There’s part of the WellTrack story that overshadows its pending $1-million funding, or even its efforts to double revenue every quarter this year.
It’s the tale of how CEO Darren Piercey decided one day that his COO Natasha O’Brien deserved a significant stake in the company and handed over half his share.
Piercey, a University of New Brunswick psychology professor, started the company in 2010 to create an online tool to help treat mental health issues like anxiety and depression. After the company, whose official name is CyberPsyc Software Solutions, received funding in 2012, he hired O’Brien, now the company’s COO. Together, they altered the product and its target market so they are now making sales.
WellTrack is a product that helps organizations improve the mental health of its members, especially those suffering from stress, anxiety and depression. The company has had some sales to corporations, but it found a more responsive clientele in universities.
The reason is that depression and anxiety afflict about 45 per cent of university students in North America — more than double the percentage of the general population.
“It’s like an epidemic,” Piercey said in an interview in Fredericton this week. “What’s more, the number of people seeking help is rising, and universities are really worried about the first-year dropout rate.”
Helping universities to help their students represented a huge business opportunity, and Piercey and O’Brien turned to the regional startup accelerator Propel ICT to help them capitalize on it. Though Piercey had gone through the program in 2012, they enrolled again. Propel helped them to adjust their business practices to bring in more money.
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Focusing on the university market, they adjusted the price point so the product is now offered at six to eight times what early adopters paid. And they set ambitious sales targets. It’s now selling to about 30 universities and has 10 more poised to sign up.
The company posted $120,000 in recurring revenue in the second quarter, and is on track to increase it to $240,000 in the third quarter. The goal is to double it again in the fourth quarter, which would give the company a neat $1 million in annual recurring revenue.
“We’ve closed $100,000 to $150,000 in the next few weeks, which would put us close to doubling our revenues in this quarter, just as we did in the last one,” said O’Brien.
Because of that revenue growth, Piercey expects to close a $1-million funding round in the next four to six weeks. He wouldn’t say who the investors are, though they may include previous investors such as New Brunswick Innovation Foundation and East Valley Ventures. That funding will allow the company to add four staff members, bringing the total to nine.
Throughout it all, Piercey understood O’Brien was key to the growth of the company and deserved a share of the company. So one day, out of the blue, he suggested she should get half his shares.
“I was thinking about it and it just seemed to make sense,” said Piercey, who is just starting a two-year leave of absence from the university to focus on the company. “We couldn’t do this without each other.”