Mental health startup StartTalking announces partnership with QuikTrip
October 14, 2016 | Meghan LeVota
Editor’s note: In response to readers’ desire for quick-hitting stories, Startland News is launching a new segment, “News Flash,” to enable more coverage. Let us know what you think!
Lenexa-based StartTalking has announced a pilot partnership with QuikTrip that will make its service available to all 3,000 QuikTrip employees in the Kansas City area.
The mental health startup will provide its telehealth and online therapy services via QuikTrip’s employee assistance program, confirming the firm’s value, said founder Mark Nolte.
“We’re still very much in startup mode, but this validated our business model and proved that it can be done,” Nolte said. “We’re grateful for the opportunity to learn a lot in the pilot about what works, what doesn’t and what protocols to take in the future.”
Launched in 2014, StartTalking was inspired by Nolte’s own struggle with depression. The software provides immediate online counseling and therapeutic sessions through online messaging and encrypted video. His software is designed to catch depression and anxiety in its early stages, before things get critical.
A Liberty-based behavioral therapist from Clinical Counseling Associates Inc. will be providing the online therapy to QuikTrip employees. The therapist and Quiktrip employees will be able to access the video platform on their smartphone or laptop with StartTalking’s technology. Nolte said that QuikTrip was interested in his firm services to help cut down on travel and absentee costs.
A medical device salesman of more than 20 years, Nolte said the market for telehealth psychotherapy is around $2 trillion, and that Americans spend about $24 billion on psychotherapy.
2016 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
VIDEO: KC startup BAM supplies soundtrack to LEANLAB’s education mission
The mission of Base Academy of Music (BAM) is clear –– help kids in Kansas City’s urban core reach their God-given potential, one note at a time, said Clint Velazquez. “Music is what got me through school,” Velazquez, founder of the academy said. “I became a music teacher later in life. Working in the suburbs,…
KCFD: Only 19 accidents in four months involving electric scooters popular in Crossroads, downtown
The arrival of trendy Bird and Lime electric scooters hasn’t tripped panic alarms for the emergency medical services in Kansas City, according to a new report from the city. A manual review of nearly 100,000 EMS records logged between July and Oct. 31 shows only 19 accidents involving the scooters, the Kansas City Fire Department…
Teach for America KC celebrating 10 years building entrepreneurs to fight education inequity
Dividends from Teach for America KC swelled Rachel Foster’s development as a teacher and community member invested in Kansas City, the leader in innovation-driven education said. “I owe everything, it feels like, to Teach for America,” said Foster, Young Entrepreneurial Spirit program leader at Lee A. Tolbert Community Academy. “The fruits keep coming in for…
Target Hill Capital defusing risk on startups between friends and family, seed funding stages
An opportunity to deliver exponential impact in a community committed to entrepreneurship has resulted in the launch of Target Hill Capital –– an outside-the-box venture capital fund, Marshall Dougherty said. “When we were involved [with previous startups], we compared notes and surveyed the startup ecosystem in Kansas City,” Dougherty said of the events that led…