, this has been personal. Around five years ago while I was running my previous company, I had a sudden downturn in my health, which led to a long struggle with insomnia. It had such an impact on my quality of life, and I got to see first hand how the U.S. healthcare system deals with an ongoing condition – it was a terrible experience.
I would get bounced around from specialist to specialist, from test to test, and from medication to medication, which was timing-consuming, expensive, and offered me very little support in between visits. On top of that, there was this artificial barrier that felt like it existed between traditional medicine and wellness (e.g. diet, habits) when in fact both things ended up being so important in helping me with getting better.
More than 40 million Americans would be familiar with the experience that I went through, and as an entrepreneur I started thinking about how I could fix what is such a big problem!
You founded Deep a literal month into the pandemic starting in New York. How did that change your plans, if at all? Any new, unexpected challenges you found yourself needing to solve for?
AG: If anything it’s been a blessing for us that we started just after the pandemic began. We’ve always been a “pandemic native” company, which means all of our cultural values and norms have been built with remote work in mind from day one. The pandemic has also supercharged the demand for sleep health solutions; one study showed that 40% of people report that their sleep has gotten worse during the pandemic. From that perspective, I think we got started just in time to meet such a critical problem.
In the time since, there’s been a lot of new adoption of telehealth tools, for obvious reasons, from people who otherwise might have gone to see a specialist in person in a clinic or office. Do you think those shifts will be sustained post-pandemic?
AG: I really believe the shift is only going to be one way, and the trend will continue even as we move past the pandemic. We’ve seen it in many other consumer verticals – people want the convenience and speed of digitally-native products, as well as the direct connections with brands and companies that they share common values with. Healthcare has a higher burden on trust, but once that is established, the same rules apply. There will always be a place for in-person consultations if physical testing is required, but the vast majority of interactions can move online.
When most people talk about wanting to improve their sleep habits, they’re just talking about getting more hours in or perhaps cutting screen time right before bed. What are some of the other habits we should be thinking about more?
AG: Consistency is such an important thing to try and implement. Consistency of bedtime and waketime will give you a physiological advantage, making it easier for your body to maintain a circadian rhythm that fits your lifestyle. Second, consistent routines at night give yourself a psychological boost, triggering in your mind that it’s time for bed and restorative, deep sleep.
It’s a simple concept, but not an easy one to execute! Work on making small adjustments at a time and write down your routine or tell a friend to keep you accountable.
What’s next for Deep? What’s one growth goal you have for the company in 2022?
AG: We have some really exciting plans to expand our product offering to meet an even broader set of sleep health needs, which has been an overwhelming ask from our existing customer base. This will include a suite of at-home tests that can help screen for common sleep conditions like sleep apnea, plus telemedicine consults with sleep specialist physicians for the subset of our users who require that type of care. As a goal? We measure our success in terms of better sleep health; by the end of 2022, our aim is to improve the sleep of at least 50,000 people by 30%.
Okay, some rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
AG: I’m not sure if this is one for the traditionalists but the Vodka pizza from Rubirosa can’t be beaten.
And where do you get your favorite bagel?
AG: My local, Tompkins Square Bagels.
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting (remember in-person meetings)?
AG: Happy Bones in Nolita – not only do they make great coffee, but they are the only New Zealand coffee shop (that I know of anyway) in the city!
What’s your favorite remote work office hack?
AG: Taking phone meetings while going for a walk outside. Not in a Travis Kalanick walk-around-a-track way; but just to get a change of scenery! It’s easy to get cabin fever in a small NYC apartment.
What’s one favorite health hack you wish more people knew about?
AG: This one is easy: prioritize your sleep! More sleep reduces the likelihood of getting sick by 75% and can help you lose weight by reducing appetite and helping you make better food decisions.
BALANCED
What does your company do?
Balanced co-founder and CEO Katie Reed: Balanced is a digital fitness platform for healthy aging. Fitness has evolved digitally into the home for the majority, but older adults have been left behind due to the one-size-fits-all approach. It’s not age that stops us from craving a brand we can align our identity and find community with, but the heterogeneity of our body profiles as we accumulate injuries or chronic conditions throughout the years. Balanced meets older adults where they are by utilizing an onboarding flow to personalize the experience and curate class recommendations based on their individual needs and goals––to relieve pain, modify for injuries, and work with chronic conditions such as osteoporosis.
