The Healthy Enterprise

In this episode of The Healthy Enterprise, host Heath speaks with Ataes Aggarwal, co-founder of Moodr Health, an AI-driven platform improving behavioral health through remote monitoring. They discuss Moodr’s origins, its evolution from perinatal mental health to broader applications, and the ethical use of AI in healthcare. Ataes shares lessons on scaling a health tech startup, building motivated and independent teams, and navigating challenges unique to communities like Appalachia. The conversation also touches on marketing’s role in brand growth, the power of partnerships, and Ataes’ core advice: keep things simple and stay persistent.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Moodr Health and Its Mission
03:12 The Genesis of Moodr Health
06:09 The Role of Data in Behavioral Health
08:46 Building Relationships Through Technology
12:07 Ethical AI in Healthcare
15:00 Expanding Focus: From Perinatal to Broader Mental Health
18:06 Challenges and Growth in Business
21:04 Real-World Impact and Case Studies
24:02 Scalability and Future Directions
28:15 Motivation and Team Dynamics
32:24 Marketing and Brand Development
37:30 Scaling Challenges and Team Independence
40:46 Community Impact and Healthcare Challenges
45:05 Collaborations and Partnerships
48:04 Final Thoughts and Advice

Guest Information:
  • Guest's Name: Ataes Aggarwal
  • Guest's Title/Position:  Co-Founder
  • Guest's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ataes/
  • Company / Affiliation: Moodr Health  https://moodrhealth.com/
  • Guest's Bio: Ataes Aggarwal is the co-founder of Moodr Health, a company empowering healthcare organizations to build genuine, scalable connections with their patients through AI-driven, ethical technology. A Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering graduate, Ataes combines technical expertise with empathy to advance behavioral health. He champions responsible AI, emphasizing privacy, fairness, and respect, and believes success comes from simplicity, perseverance, and creating real impact in people’s lives.

Takeaways:
  • Moodr Health aims to stop silent suffering in behavioral health.
  • The platform started with a psychiatrist using Fitbits for patient data.
  • Data collection in mental health can enhance treatment efficacy.
  • Building relationships through technology is key to patient care.
  • Ethical AI is crucial in healthcare applications.
  • Moodr Health is expanding its focus beyond perinatal mental health.
  • The company is passionate about serving veterans and community health.
  • Scalability is a challenge but the technology is designed for growth.
  • Real-time data can improve patient-provider communication.
  • The team is dedicated to making a meaningful impact in healthcare. Motivation stems from having a clear vision and a supportive team.
  • A strong team is essential for navigating the challenges of a startup.
  • Continuous learning is crucial, often through traditional methods like textbooks.
  • Marketing is a vital component of a startup's success.
  • Founders often have a deep connection to their brand and its story.
  • Building independence within teams is key to scaling effectively.
  • Healthcare challenges in Appalachia require innovative solutions.
  • Collaborations with organizations can enhance service delivery.
  • Every detail matters when serving patients and customers.
  • Simplicity in communication and strategy is difficult but essential.




Creators and Guests

Host
Heath Fletcher
With over 30 years in creative marketing and visual storytelling, I’ve built a career on turning ideas into impact. From brand transformation to media production, podcast development, and outreach strategies, I craft compelling narratives that don’t just capture attention—they accelerate growth and drive measurable results.
Guest
Ataes Aggarwal
Ataes Aggarwal is the co-founder of Moodr Health, a company empowering healthcare organizations to build genuine, scalable connections with their patients through AI-driven, ethical technology. A Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering graduate, Ataes combines technical expertise with empathy to advance behavioral health. He champions responsible AI, emphasizing privacy, fairness, and respect, and believes success comes from simplicity, perseverance, and creating real impact in people’s lives.
Producer
Meghna Deshraj
Meghna Deshraj is the CEO and Founder of Bullzeye Growth Partners, where she partners with eCommerce brands, healthcare institutions, and small businesses to scale profitably without outside funding. Under her leadership, Bullzeye has driven over $580M in annual growth and more than $1B in collective direct revenue for its clients. With a background spanning corporate strategy, IT, finance, and process optimization, Meghna brings a unique blend of data-driven marketing expertise and operational leadership. A Certified Six Sigma Black Belt with deep experience in program management and business transformation, she has successfully led global teams, large-scale integrations, and organizational change initiatives. Her superpower lies in marketing strategy and consulting, fueled by a passion for helping businesses grow through innovation, efficiency, and strong client relationships.

What is The Healthy Enterprise?

Join host Heath Fletcher on The Healthy Enterprise as he explores how healthcare leaders and innovators are transforming the industry from the inside out. Whether you’re a provider, tech entrepreneur, marketing strategist, or industry executive, these conversations deliver actionable strategies, innovative solutions, and human-centered insights to help you grow, lead, and make a lasting impact.

Created and produced by Bullzeye Growth Partners — let’s make something great together.

