Like most entrepreneurs, Nate Maingi had high hopes back in 2004. But his thoughts weren’t about creating the next great technology or buzziest product — they centered around the work he could do as a social worker.
“I came in with the spirit of, ‘I’m going to save the world,’” he said, who spent three years in the job. “Then I left because it wasn’t going to happen.”
He pivoted to tech entrepreneurship, starting and exiting two companies over a three-year span.
But his foray into startups brought him back to a familiar spot. When he launched an IT support company for small businesses, he was tasked with finding his client — a mental health practice — software to better manage the company’s workload.
“We were hired to find something but couldn’t,” Maingi said.
Fast forward to 2020, when Maingi and his partner, Amy Query, launched a pilot version of Therapy IQ. The company focuses solely on mental health practices, providing software in a B2B format to manage the operational side of the practice, namely with the complex electronic health records therapists often find challenging.
“A practice is not just clinical; it’s, ‘Is the bill getting paid? What’s the patient retention?’” Maingi said. “We took the clinical and married the financial side.”
Maingi, the company’s CEO, hopes the software can help therapists better manage the day-to-day paper workload.
“Think of it like a LEGO set; you go to build whatever workflows you want,” he said. “They don’t have to learn the software or adapt to it. They just build to it, which is not the case with most software, which requires so much training and onboarding.”
Ultimately, he hopes with the ease of the software comes less burnout from therapists over time. And despite his history with multiple exits, he plans to have Therapy IQ for the longer haul.
“This one, I’m looking for a long-term thing; I really think we can make an impact,” he said. “An opportunity can come up, sure, but we’re fully committed to the dream and doing the work we came to do.”
The company is off to a solid start since fully launching in June 2021. It has 12 employees, most of which are in Florida.
It recently closed a pre-seed round of $1.5 million and has launched a campaign for a $2 million seed round today. The new round of funding will be through the crowdfunding site Wefunder.
Maingi plans to use current and future funding to hire six to seven people and increase marketing efforts. He plans to expand beyond mental health facilities and include physicians’ offices, offering Spanish services and expanding to South America.
“I honestly hope others do this; it’s not about competition,” he said. “The situation being what it is right now ... at some point, you have to make a change.”