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
KR: New York City is undeniably the best city in the world. There’s a level of grit, drive, and dynamism in the talent pool here that you don’t find in any other cities. Knowing we had to find the best fitness trainers and technical talent to build a company at the highest caliber, my co-founder Kelly and I felt NYC was the obvious choice. Much of our founding team comes from NYC companies like ClassPass, Namely, and Ro, which we believe has helped create a brand that keeps our members coming back.
New York had been responding to COVID-19 for a year when you founded Balanced. Did the pandemic impact why you wanted to build the company?
KR: When the pandemic hit in early 2020, I flew to Palm Springs to be with my grandmother. We could read the same books together, cook together, but when it came to exercise, I had a variety of digital exercise programs but nothing of that caliber existed for her, limiting her ability for functional movement. Exercise for older adults can mean the difference of having the ability or not to perform everyday tasks.
My co-founder Kelly Froelich had a similar realization with her grandparents, while virtually training them over FaceTime with cardio boxing during the quarantine. Exercise is increasingly difficult as we age. Knowing where to start is a huge barrier. It was this first conversation Kelly and I had during the pandemic where it clicked for us, and we immediately set out to work on what Balanced has become today.
There’s been a much faster adoption of digital fitness tools, for obvious reasons, from people who otherwise might have gone to a fitness class or a trainer in-person. Do you think those shifts will be sustained post-pandemic?
KR: Absolutely. It takes 28 days to start establishing a new routine as a habit. With two years of the pandemic, consumer preferences have fundamentally changed. It would take another shock to the system in the reverse to have all folks who converted to digital, flip back to in-person by default. We’ll still, of course, see a good segment of folks return back to in-person studios. I actually love how Kelly phrases it in terms of comparing it to dine-in restaurants and take out – “they both co-exist and there’s a time and place for both.” The same applies for in-person fitness and digital-fitness in the home.
On the one hand, you don’t normally see a lot of older adults going to a gym — which is why a platform like Balanced exists — but on the other, digital literacy barriers could make non-gym or class options just as challenging. How are you connecting to those customers to let them know there’s an online option for them?
KR: We’re starting digital-first by using the scale of technology to increase accessibility to safe, effective, and engaging exercise opportunities. It’s very difficult to start as a brick-and-mortar company and attempt to expand in the digital space; it’s just not in the DNA.
And older adults are much more technical than ever before due to COVID-19, which further cements why now is the perfect time to build a digital-first solution for this segment. In the United States, 58% of older adults (65+) stream content weekly and 68% use a tablet daily. We’re using technology practices in the beginning that they are already well familiar with, such as on-demand streaming (YouTube) and live streaming (Zoom). This helps us reach both the very technical and lightly technical, of which a majority are now.
As a first-time founder, what’s been the most unexpected challenge in getting Balanced off the ground?
KR: The rate of compounded growth. You are solving problem after problem after problem, every single day. All of these problems are consistently new and ambiguous, requiring enough information to make educated and informed decisions without losing too much time delving into the rabbit hole of over-optimized decisions. The name of the game is speed: speed to market, speed to learning, speed to iteration to continuously get better every day. Kelly and I frequently say to each other that we wouldn’t even recognize ourselves from a year ago. It’s surprising how the constant evaluation of trade offs and limited resources will modify your systematic approach to problem solving.
What’s one growth goal that is at the top of your list for 2022?
KR: In 2021 we launched to the public, and in 2022 we started to build relationships with Medicare Advantage plans, which is incredibly exciting. The opportunity to scale Balanced with Medicare Advantage means older adults won’t have to pay out of pocket for a product that truly helps them live their happiest, healthiest, and most engaged life possible.
Okay, some rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
KR: Pizza slice? Upside Pizza in Nolita. Pizza pie? Roberta’s in Bushwick.
And where do you get your favorite bagel?
KR: I’m less particular about my bagel than my pizza, so any bagel shop on any corner of NYC works for me most of the time. That's the beauty of NYC.
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting (remember in-person meetings)?
KR: Saturdays in Soho – part coffee shop, part surf shop, with a low-key backyard that’s great for conversation. A calm vibe in the middle of the concrete jungle where I don’t have to worry about not having the ability to hear the person I’m meeting.
What’s your favorite remote work office hack?
KR: Forcing myself to get outside as much as possible during the work day – taking a walking meeting outdoors, hands-free with my airpods, or even breaking up the middle of the workday to go on a run in between meetings or deep work. Having a dog is also a great for forcing myself outside more often with our daily walks.
What’s one favorite health or productivity hack you live by?
