TL;DR
Teladoc served severe needs with expensive therapy and low needs with self-serve content — but had nothing for the medium-severity 60% of demand. I built Mental Health Coaching to fill that gap; it became the company's highest-NPS product and a $27M ARR anchor.
The Problem
Our largest client hit a severe therapist shortage with wait times near 24 days. I read it as three stacked problems: a customer access problem, a portfolio gap for medium-severity care, and a competitive-displacement risk as other large clients evaluated Ginger and Lyra. Missing the 1/1 contract cycle could have cost the whole category.
The Approach
I turned market noise into member needs using Voice-of-Customer data, research-call recordings, and competitor teardowns — finding that therapists were booked for needs that didn't require an MD, that members were over-treated and over-charged, and that there was no continuity across physical and mental care. Three decisions mattered most: deliver care via certified coaches, not licensed clinicians (a ~60% cost reduction), won past heavy clinical pushback by adding a triage safety net that routes severe members to therapy; integrate tightly with chronic, primary, and urgent care for continuity (and bundling leverage); and hold ruthless scope discipline for a 9-month MVP.
The Solution
I led three engineering pods, design, and data; made scrappy MVP calls (e.g., a lightweight recording workaround) to protect the non-negotiable launch date; and personally trained the first cohort of coaches before go-live so I'd see workflow gaps firsthand. Features like coach-switching and in-app messaging were deliberately deferred to v2.
The Impact
Wait times dropped from 24 days to 48 hours; the client saved ~$19M in 10 months; product NPS hit 70 and CSAT 92% — both the highest at the company. Coaching became the bundling anchor behind ~$27M in ARR and a ~$100M pipeline lift. The lesson: the highest-leverage B2B2C decisions aren't about the product itself, but where it sits in the portfolio.