From AA to founding an Addiction Recovery Startup: Robin McIntosh from Workit Health

Robin McIntosh is a designer, author and social impact entrepreneur. She has founded multiple companies, and has worked across startups, brands, and business communities over the past decade, with a focus on the arts, health and wellness. Currently, she serves as co-founder and co-CEO of Workit Health, where she and her co-founder Lisa McLaughlin develop digital therapeutic programs and precision prevention models for addiction recovery and wellness. Workit provides home-based detox and rehab services and guides individuals from high-risk substance use to a healthy thriving lifestyle through a 90-day program of weekly interactive lessons, tailored content, and personalized interactions with coaches and clinicians. Its evidence-based program offers online and offline treatment for all three addiction stages: prevention, treatment and detox.

It’s safe to say that Robin was born an entrepreneur

She was raised by parents who were entrepreneurs, and who encouraged the family to “be your own boss” and to “always bet on yourself.” While in most homes, children are encouraged to seek steady-income through a job, Robin’s parents taught her that by “betting on herself” would eventually pay off best. As a result, her father encouraged her to take advantage of all opportunities that came her way. Robin took this to heart in college and grad school, when she got connected to the startup world. In fact, Siren, a design firm she co-founded prior to Workit Health, came about from accepting an offer to design a brochure for a project.

Personal experience inspired Workit Health

At Siren, they partnered with multiple incubators, including Rock Health, to help some early stage digital health companies optimize design processes and products. In that role, Robin engaged with cutting-edge technologies to address diabetes, early detection of prostate cancer, wearable devices, and many more. When Robin concluded her design activities at the end of the day, she would attend Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings.

“There was not one day that went by that I did not think about addiction,” she reflects.

“These AA meetings still had the same look from the 1930s, with the basement room and the bad coffee.”

And while Robin has fond memories of the charm, love and warmth of this environment, she could help but notice the sheer amount of people that would relapse or worse, people trying to get into treatment but could not do so.

In 2015, Robin had some extra time on her plate, and invited Lisa, her now co-founder and co-CEO whom she had met through AA, to brainstorm how to leverage technology to help folks struggling with addiction.

They focused on why 9 out of 10 Americans diagnosed with substance use disorders never receive treatment. Workit Health was born to tackle affordability and access to recovery and treatment. Through a digital treatment intervention with a gold-standard holistic approach and evidence-based practices, they provide insurance-covered and accessible treatment to individuals struggling with substance use around the country.

“The problem became too burning to keep going on with Siren and pretend like this inequity is OK. So I left I Siren, and focused all my energies on building WorkIt Health.”

Off-script innovation

Robin and Lisa are not only co-founders, but they are also co-CEOs. And while this enrages most investors who are quick to jump to conclusions about two women trying to make ultimate decisions for the company together, it has worked out well for them. In fact, Robin encourages us to think outside the box of the many articles about why Co-CEOs don’t work (written by men) that you can find with a quick Google search.

“If these recommendations worked so well, the world would not be where it is today. In this f* crisis. We are mimicking the industrial revolution, Ford Assembly line way of doing things with the big CEO at the top.”

“We believe that consensus drives the best innovation.”

It was not only in their leadership that Workit Health stood out from other startups. Robin also recounts how they alway kept a more conservative cash flow than peer companies. Based on her family’s saying to “never borrow from the future,” Robin knew “it was not guaranteed that they could raise money until the end of times.”

We have patients, we have customers and health plans we work with. To leave them high and dry would be a disaster for us and to the people receiving the services at the end of the line.”

Looking back, she is grateful for this approach.

Since our conversation, Workit Health has raised $118M in a Series C funding led by Insight Partners, with participation of CVS Health Ventures, FirstMark Capital, BCBS Venture Fund, and 3L Capital.

Interested in substance use recovery? Following an authentic entrepreneurial journey? Check out Spotlight on Women in Healthcare Ventures on Spotify and Anchor!

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Story written by Luiza Perez , Nikita Gupta, Anna Kroner, Amy Chen.