Mental health startup StartTalking announces partnership with QuikTrip

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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.