KR: I schedule everything in my calendar – work, friends, exercise, tasks to get done by. It helps me visualize how much I’ve committed to in a given week so I can follow through with my commitments to my partner, friends, family, and colleagues. My word and follow through is very important to me. Things will slip, of course, but this workflow helps me manage my commitments more effectively.
DOOLA
What does your company do?
doola co-founder and CEO Arjun Mahadevan: doola helps global web2 and web3 entrepreneurs easily set up an LLC, C corporation, or DAO LLC in the US with support including employee identification number, US address and bank account, payment gateway, ongoing state compliance, and IRS tax filings.
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
AM: Because we serve customers on every continent – except Antarctica, still looking for our first business from there 😄. It is important to us to have an HQ in a truly global city. New York is one of the most globally interconnected cities in the world and the caliber of talented people in New York is incredible. This is key for any growing startup as at the end of the day; a company is its people. And I have to say: there’s something energizing about walking down the street in NYC. There’s a contagious type of energy in the air.
When did you start building doola? And what prompted you to create a solution that prioritizes non-US residents that want to do business in the country?
AM: When my co-founder and I started their first US company, we found the experience extremely complex and time-consuming — especially as a global team (I was in the US and JP in Germany). We then pivoted from our first idea and realized something: We didn’t know exactly what we were going to be build, but we did know we didn’t want to spend any time going through the time-consuming and expensive process of getting the full stack of software and accounts setup needed to get a business off the ground. So we thought, ‘“What if you could click a button and ‘initialize’ a company, not just start it, but also maintain and grow it over time?” We couldn’t find a solution like this so we decided to build it.
Part of the reason we are so excited to help founders globally is because we truly believe that one, there is a lack of services/products that serve international founders because it’s “more painful” to do so (i.e. you need to fax forms to the IRS to get your EIN number) and two, we went through this very pain ourselves as an international team based in the US and Germany and thought this is something other founders should not have to go through.
We’ve heard about the “Great Resignation” — and the broader shifts in the labor market since the pandemic began. Are those shifts resulting in more independent “solopreneurs”? Do you see more people quitting their jobs and starting their own companies?
AM: 100%. Today, there has been a shift in society toward having more control over how we spend our time, being your own boss, and feeling fulfilled in your job. When a fan sees a creator doing that they love, they want to follow that path, not a path that leads to a cubicle. This is why the creator economy is booming, and we are seeing the impact directly at doola. We’re seeing this backed up by the data as well when it comes to new business applications in the US They’re at all-time-highs according to census.gov, and this trend is continuing well beyond the start of the pandemic.
How do you advise your customers on incorporation processes? Does doola make recommendations on whether to form in New York vs California vs any other US state?
AM: It’s our job to not only help customers set up their LLC, C corporation, or DAO LLC compliantly, but also, when possible, guide them. We aren’t an official tax or law firm, but we work with lawyers and certified public accounts to get professional recommendations. We get asked all the time, “What’s the best state to form my LLC in?” The answer isn’t Delaware or New York, but rather your home state. This is because your company is doing business primarily in that state, whether it is a physical or an online business. There are two exceptions to this rule: One, you are a non-US resident – in which case you can choose any state, and we recommend Wyoming or Delaware – or, two, if you have a real estate LLC. (We talk about why this is in this blog post, but essentially the "home state rule" doesn't apply here). Our four-step process page and our growing library of educational YouTube videos are all ways we seek to teach founders globally about the ins and outs of launching a US company.
What one growth goal is at the top of your list for 2022?
AM: Our mission at doola is to unlock the potential of human entrepreneurship and democratize access to wealth creation by empowering anyone in the world to turn their dream idea into their dream US business. We know there's more than just starting a company. As a founder, you don't have time to waste on paperwork and other tedious tasks to keep your company running. You have bigger goals. Our top goal for 2022 is to increase tenfold the amount of companies we’ve launched so far.
An interesting thing we’ve also learned is that customers don’t want an LLC or a C corporation; they want a way to collect and receive money (whether that’s as a bootstrapped business with an LLC or a venture backed C corporation raising US venture capital). We have some cool things in the works, which can help companies do this even faster. Stay tuned.
Okay, some rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
AM: Joe’s Pizza.
And where do you get your favorite bagel?
AM: Carbs are poison. Just kidding, I eat carbs. I don’t have one yet 😄. Someone please tell me where I need to go!
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting (remember in-person meetings)?
