From startup to scaleup: Lavender Psychiatry

Pritma Dhillon-Chattha, DNP, MHA, RN

After 45 days of intense planning and hustle, Lavender was launched by Brighid and I (Pritma) on May 4, 2020. It was an exciting yet anticlimactic (think ‘crickets’) moment, not atypical for startups. The work was only just beginning as we closed the month off with 3 completed appointments - a somber start to our startup journey.

Lavender is a nurse-led online psychiatry and therapy office founded to make mental health care more accessible and affordable with a combined medication management and therapy approach. Launching Lavender was very scary and new for us. Entrepreneurship is often a lonely and risky road - one less travelled by nurses. We didn’t quite know the process and just started a to-do list, with the mindset that ‘we’re building the plane as we fly it.’ In doing so, we’ve had to adjust our expectations and become comfortable with making the best decisions with little information at hand. Following the advice of our many mentors who launched businesses before us, we knew we had to launch quickly and thus our processes would be far from perfect. The most important thing in entrepreneurship LAUNCH the product/service as fast as possible and fail quickly because the first launch is rarely ever successful. The key is to iterate fast and keep testing markets with imperfect versions of your product until you achieve ‘product-market-fit’ - preferably before investing a great deal of time and money. 

There is a long list of nurse entrepreneurs, innovators and mentors who supported our growth in many ways. We took every opportunity to network with anyone willing to meet with us, and shared our ideas freely. In our experience, sharing your ideas with as many people as possible is more important and will lead to greater success, than keeping them close to your chest in fear that someone may steal them. The truth is, passion and determination breed success and it’s unlikely that anyone you meet will have the same passion for your product - or opportunity to see it through - as you will.

Six months after launching, we realized we couldn’t keep up with demand and the systems we initially set up were unsustainable as we scaled. We faced funding challenges that stunted our month over month growth, so we began researching funding options - another thing we weren’t very familiar with. Among the options we discussed were investor funding, business loans, and grants. We met with many banks and investors to learn about the process, benefits and implications of each funding source. In parallel, we came across the ANA Innovation grant and decided we had nothing to lose by applying. We were beyond excited to receive that call from Oriana Beaudet, Vice President of Nursing Innovation, telling us we had won! As a bootstrapped, self-funded startup, our growth could not have been possible without the American Nurses Association Innovation Award, which allowed us to build scalable processes and launch into new states. The funding ecosystem is super complex and receiving the grant also allowed us to continue researching other sources to make more informed decisions on how and when to raise additional capital with the right partners. 

Fast forward one year, and Lavender is 30 employees strong, with over 1000 visits per month and steadily growing by double digit percentage points month over month. As a bootstrapped, self-funded startup, this could not have been possible without the American Nurses Association Innovation Award!

As we reflect on the past 18 months, we are in awe of what has been created by team Lavender, and are so privileged to be working with amazing staff and clients. It all started from a small idea and a few risks. Nurses are natural innovators, and we need your ideas to solve healthcare’s problems - so if you have an idea, the ANA Innovation Award should be your first step - like us, you have nothing to lose but much to gain! 

October 2021