Bill Gianoukos is the co-founder and CEO of Goodpath, which emerged from stealth on Thursday to launch its digital integrative telehealth portal. Goodpath accelerated its launch timeline to support health care practitioners who are struggling to manage the chronic care needs of patients during the COVID-19 crisis.
Goodpath can step in as an appropriate alternative to office visits by offering patients plans which include virtual meetings with a dietician, personalized physical therapy, yoga classes, cognitive behavioral therapy, meditation, nutrition and symptom relief products. To help provide people with access to care during the pandemic, Goodpath has discounted its health care programs by 30 percent.
Gianoukos is no stranger to entrepreneurial pursuits and successful exits. He and his Goodpath cofounder Carl Nehme sold their augmented reality startup TrumpIt to Wayfair in 2016. He then spent two years running Wayfair’s mobile app team.
Prior to that, Gianoukos was a co-founder and chief product officer at HeyWire, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2014. Gianoukos has local roots and studied computer engineering at Tufts University, steps away from his hometown of Somerville.
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How would you describe your childhood?
Very typical first-generation US immigrant childhood. While I grew up super proud to be an American, I realized from an early age that my Greek heritage made me unique.
Do you remember your first startup idea? If so, what was it?
I do, it was when I was a junior at Tufts University. I built a device for blind people to navigate public areas. I won a biomedical engineering competition with that device at Tufts University and my professor encouraged me to get a patent on it. Unfortunately, someone had filed for a very similar pattern just a few months earlier.
Why drove you to attend Tufts University?
I always wanted to stay in the Boston area for university, and I felt Tufts had the best combination of engineering and liberal arts.
What’s changed most about Cambridge / Somerville / Medford in the past 20 years?
As a self professed foodie, the restaurant scene has gotten a ton better. I remember growing up at the end of my street was a restaurant called the Paddock, it was an old towne pub. Now one of the most exciting restaurants in the country, Sarma, is in that location.
What’s been most challenging in transitioning from VP of engineering to CEO?
Truthfully, I sometimes miss diving deep into complex engineering problems. I rely on my CTO and the rest of the engineering team to solve these problems now.
Besides the Wayfair e-commerce experience, what drove you to build an e-commerce company? Why focus on wellness?
My mom passed away a few years ago from stage 4 brain cancer, while going through her battle I realized there were many inefficiencies in the healthcare system that can be radically improved by technology. Also, the Wayfair experience taught me how impactful building a direct to consumer company can be at scale. That’s what led to Goodpath - we want to work around the broken healthcare system and provide quality healthcare directly to people via telehealth. Our mission is to “improve quality of life”.
Are you venture-backed and can you disclose how much funding you’ve received and from whom?
We are very fortunate to be backed by four great VCs. We raised $4 million in a seed round last June led by GFC (Global Founders Capital). We are also backed by Indicators Ventures, Switch Ventures and Blindspot Ventures.
What are the rules you’ve established before adding naturals products to Goodpath’s e-commerce wellness marketplace? (Research-backed, etc)
We have an entire medical team that not only approves all the natural products but all the services, devices and therapies on our site. Goodpath takes an integrative health approach to caring for illnesses, everything has been approved through clinical data and research.
Let me give you an example. Turmeric is an amazing supplement and flavoring agent. It can reduce pain and inflammation in the body, all naturally. There are many turmeric supplements available out there. But what the average person doesn’t know is that what really matters in making a turmeric supplement effective is the concentration of curcumin, the active component of turmeric. Our pharmacy team did weeks of research about the different combinations available and cross-checked against multiple peer-reviewed studies. That’s how we ended up with the specific supplement we sell. We believe it’s simply the best out there.
You recently published Goodpath’s Coronavirus Advice page. Can you explain this effort and what your company is doing to help people during this pandemic?
Goodpath is in a unique position to help right now. All of us, all across the country, are in a situation where people are scared, are searching for reliable information, and want to know how to care for themselves and their families.
Goodpath is a team of ecommerce experts and medical professionals across multiple disciplines, with a range of expertise. My co-founder and Chief Medical Advisor also works at the Harvard teaching hospital Massachusetts General Hospital and is there now assisting patients. Many of our team members are actually at the frontlines at their affiliated hospitals.
It's not just that our company is well-positioned to help - it felt wrong not to. When there is so much unreliable news out there, we wanted to provide a source of easy to understand, medically-reviewed information about coronavirus, what the effects of social distancing and stress can do to the body, how to get access to care while social distancing, and how to care for one's body directly.
So we put all our coronavirus insight into one place, in easy-to-read language. All our information - about coronavirus or not - comes from our medical team and just like all our medical work, is vetted against the CDC, the WHO, the New England Journal of Medicine, and other peer-reviewed publications. Information about coronavirus keeps changing regularly, so we keep monitoring those sources and update our information as the guidance changes.
One other thing. There is another way we are helping during the pandemic, beyond providing better information. We’ve discounted all our healthcare programs by 40%, so that patients can keep treating their sleep troubles, IBS, or back pain, even if they haven't been able to see their doctor.
What’s your favorite thing about Boston’s innovation community?
The Boston innovation community has a chip on their shoulders because the Bay Area and New York are considered stronger tech hubs. I think this really unites the community with everyone trying to support other Boston companies. At Goodpath, when we are deciding between partners, we always default to Boston companies. For example, we chose Klaviyo for our email marketing and Moltin for our e-commerce engine.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with the community?
We have started partnering with primary care facilities to provide assistance to patients that are suffering from common health conditions. Our integrative health approach has been proven to be superior to the traditional approach but it’s difficult to implement in the current healthcare system.
The feedback from both the primary care practices and their patients has been phenomenal.
Overall, we are excited that we are on a “good path” to fulfilling our company mission of improving quality of life.
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