Therapists are key to addressing the growing demand for mental healthcare, but becoming a therapist is a lot of work. From graduate school and training to supervised clinical work and licensing, the process usually takes the better part of a decade.

‍

For therapists who want to serve clients and build a caseload outside of hospital systems and treatment centers, the best path is to go into private practice. This path offers independence, autonomy, and flexibility.

‍

However, it also involves becoming an entrepreneur and small business owner, requiring a set of business skills in which most therapists never receive formal training. Plainly speaking, therapists are taught nothing about running a business in grad school–and that’s a problem!

‍

Some of the most painful parts of becoming a new business owner are figuring out how to set up a new business, organize your finances, and pay yourself–with the scariest of all being taxes. How much do I owe? To what state? When? Why? Am I going to get in trouble with the IRS?

‍

Accounting is hard–and let’s be honest, boring–unless you're one of the big nerds like the folks on our diverse and growing team at Heard. Every hour that a therapist spends wrangling finances is an hour they’re not making money or doing work that fulfills and energizes them.

‍

Without a tailored solution, therapists are left to patch together costly (often predatory) lawyers and CPAs, DIY software and spreadsheets, missed write-offs, late fees, and penalties. It’s enough to leave anyone feeling stressed out.

‍

{{consult}}

Smart accounting software with a human touch 

At Heard, we solve the pain of managing the accounting back office for private practice therapists by providing entity formation, bookkeeping, payroll, and tax services.

‍

We’re obsessed with eliminating the barriers independent mental health professionals face becoming and remaining financially independent, which is why we’re so excited to announce a $10M Series A led by Footwork alongside co-investors Founders Co-Op, Act One Ventures, and a spectacular group of mission-driven angel investors.

‍

Why did we choose Footwork? They are real people. They are ready to do the work. They each have a personal connection to the problem. For the same reasons we chose to work with Founders Co-Op and Act One Ventures, we chose to work with Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi at Footwork. They are entrepreneurs first, and empathetic leaders who orient their work around their personal values and ethos.

‍

We’ll use this money to build a leadership team with robust scaling experience, focus on making our core software offering a delightful experience, and continue to expand the surface area of our product footprint in the financial back office.

How we got here

We launched in mid-2019 as a marketplace business that matched therapists with clients. We joke about it now as “Bumble for therapists” but quickly realized where that path led. There are good businesses here, but not the one that puts therapists at the center.

‍

We care deeply about improving the lives of the providers who have shaped ours, and after interviewing hundreds of therapists around the country, we heard the same story over and over about just how painful managing the accounting side of their business was. So we went to work on a solution, and in January of 2021, launched a new flavor of Heard.

‍

We believe my experience as an accountant, in building tax software, and as the partner of a therapist, combined with my co-founder Victoria’s engineering and product background, including time at a mental health startup, and both of our mental health journeys, leads to unique founder product market fit.

‍

We are passionate, mission-driven, and focused on making life easier for therapists, and will never compromise on those values for short-term gain. We’ve shown the grit to iterate through three pivots and we’ve surrounded ourselves with 20 other mission-driven team members working to improve the lives of therapists and their clients. We couldn’t be more excited for the road ahead.

‍

If you want to join us on this important mission and be a voice in the room, check out our open roles and get in touch.

‍

{{cta}}