Alternative medicine was valued at 82 billion USD last year and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 22%. After suffering from a chronic inflammatory disease, Tegan Bukowski realized the remedy to her condition wasn’t based on the medical system, but on holistic health. Determined to change how the world accesses preventative healthcare, Tegan and her co-founder Sky Meltzer created WellSet, a platform that just got backed by BlueCross BlueShield dedicated to helping everyone find a practitioner for their health and wellness needs.

Growing up on a boat in Puget Sound, Washington, Tegan Bukowski had an unconventional upbringing. After her physicist father taught her how to code in elementary school, Tegan knew she found a passion for building websites and creating things at a very early age. Her first entrepreneurial moment was around the time when MySpace and Facebook were peaking in popularity -- Tegan created a tutorial website for Neopets that became so popular, people started to recognize her on the street!

“I always loved thinking outside of the box. From the time when I was a little kid, I just always liked solving problems, and that is the way my brain works. I also like to create systems that can scale, which is why tech really interests me. It is not just solving a problem for a small group of people, but solving a problem for the whole world which is really exciting,” Tegan said.

During college at Wash U. in St.Louis, Tegan explored more of her passion for philanthropy and creativity while studying architecture and environmental philosophy. She started a nonprofit while in college that operated in 9 different countries, which focused on art therapy in combination with other types of things like English classes for kids affected by guerrilla warfare in Colombia, photojournalism classes for those in the slums in Kenya, etc. Tegan also started NASA’s first astronaut blog with a few astronauts, while they were at the space station.

“I was definitely not shy growing up. I’m a jack of all trades type of person --- I like to do a lot of different things,” said Tegan.

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THE AHA MOMENT

After graduating from Wash U., Tegan went to Yale for a master’s in architecture and ended up working for Zaha Hadid in London, her former professor from Yale. Working for a top architect was exhausting, but what was even more exhausting is that she was hospitalized over and over again for a chronic inflammatory condition that seemed to have no "cure". Doctors would put her on morphine and give her steroids and then send her on her way with no real solutions or guidance. Tegan's frustrations from not experiencing a more holistic approach from her docs became a lightbulb moment for her to find a better solution for all.

“I had to go down my own path to figure out what was going on with my health. Our medical system isn’t set up for people who have chronic conditions that aren’t easily solvable with a pill or surgery. So I was determined to figure out a path of preventative healing and figure out how to address all of these issues.” Tegan said.

After a culmination of events in her life, Tegan wanted to start a platform that allowed greater accessibility to holistic and preventative health. She partnered with co-founder Sky Meltzer in 2018 to build the platform and officially launched at the end of last summer in 2020.

“As a society, we have made some leaps and bounds to today, where everything I consider to be preventative medicine is a lot more accessible and understood by the general public. But, it has taken a long time for a company like WellSet to be supported by the general population in interest, education, understanding, and also western medicine’s acceptance of it. I think we are just getting to the point now where it is a little more mainstream,” Tegan said.

“It takes a lot to launch a double-sided marketplace because you have to onboard your supply and keep them happy for the years that it takes to build a platform. Then, you have to launch the client-side. It takes absolutely forever but we have been really good at getting supply on board. We’ve had about 20,000 practitioners apply to be on WellSet,” said Tegan.

WellSet created value from the very beginning. The platform started running programs like virtual group classes during COVID. A lot of those events or group classes were also in partnership with brands, and some were even formatted into different kinds of mini online festivals. WellSet also took care of the practitioners -- running a 10-week business accelerator for practitioners to help them run their business better.

“The big AHA moment for WellSet as a company was that we originally built it to be a marketplace, but we realized that the practitioners were actually the ones who really needed us. Because they don’t have the tools to run their business right now -- they are using so many different platforms like Venmo, Calendly, cash, etc., and it is a mess that has a trickle-down effect because the practitioners' businesses aren’t getting served and the clients aren’t converting because of the disorganization. So we actually call ourselves a SaaS-enabled marketplace, which is a software as a service business plus marketplace, meaning that we power their entire businesses from beginning to end. We call it a “business-in-a-box” solution.,” said Tegan.

Also, vetting practitioners was an important part of the business strategy as well. Currently, WellSet is focused on specific practitioner types that are approved by flex spending accounts like FSAs, HSAs and HRAs. As part of WellSet’s mission to help make preventative health more accessible, the company is also trying to get insurance programs and corporate wellness programs to cover more modalities. Some are covered like acupuncture and sometimes massage therapy, but for the most part, it is all out of pocket. WellSet just received investment from 1501 Health - an accelerator created by CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, Healthworx, and Lifebridge Health to work to solve this problem.

“There is a huge issue for access because not everyone can afford a $250 session with a practitioner, but they might need that. We are working to get more practitioner types to be covered by insurance and we are having a lot of great conversations right now with different insurance partners. WellSet Select is a verification feature where practitioners can opt into and go through a background check and submit references to be verified. About half of our practitioners have gone through this verification process. From a business perspective it is great for us because they are committed to using WellSet and keeping all of their credentials up to date for our clients,” said Tegan.

THE ADVICE

Tegan’s frustration with the healthcare system, combined with her inspiration to help others, sprinkled with her coding background, allowed her to create WellSet to be what it is today. Along the way, she learned many lessons related to different facets of being an entrepreneur:

Biggest Advice: “Make sure you love what you’re working on because you’re going to be working on it for a long time. Everyone thinks you can start a company and sell it right away, but that is not how it works. There is never an overnight success in the tech industry.”

On Self-Care: “I do yoga to stay sane. I also like journaling and I keep my calendar mapped out with what I need to do. I only take meetings 2 days a week and whenever I feel sluggish or in a really bad mood, I exercise to help me with my moods and productivity.”

On Fundraising: “Try to constantly figure out how to serve both sides of the market better, and how to make everything more accessible from a price standpoint. Investors really appreciate the community and strong brands that are created with very little capital.”

On Hiring: “Our first hires were community managers. I very much believe that any good company starts with a community, a movement.”

On Customers: “Ask a lot of people questions and see what they are interested in actually paying for. It doesn’t matter if they say they might pay for something - you have to get them to prove that they actually will.

Interested in finding a holistic health practitioner, or are you a holistic health practitioner interested in working with WellSet? Check out WellSet to learn more.

Photo courtesy of WellSet.

Written by Christina Chao.