Holistic Health Kenshō Moves Into Telehealth

Bernard Mendez
Bernard Mendez is an editorial intern at dot.LA. He attends UCLA, where he is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics. Mendez was previously an editor at the Daily Bruin, the student newspaper at UCLA.
Holistic Health Kenshō Moves Into Telehealth

When Krista Berlincourt was dealing with health issues due to a hormonal imbalance, she wasn't getting the answers she wanted from her doctors.

Instead, she turned to holistic medicine, and the success of that experience led her to start Kenshō Health, a Los Angeles-based startup that offers a searchable referral service to help patients find holistic medicine healthcare providers.


Kenshō Health announced Thursday that it raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round that was led by KB Partners and included Company Ventures and Gaingels.

Kenshō Health co-founder Krista Berlincourt

Kenshō's platform matches patients to licensed holistic healthcare providers. It includes over 2,000 providers so far, who provide services ranging from acupuncture to therapy to chiropractic care.

Holistic medicine is a form of treatment often based on traditional medicine combined with modern medicine. Providers seek to find cures for long-term ailments by looking for the root cause of health problems, rather than finding short-term fixes.

The complementary and alternative medicine industry is projected to grow over 20% per year between 2021 and 2028, according to research from the Grandview Research CAGR.

Even so, Berlincourt said it is difficult to find providers because the majority of holistic healthcare providers are private practice and decentralized. Kenshō, she said, is like a phone book — a platform that doesn't otherwise exist in the holistic medicine industry.

"Today, [finding providers] is like walking down the street and hoping that you might meet someone," she said. "But with [Kenshō], you effectively have a matchmaker."

The platform also makes it easier for users to find providers that fit their lifestyles, a feature that became their focus after hearing from underrepresented users who wanted to find providers who had shared experiences with them. A transgender person of color, for example, would be able to use their platform to find a provider who is also a transgender person of color, she said.

"When you're trying to find a doctor, you're trying to find a person that resonates with you, who you trust to heal you," she said.

Berlincourt said several hundred thousand people have used Kenshō, which gets the bulk of its revenue from partnerships with healthcare plans and health care networks. It will begin charging booking fees and other transaction fees beginning in the fall and is planning to launch full-feature telehealth features to its platform around that time.

Berlincourt said that during the COVID-19 pandemic, people have begun to shift toward holistic healthcare, in combination with traditional medicine, to address their medical ailments. She is hoping that Kenshō will help accelerate this shift.

"We just have some old and entrenched systems that really need updating, and technology's a really easy way to do that," she said. "I think it's important for consumers and for the country that we move this mountain forward."

https://twitter.com/bernardhmendez
bernard@dot.la

Subscribe to our newsletter to catch every headline.

Cadence

LA Venture: Emilio Diez Barroso On Why Everyone Isn’t Cut Out To Be A Founder

Minnie Ingersoll
Minnie Ingersoll is a partner at TenOneTen and host of the LA Venture podcast. Prior to TenOneTen, Minnie was the COO and co-founder of $100M+ Shift.com, an online marketplace for used cars. Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google. Minnie studied Computer Science at Stanford and has an MBA from HBS. She recently moved back to L.A. after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California. In her space time, Minnie surfs baby waves and raises baby people.
LA Venture: Emilio Diez Barroso On Why Everyone Isn’t Cut Out To Be A Founder
Photo: provided by LAV

On this episode of the LA Venture podcast, Bold Capital Partner Emilio Diez Barroso talks about his entrepreneurial journey, what led him to become an investor and shares the qualities he looks for when investing in companies.

Bold Capital is a Series A fund that primarily focuses its investments in deep tech and biotech companies. But, like other funds, they make excuses to invest in other companies every now and then.

“We're always interested in things that have the potential to truly transform how things are done and uplift humanity,” he said.

In his experience with investing in early stage startups, Diez Barroso said “humility and vulnerability are assets and qualities in the journey, and you don’t feel like you have to have it all together with your investors.”

Which is why he looks for people who have “this capacity to take full responsibility for how they show up and they have a vision and they have the willingness to go and execute it.”

In addition to his work at Bold Capital, Diez Barroso also runs two family offices which provide him with a surplus of knowledge in the investment space.

“I wear two very different hats,” he said, “and I invest very differently when I'm investing for myself, when I'm investing for my family, and when I'm investing for LP’s.”

But before becoming an investor, Diez Barroso got his entrepreneurial start when he arrived in Los Angeles. He admits that he failed plenty of times because unlike in Mexico, where Diez Barroso grew up, he didn’t have the same access to the contacts or resources of his family business.

“I would say yes to every opportunity that came my way,” he said, “I had started or partnered with someone and co-founded and most of them I had no idea what I was doing, so most of them really failed and a few got lucky enough to succeed.”

After learning how these startups worked and investing his own capital into several companies, he soon realized he was a much better investor than an operator.

“I think we're not all cut out for the journey,” he said, “and I don't think we should all be cut out for that journey. I think that it takes a very different character to start something from scratch.”

Throughout his own journey, Diez Barroso acknowledged that he struggled with his own identity and need to feel like the smartest person in the room. Once he better understood his own motivations, Diez Barroso was able to see that he was chasing the next reward, the next carrot.

“It's fun to close the deal and it's fun to grow the business,” Diez Barroso said. “But what I hadn't been in contact with is how much of my fuel was derived from trying to outrun the idea of not feeling good enough.”

Of course, he’s not alone. “I see a lot of entrepreneurs, activists all across fields and I can tell the difference when they're running from this fuel that is sort of very quick burning because there is an anxiety that oftentimes makes us narrow minded,” Diez Barroso said. “We are so attached to what we think should happen that we leave very little space for the possibilities.”

dot.LA Reporter Decerry Donato contributed to this post.

Click the link above to hear the full episode, and subscribe to LA Venture on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

This podcast is produced by L.A. Venture. The views and opinions expressed in the show are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of dot.LA or its newsroom.

Xos Receives Multi-Million Dollar Order for Armored EVs

David Shultz

David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.

Xos Receives Multi-Million Dollar Order for Armored EVs
Xos/Loomis
The United States transportation sector is rapidly adopting electric vehicle technologies at every level. From aircrafts, to tractor trailers, to sedans and bicycles, no means of locomotion is off limits…even armored trucks.
Read moreShow less
RELATEDEDITOR'S PICKS
LA TECH JOBS
interchangeLA
Trending