Tyner proud of WeCounsel’s growth, focused on future growth
By Tom Ballard, Chief Alliance Officer, PYA
“It’s been a whirlwind experience,” Harrison Tyner, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of WeCounsel Solutions, LLC, says of the last six months that led-up to the announcement earlier this week about the completion of the start-up’s $3.5 million Series A round.
“We’re going to put the funds to good use,” he explains, adding, “We’re going to grow our business.”
We played telephone tag with Tyner for about 24 hours before we connected to chat about the progress and pivots the company has made since we first met him nearly three years ago.
“We graduated from the ‘GIGTANK’ in 2013, got an angel investment ($600,000), and released the private practice version of our software,” Tyner said, describing the company’s approach as B2B2C. “That’s what we went with for a year and a half.”
At the time we were first introduced to the company, it was focused on enabling patients to have better access to their therapists through the use of videoconferencing. Today, WeCounsel describes itself as a HIPAA-compliant, telehealth engagement platform with an emphasis in behavioral health. Its software serves as a turnkey virtual office for healthcare providers and businesses complete with a custom video conferencing experience.
“We were chugging along slowly on the private practice (side), and we picked-up a few proof of concept clients for the enterprise side,” Tyner explained in describing the period between late 2013 and early 2015.
In March of 2015, he said he had an awakening moment.
“We’ve got to make a change,” Tyner recalls concluding. “We were doing too much. We had to rollback to an SAS model only.”
WeCounsel made the proverbial pivot on April 7, 2015 with a full makeover of its website and a redo of its pricing and marketing strategies. The changes coincided with the company securing bridge capital that would give it a year to secure the Series A funding. That effort began in August, and the Series A closed less than two weeks ago.
“We came full circle almost a year to the date,” Tyner says proudly.
As far as the journey, he says simply, “There’s been a lot of learning.”
Tyner is proud of WeCounsel’s growth. There are now 12 employees and a client base of about 40 enterprise clients and hundreds of private practice ones.
“Our success is a testament to this entrepreneurial community,” he adds, calling-out CO.LAB, “GIGTANK,” and the Chattanooga/Hamilton County Business Development Center, now known as the INCubator, for their support.
