President of BetterUp Care, Omar Dawood on VatorNews podcast

Kristin Karaoglu · November 3, 2021 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/5351

Learn how BetterUp Care fits into the booming mental health landscape

Vator · Interview with Omar Dawood, President of BetterUp Care
Vator · Interview with Omar Dawood, President of BetterUp Care

Bambi Francisco Roizen interviews Omar Dawood, President of BetterUp Care.

Founded in 2013, BetterUp is a mobile-based leadership development platform used by Fortune 500 companies. BetterUp develops new behaviors and mindsets that enable high performance amid constant and accelerating change through on-demand, virtual coaching sessions. BetterUp Care is the company's focus on mental health. 

Some takeaways...

-- Omar’s interest in healthcare began as a teenager struggling with stage 4 cancer.  

-- BetterUp Care is a proactive approach to mental health, focusing on resilience and flourishing versus a reactive approach to mental disorders that many other companies like Lyra and Ginger (now Headspace Health) have taken.

-- BetterUp Care is akin to a primary care doctor as gatekeeper to specialists and secondary care. Members go to BetterUp Care as the starting point. BetterUp Care guides (a person that acts as a concierge) who assesses the member to determine where to direct them. For instance, if a person is dealing with anxiety about not meeting sales goals, they may be directed to a program focused on sales. Or if a person is dealing with stress as a new manager, they may be directed to a program focused on developing leadership skills. Or if it’s a clinical challenge, a person may be directed to therapists or psychiatrists partnered with BetterUp.

-- BetterUp Care has no plans to hire therapists or psychiatrists as they’re laser focused on preventing mental decline and a therapist offering is more reactive. To this end, BetterUp Care is complementary to offerings such as Headspace Health, Calm and Lyra. 

-- BetterUp’s two recent acquisitions of Impraise and Motive underscore the company’s commitment to support people by collecting more personalized data that can help them better understand a member’s needs. Motive has AI that identifies emotions and shows how employees and customers feel about the products they're selling or consuming. Impraise helps managers grow their talent with continuous feedback loops. 

-- BetterUp isn’t collecting new data as much as it’s creating new insights from data collected. Like all organizations focused on mental health, they collect PHQ-9 and Gad-7 surveys. But there are other measurements of growth they’re creating. For instance, one measurement is a person’s likelihood to be promoted, or a person’s presenteeism. 

-- The mental health concerns of members today haven’t changed in decades but there are challenges around creating boundaries between personal and professional life and some stress around getting back into the office.

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Also, Advsr; a boutique M&A advisory firm. They wrote the book on startup M&A called "Magic Box Paradigm: A framework for startup acquisitions." Go to Amazon.com to get your copy. Also thanks to Stratpoint, an outsourced engineering firm and Scrubbed, an online bookkeeping firm. If you need affordable and quality engineering and bookkeeping, check them out. We highly recommend them! 

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Kristin Karaoglu

Woman of many skills: Database System Engineer; SplashX event producer; Author of Startup Teams

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