In the fourth and final installment of our “Candid Through Crisis” Q&A series, BehaVR founder and CEO, Aaron Gani shares how his company has pivoted during the pandemic, and what opportunities the current climate presents for both him and other entrepreneurs.
What are the challenges that companies could be facing during times like this and how can your company offer support?
BehaVR provides digital wellness solutions to help people better manage pain, actively combat stress, and stay on track with addiction recovery. These were areas of significant unmet need before COVID-19, and now these needs are particularly acute. We’ve modified our stress program to include new content specific to “Tackling Uncertainty and Boosting Immunity”, and we’re making this program available through the end of the summer to clinical organizations at a 95% discounted price. We’re also accelerating our work to offer all our programs in-home, so patients can access all our content in the comfort and safety of their homes, and still be connected with the clinicians monitoring their progress via telehealth.
How are you managing a remote team?
We are all working remotely, and have increased our usage of Zoom conferencing. However, we were already split across Kentucky and Nashville pre-COVID, and already utilized G-Suite, Slack, Zoom and other tools, and pretty much managed ourselves and our work virtually. So, the big adjustment has been not seeing people in the office. We had our first virtual Happy Hour via Zoom experience (at the suggestion of another Endeavor company) – it was fun!
What areas do you predict entrepreneurship will flourish following the pandemic?
Anything and everything digital. Hopefully the last major holdout against digital transformation (our healthcare system) will finally increase the pace of re-invention and shift towards a truly consumer-centric value chain. That’s what BehaVR is working to help enable.
What have you learned during this experience that makes you a better entrepreneur?
Focus on value creation, always. Then focus on it some more. When life gets turned upside down, people are only going to be interested in things that really create value, that they really feel they NEED.
How can the community support you?
BehaVR is fortunate to have great partners and investors, including some new investors. If I had a dream, it would be that collaborators in the healthcare system would kick up their pace of innovation several notches. We’ve seen how quickly we can all adapt in a crisis. Now we need to act with more urgency to re-tool and re-orient the whole system for value creation and consumer-centricity, even as the immediate crisis subsides.
