Business sounds healthy over at two Toronto-based healthtech startups, Practice Better, and That Clean Life.
Practice Better has acquired That Clean Life. Practice Better is a practice-management software platform for health and wellness professionals, while That Clean Life offers nutrition-planning software for clinicians.
The acquisition will allow Practice Better customers to integrate nutrition planning and healthy eating into their workflows.
The acquisition allows Practice Better customers to integrate nutrition planning and healthy eating into the workflows of customers and care plans for clients.
Kim Walsh, CEO of Practice Better, called the acquisition a “huge step towards our strategic vision to become the all-in-one platform and community of choice for health and wellness professionals and puts us in a differentiated position to fuel our next phase of growth.”
Practice Better declined to disclose an exact sum, but told BetaKit the eight-figure USD deal closed on June 30. Five Elms Capital, an American firm out of Kansas City, led the transaction.
While Practice Better’s acquisition of That Clean Life enabled the former startup’s continued expansion, That Clean Life received a large infusion of funds with the current deal. After it was founded in 2014, That Clean Life was bootstrapped as a business-to-consumer product designed originally as a healthy eating product, according to Abigail Keeso, the startup’s co-founder.
It wasn’t long, however, before That Clean Life started to hear that professionals wanted more than a web-based app that would help people set up meal plans. So with her co-founder, partner Christoper Hopkins, Keeso pivoted to build That Clean Life Nutrition Planning Software for Health Professionals, which is designed to serve dieticians, doctors, nutritionists, and health coaches.
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Around that same time, in 2016, Keeso was introduced to Nathalie Garcia, the original co-founder and CEO of Practice Better. Keeso found they had a lot in common: both lived in Toronto, both were developing software for health and wellness professionals, and both were leading the startups with their partners.
The two startups decided to work together on cross-promotions, something they have done for the past eight years. “This acquisition made sense,” Keeso said. “[Both of our] customers were always asking for features the other startup already had.”
Practice Better claimed that it serves more than 10,000 customers in over 70 countries globally. Current CEO Kim Walsh said over 65 percent of its customer’s growth comes from word-of-mouth and referrals.
For its part, Keeso claimed That Clean Life has thousands of customers around the world.
After meeting the team over the last six months, Walsh became Practice Better’s new CEO. She joined Practice Better shortly after the startup announced the $27-million raise from Five Elms Capital. During her introductory experience with Practice Better, Walsh was aware of the then upcoming acquisition.
Garcia is taking on the role of chief strategy officer, where she will continue serving Practice Better’s customers, employees, partners, and investors while supporting and advising Walsh in her new role.
Walsh brings experience in health and wellness footwear, technology, and CRM software from HubSpot. She spent 11.5 years cultivating an extensive background in building businesses inside of HubSpot by partnering with product, partnerships, marketing, sales, operations, and strategy.
During her time there, she said she helped build the enterprise business from no revenue to$60 million, and helped bring the GTM Partnership organization from what was claimed as $1-to-300-million in revenue. Following her time at HubSpot, Walsh served as senior vice-president of Apollo, where she led all go-to-market functions and helped the company triple its revenue and increase its active users by four times after closing a $110-million Series C led by Sequoia Capital.
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Practice Better’s acquisition signals a new round of growth for the startup. Adding That Clean Life’s four full-time employees and six contracts to Practice Better’s employee roster brings the company to a total of 37 employees.
Keeso said integration is a key priority right out the gate. She wants to ensure Practice Better customers can build their nutrition plans right from within Practice Better, and that they can then access their nutrition plans right from the client portal.
The second priority is the release of a $30 per month starter plan. Up until now, only one plan has been available, but Keeso said they heard from a lot of customers, especially health professionals just starting their own businesses, that they didn’t need advanced features and wanted a more affordable product.
Looking ahead, Walsh said the startup is focusing on its mission, vision and strategy. Already, Practice Better has “upleveled” its staff. Without giving away details, Walsh said the startup intends to launch additional products, deepen integrations, and open up its services to allow others to build using Practice Better’s platform as well.
Featured image courtesy of That Clean Life.
