Grow Therapy

Lyra Health

Grow Therapy

Two-sided marketplace for mental health. Therapists join Grow Therapy's network and the company handles insurance credentialing, claims billing, scheduling, and compliance.

In return, Grow Therapy takes a percentage of each session's insurance reimbursement. Patients search Grow Therapy's directory to find in-network therapists by specialty, insurance plan, and availability.

The therapist gets to focus on therapy. The patient gets affordable care.

Grow Therapy gets a cut for handling the business side. Everyone wins except the old credentialing companies that charged therapists thousands of dollars to do what Grow Therapy does for free.

Lyra Health

B2B — Lyra sells to employers as a mental health benefit. Companies pay Lyra a per-employee-per-month fee to provide their workforce with mental health care.

Employees get access to Lyra's curated therapist network, self-guided digital programs, and coaching. Lyra vets and credentials every provider in its network, requiring evidence-based practices like CBT and DBT rather than whatever approach a therapist happens to prefer.

The company tracks clinical outcomes using standardized measures and reports aggregate data back to employers showing ROI — reduced absenteeism, lower disability claims, improved retention. This is not wellness fluff.

It's clinical care with business metrics attached.

Grow Therapy

Jake Cooper was working in healthcare operations when he saw the same problem from both sides. Patients couldn't find therapists who accepted their insurance.

Therapists wanted to accept insurance but the credentialing process took 6 to 12 months and the billing was a bureaucratic disaster. Most therapists just went cash-pay to avoid the headache, which meant only people who could afford $200 a session got care.

Cooper started Grow Therapy in 2020 to solve the plumbing problem. Not the clinical side — the administrative infrastructure that makes it possible for a therapist to see an insured patient without losing their mind.

He launched right as the pandemic made therapy demand explode and supply couldn't keep up.

Lyra Health

David Ebersman was CFO of Genentech during its biotech golden era, then CFO of Facebook through its IPO and early public years. After leaving Facebook in 2014, he didn't retire.

He looked at mental health care and saw a system that made no sense. Employee Assistance Programs — the standard benefit employers offered — had utilization rates around 5% because they were terrible.

Therapists were hard to find, quality was uneven, and nobody measured outcomes. Ebersman started Lyra Health in 2015 with a radically simple idea: build a mental health benefit that employees actually use by making care easy to access, clinically excellent, and outcomes-tracked.

He brought Silicon Valley's obsession with data and measurement to a field that had been operating on vibes and good intentions.

Grow Therapy

Supply-side acquisition — recruit therapists by solving their biggest pain point (insurance credentialing) for free. Once therapists are in-network through Grow Therapy, patients find them through the directory.

The company expanded insurance partnerships aggressively, getting in-network with Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealthcare, Anthem, and dozens of regional plans. State-by-state expansion tracking licensing requirements.

Content marketing targeting therapists frustrated with private practice admin. Referral loops from satisfied therapists bringing colleagues onto the platform.

Lyra Health

Enterprise sales to large employers — Fortune 500 companies, tech companies, and healthcare systems. Lyra's pitch is built on data: publish outcomes showing clinical improvement rates above 80%, share case studies showing ROI, and let HR leaders calculate the cost of not providing good mental health care.

Early wins with marquee tech companies (Facebook, Starbucks, eBay, Morgan Stanley, Zoom) created credibility that opened doors to every other industry. International expansion into Europe and Asia to serve global workforces.

Strategic partnerships with health plans to embed Lyra as the behavioral health carve-out. Acquisition strategy — bought Togetherall (online peer support community) to add lower-cost tier of care.

Grow Therapy

Insurance reimbursement rates for therapy are low and getting lower in some states. Grow Therapy's margin depends on volume because per-session economics are thin.

Keeping therapists on the platform once they're credentialed is a retention challenge — some therapists use Grow Therapy to get credentialed, then leave to handle billing themselves. Competition from Headway, Alma, and others doing similar things means the race to sign up therapists is intense.

Quality control across 10,000+ providers is a real concern. And the fundamental tension remains: insurance companies want to pay less per session, therapists need to earn enough to survive, and Grow Therapy sits in the middle trying to make both sides happy.

Lyra Health

Proving that clinical outcomes translate to business ROI is an ongoing challenge because employers want hard numbers and mental health improvement is inherently hard to quantify in dollar terms. Therapist recruitment and retention in a market where every mental health startup is competing for the same limited supply of licensed providers.

Enterprise sales cycles are 6 to 12 months and require navigating benefits consultants, HR leaders, and CFOs who all have different priorities. The stigma problem — even with great benefits, many employees still won't use mental health services, so utilization rates are everything.

And price sensitivity: employers want better care but they also want it cheaper than the last contract, and margins matter when you've raised nearly a billion dollars at a $4.6 billion valuation.

Grow Therapy

Insurance credentialing — gets therapists paneled with major insurers in weeks instead of months. Automated billing and claims processing that eliminates the denied-claim nightmare.

A patient-facing directory with filters for insurance, specialty, location, and availability. Practice management tools including scheduling, intake forms, and session notes.

Telehealth platform built in so therapists don't need separate video software. Group practice support for therapists who want to scale beyond solo practice.

Lyra Health

Lyra Care — access to a vetted network of therapists and coaches, all trained in evidence-based methods, available for video or in-person sessions. Digital self-care programs using CBT-based lessons for mild symptoms that don't need a therapist.

Blended care model combining digital tools with live therapy for moderate cases. Medication management through Lyra's psychiatric providers.

Workforce mental health analytics dashboard showing employers utilization rates, clinical improvement scores, and cost savings. Family care extending coverage to dependents and children.

Critical incident support for workplace crises.

Grow Therapy

Investors include Sequoia Capital, TCV, Signalfire, and SVB Capital. Series C in 2023 valued the company at over $1 billion.

Lyra Health

Investors include Greylock Partners, IVP, Adams Street Partners, Coatue Management, and Dragoneer Investment Group. Series F in 2022 valued the company at $4.6 billion.