Sophia, the MIT-born startup that helped people find the right therapists, officially closed in November 2018, according to a company announcement on its website. The page now redirects visitors to similar services.
The Techstars and MIT Delta V alum facilitated these matches between patients with therapists by giving both parties detailed questionnaires on different aspects like needs, logistics, insurance, personality types and treatment styles.
The startup showed a lot of promise and garnered good interest, said co-founder and founding CEO Eva Breitenbach. Then what went wrong?
“Insurance is a nightmare in this space,” she explained.
Breitenbach added that the Sophia team didn’t want to prioritize the matching based on insurance, but on other factors like need and treatment style. This, however, created its own complications for the company.
“It was logistically complicated; it felt problematic to provide a service that was not accessible to a large chunk of people,” said Breitenbach. “We were caught between a rock and a hard place.”
She pointed out that insurance has been a barrier to traditional in-person therapy. Although there are companies circumventing this by providing online therapy, Sophia decided to not go down that route.
Breitenbach, who is now a product manager at Boston-based meditation and wellness platform 10% Happier, sees a lot of promise in therapy being provided as part of employee assistance programs.
“That model has a lot of promise and we might see some success,” she added.
She stepped away from the company in June 2018 while her co-founders, Chethan Jhaveri and Bowen Lu kept the operation running until funds ran out. The employees were let go in November and the company closed its offices around the same time.
