Kenshō is on a mission to take back the conversation around natural and alternative health from those cashing in on pseudoscience and giving the practices a bad name. The start-up launched a private beta and has raised $1.3 million in seed funding.
WHO: The company was born out of Kenshō CEO & co-founder Krista Berlincourt’s own frustrations navigating holistic health after she left her last company, Simple, a FinTech pioneer, to heal the adrenal failure that left her hospitalized. Two years later, Berlincourt met Danny Steiner, a health industry veteran, who developed and launched Brami, a breakout superfood company. The two initially bonded over their mutual interest in behavioral science, then discovered a shared mission to help people get better by making holistic health more accessible.
Today the two are solving for holistic health’s provider curation and consumer trust challenges with a personalized discovery platform that leverages in-depth scientific research to customize provider recommendations based on a wide range of considerations, including a user’s symptoms, goals, lifestyle, and preferences. To better inform consumer perspective around holistic health, Kenshō is partnering with Authorea, an open research publishing platform within Wiley, one of the world’s leading scholarly publishers. The partnership pioneers open access to scientific research that validates the efficacy of holistic health practices.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: “We’re the antithesis of Goop,” Berlincourt, a FinTech veteran who previously focused on communications and marketing at Simple Finance, tells TechCrunch. “What we are creating is less of a consumer magazine. We are a holistic health platform that approaches things as more of a holistic health medical journal—everything is backed by science.”
“When it comes to health, knowledge is power,” said Kenshō CEO & co-founder Krista Berlincourt. “Many people think of ‘holistic health’ as pseudoscience when in actuality many of these practices have existed for millennia and today there’s plenty of scientific evidence to support their efficacy. Kenshō’s excited to have Authorea as our partner in making this information, scientifically sound, transparent, and accessible for the people it can help most.”
“People are increasingly interested in a more holistic approach to health,” said Anu Duggal, Founding Partner of Female Founders Fund. “They’re also understandably confused about how to tell if a provider is qualified to support their unique needs. Kenshō does the hard work of doing all the research and carefully vetting providers so that customers don’t have to. In addition, Kenshō’s personalized discovery platform helps every customer find just the right answer or provider with unprecedented ease, care, and confidence.”
“Kenshō has a clear vision to disrupt healthcare by improving wellbeing with a product that will truly help people. This is the first company to solve for provider curation, quality, and most importantly, makes it easy for consumers to consider all options,” said Brian Garrett, co-founder and Managing Director of Crosscut Ventures.
DETAILS:
