Launch HN: Mighty Health (YC S19) – Health coaching for people over 50
We’re James, Felipe, and Bernard, founders of Mighty Health (https://mightyhealth.com/gift), a personal coach that helps people over 50 become healthier through exercise, nutrition, and wellness.
With Father’s Day coming up, we thought some of you might be in the same position as we are, worrying about our parents and loved ones, wanting to do more to help out in these uncertain times.
A few years ago, my dad was rushed to the hospital for emergency heart surgery. Though he luckily survived, this was quite the wakeup call—he had to change his lifestyle habits immediately, or else he’d have to deal with painful, worsening chronic issues for the rest of his life.
These changes—exercise, nutrition, sleep, and reducing stress—are hard as is, but even more so for folks over 50. Most wellness apps are designed for motivated millennials, making them feel less relatable to older adults. They don’t take into account evolving health needs, joint issues, or technical limitations. Personal trainers and nutritionists are expensive long-term and often inaccessible. And because our older loved ones are at higher risk of COVID complications due to their age, they won’t be able to return to gyms for the foreseeable future.
That’s why we started Mighty Health. Everything is designed intentionally for people over 50:
1. Coaching: A personal coach keeping them motivated through SMS, providing a real human relationship
2. Exercise: At home workout videos that are easy on the joints, led by top-rated certified trainers
3. Nutrition: A personalized plan and grocery list designed by cardiologists for heart health
4. Reminders: Preventative health checkup notifications (based on their age and gender) and medication reminders
5. Celebrations: Texts to family members about milestones in the program so you can celebrate together
Our app is simple to set up and use, accommodating large and high contrast text. We chose SMS (through Twilio/Front) for coaching because it’s a more familiar medium, like texting with your family. We integrate with Apple Healthkit and Google Fit, as well as a number of cellular blood pressure cuffs and scales.
Dr. Bernard Chang, our medical co-founder, is the Vice Chair of Research at Columbia University’s Department of Emergency Medicine and leads our team of physicians, trainers, and coaches who develop our plans and content.
These plans are optimized for health goals specific to people over 50, such as losing weight to prevent chronic diseases, becoming stronger/decreasing joint pain, or reducing their risk of heart disease. On average, 85% of our users stick to our plans for at least 12 weeks and lose ~10 pounds.
We’d love for you to check out our website at https://mightyhealth.com/gift and are eager to hear your feedback and ideas below. Feel free to reach out directly at james@mightyhealth.com as well!
78 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadThank you for doing this.
We used a custom design by our great designer, meaning the rest of the landing page is CSS and HTML.
We used a few css libs, for the sake of helping us making it responsive, but that is all.
Just like economic gap that is growing in the US there is a major health gap growing too. For those with resources 50 is like the new 20 as many of men are now “juiced to the gils“ with testosterone provided by their doctors (I see it a lot in Miami, and I’m sure it’s proliferated in tech companies/cities too, just something about money and ego I think), then for the have nots it’s this age where many are just holding out to become Medicare eligible to begin treating their chronic conditions and they are only suffering and getting worse in the meantime.
One day, if I am ever financially independent (unlikely), I have resolved to dedicate my life to health/wellness for children, with a very specific goal of type 2 diabetes prevention. I really have no idea why, I never got T2D, but it breaks my heart especially in children. If you ever expand in this direction, I’d be the first to apply in any capacity.
Good luck!
I think there's an interesting angle to attract a wider audience here too – if your claim of losing ~10 pounds in 12 weeks is true, maybe there's an opportunity to be a "weight loss service" masquerading as a "wellness service." The difference being that well-being is a lifelong goal and weight loss is not.
We've also found that folks are generally overconfident but misinformed about nutrition (probably due to the overwhelming amount of information online and in the media) but anxious and risk-averse when it comes to trying new forms of exercise.
The one thing from your description that threw me off was " it’s a more familiar medium, like texting with your family."
I don't text with my family. Or with anyone, really. It is a running joke that the last way you'd want to get in touch with me is by text. My kids text me just to take bets on how many days will go by before I see it. Maybe I'm the exception... but I'd encourage you to re-visit whether that really is how people who are 50+ would prefer to communicate.
How would you see the minimal invasiveness of email aligning with such a call to action?
(hope this doesn't come across as an attack as it is not intended to. Just trying to understand how you see these two ideas as compatible since I see them as opposing and so wanting to know what angle I'm missing)
For me, texting is a path I won't walk. Email is a path I walk multiples time a day. Talk to me there, I'll see it, it will be injected into my life.
Additionally, would preventative health reminders be coordinated with the patient’s PCP in some way? For example, you wouldn’t want to tell a user to go get blood work for checking lipids when they just had it done the other day.
We'd love to integrate with provider medical records in the future, but sadly there are very few incentives in a fee-for-service environment. For now, members can just check things off or "postpone" if our cadence is off.