AM: I have a few places I go to on rotation by our office near Madison Square Park. For coffee, there’s a Pret a Manger across the street. I am a big, big Chiptole fan, so that’s one of my favorite lunch/dinner spots. For a lunch meeting, I’ve been to Little Beet Table a few times, which has been great as well.
What’s your favorite remote work office hack?
AM: Getting a nice video camera for conference calls and lighting makes a massive difference on customer calls and team video calls. To start, I recommend a Softbox and Logitech Brio 4K.
What’s one favorite health or productivity hack you live by?
AM: For health: In the gym, count your reps down instead of up (i.e. instead of 1, 2, 3, go 12, 11, 10). Try it; it’s a game changer. For productivity: a 2-minute rule: If it takes 2 minutes or less, do it now (but time yourself at first, because we all overestimate how fast we can do things).
CHILL PILL
What does your company do?
Chill Pill founder and CEO Hayley Caddes: Chill Pill is a mental health community for young women where they can attend peer-led support groups and find friends who are going through similar struggles. We’ve been growing and engaging with our community of teens on Discord since last summer, and we’re releasing our app to the public in May.
A question we love to ask every founder: why New York?
HC: I originally moved here for school and fell in love with the city, but I hadn’t realized how close-knit the tech and startup community is here until I started Chill Pill. Everyone in NYC brings a diverse and unique perspective to the table, so you really can’t beat the innovation and opportunity here.
New York was more than a year into the pandemic when you founded Chill Pill and raised your first round of funding. Did that have an impact on the idea for your company?
HC: I was running a STEM program for high school students for the two years before I started Chill Pill, and we went fully virtual during the pandemic. Because I’m pretty open about my mental health, I was talking to these teens – specifically the young girls – every day about what they were going through, and I saw first hand how much they were struggling. They kept telling me that they either didn’t want therapy or didn’t have access to it, and they just wanted to find friends who got what they were going through. So I started creating peer support groups for them on Discord, modeling them after my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Once I saw them loving the support groups, I decided to start Chill Pill.
In that same time, a lot of mental health products quickly gained popularity. What sets Chill Pill apart?
HC: Most clinical and non-clinical mental health solutions are built for individuals, not communities. And Gen Zs report feeling lonelier and struggling with their mental health more than any other generation. So rather than taking a clinical or coaching approach, Chill Pill gives young people a safe space to find other people they can relate to and helps them build supportive friendships with each other. While it’s not going to solve their problems, it’s easier to go through hard experiences knowing that you have friends there to support you, rather than having to go through it alone.
Right, even if it’s on a digital platform, most people still think of mental health as requiring a therapist or similar professional. Why was it important to you to focus on the friends or peer support element?
HC: Personally, if I don’t have a supportive group of friends around me who I can be vulnerable with, it doesn’t matter how much therapy I’m going to because it will be almost impossible for me to feel happy if I’m lonely. Therapy has been crucial to improving my own mental health, and Chill Pill isn’t meant to replace professional help, but people underestimate how helpful it is to have a supportive community where you can lay it all out there and know you won’t be judged. AA has been around almost 100 years, and it’s the largest, most successful mental health community in the world. It’s built by alcoholics, for alcoholics, and it’s helped millions of people around the world get sober and stay sober as a community. So I’m just taking a page out of that playbook and applying what I learned going to years of AA meetings to structure support groups that enable young women to help each other through a range of mental health struggles beyond just addiction.
As a first-time founder, what’s been the most unexpected challenge in getting Chill Pill off the ground?
HC: It’s not really unexpected, but hiring has definitely been the biggest challenge. You really have to convince people to take a leap of faith and believe in your vision, which is tough when the product doesn’t exist yet. But because Chill Pill is so mission-driven, we’ve been able to build a team of really passionate, talented people who care about helping young women improve their mental health.
What one growth goal is at the top of your list for 2022?
HC: To launch the app and grow our community! I can’t wait to get this out there.
Okay, some rapid fire questions. First: where do you get your favorite pizza slice?
HC: John’s.
And where do you get your favorite bagel?
HC: Absolute Bagels if I’m uptown, Liberty Bagels if I’m downtown.
What’s the best place in New York for a coffee or lunch meeting (remember in-person meetings)?
HC: Kobrick Coffee in the Meatpacking District.
What’s your favorite remote work office hack?
HC: Making sure to get outside and go on walks.
What’s one favorite health or productivity hack you live by?
HC: Honestly, I am too lazy to write in a journal – trust me, I’ve tried to force myself to do it for years – so I use voice memos to journal instead!