Heath Fletcher (00:13)
Hey there, welcome to the Healthy Enterprise podcast. Thank you for joining me again today. If this is your return visit and if it's your first time, welcome. I hope you enjoy today's episode. I'm going to be talking with Ataes Aggarwal He's the co-founder of Moodr Health. It's a first of a kind platform that's rethinking how we support behavior health and chronic conditions using AI and remote monitoring. Ataes is a John Hopkins trained biomedical engineer, an advocate for ethical AI and a big believer.

in building tech that actually helps people. He's also, as he puts it, an Appalachian mid-tech pioneer and yes, a major Ten Lasso fan. We will learn how Moodr Health is helping care teams connect with people earlier, more personally and more effectively using smart data and a whole lot of hardware. So let's get into it.

Ateez, thank you so much for joining me today on this episode. I'm looking forward to hearing about your professional journey and what you're doing at Moodr. So why don't you ⁓ start off with doing an introduction of yourself and welcome.

Ataes Aggarwal (01:24)
Heath, thank you so much for having me. It's a true pleasure to be on the podcast with you. Love the work that you all are doing. I'm grateful for all the content and great people you've already been able to host and to be kind of part of that and share some of my perspective too. ⁓ My name is Ataes Aggarwal I'm from Morgantown, West Virginia, which is about an hour and a half away from Pittsburgh as we were chatting about just earlier. Recently graduated.

from Johns Hopkins University with my master's and bachelor's there in biomedical engineering. So I had a chance to live in Baltimore for ⁓ the better part of four years there. In my time, I've had a chance to build, I feel like a lot of really great things in the kind of technology, digital health and AI ⁓ field in the past even 10 years. ⁓ But I feel like a lot of those things haven't been quite as meaningful nor impactful as the work that I've seen with ⁓ Moodr Health, which

I think we'll probably spend the majority of our conversation maybe talking about today. But yeah, I'm a co-founder of Mootr Health. It's again in that digital health space. It's B2B SaaS and I'm excited to have the chance to talk about that along with all things related to maybe what I've learned while being within the space and ⁓ maybe what I'm anticipating with within healthcare and ⁓ healthcare technology. So thanks for having me.

Heath Fletcher (02:46)
Yeah, great to have you here. And I think it sounds like you've already done more in the last 10 years than some of us achieve in about 30 or 40 years, but good for you. I'm excited to hear how you ended up involved with Moodr Health or where the idea came from. So let's start there. Where did the idea for this come from and what was it that you were trying to address with this?

Ataes Aggarwal (03:12)
Absolutely. So the idea of Moodr Health really actually predates my involvement with Moodr. Although I'll say where it started is certainly not where it's pivoted to and where it is now, which ⁓ did kind of include my involvement. started about five years ago, maybe five and a half years ago now at this point in the southern part of the state of West Virginia. ⁓ And there was a brilliant psychiatrist in the southern part of the state.

who was doing something out of the goodness of her heart that was very special. She was handing out these Fitbits that she was buying from Walmart to a smaller cohort of her patients with bipolar disorder. So ⁓ she was able to track when they had different episodes of, know, kind of manic or other types of things that she was interested in based on more objective data that she was seeing outside of those visits within kind of her clinic. So...

know, activity, these things were highly, highly valuable for her. Aside from just, you know, every three months or so, a patient come in and sharing, yeah, I think I've been doing okay. And at these points since you last saw me, and they just don't have the full recollection of all the things that have happened and kind of the change of course that can really help determine, you know, for example, efficacy of a particular, you know, drug that they might have just started.

⁓ So that was a really kind of incredible start. And there was a really brilliant team of people that were working toward, you know, how can we just essentially take the data from something like a Fitbit and be able to surface that to, you know, maybe a patient, maybe a physician, maybe any sort of clinician for that matter. ⁓ But for a number of reasons, that project kind of got sidelined. ⁓ And then I came into the fray about

Two and a half years later, that kind of idea wasn't necessarily formally a startup at that point or a company. It was just kind of a raw idea. But the core of it again was taking objective data in a primarily subjective space, which is again, of reporting, self-reporting and mental health as a whole. ⁓ So that was where it's, yeah, go ahead, please.

Heath Fletcher (05:29)
I was going say, now some people might be going, well how much data can you actually collect from a fifth bit and what data would be of use in pertaining to that circumstance?

Ataes Aggarwal (05:39)
Right. Well, I think ⁓ for them at the time, I mean, there's a whole slew of data that you can collect. And obviously it's a balance between, you know, do we surface all of that data or do we just kind of share the most salient points that we're collecting? So ⁓ for them at that time, I think it was just primarily the number of hours slept, quality of sleep, and then really the number of steps. So that's something like a proxy for activity. You could say those number of steps, but those were the two things that were at least

clinically validated enough that it was meaningful to extract those pieces of data from the Fitbit.

Heath Fletcher (06:15)
Right. then of course now you get a lot more data from it now than you did five years ago, for example. thanks for clarifying that. Yeah.

Ataes Aggarwal (06:24)
Of course, course. But yeah, mean, and there's a whole bunch of other wearables that are out there now. You've got your loop, you've got your aura ring and different things like that. So it's awesome that we're able to track from a bunch of different angles. it is truly a quickly evolving space. that problem space of objective data in a very subjective area, that's kind of where it started two and a half years ago, beginning of 2023.

⁓ myself and my co-founder Aria Satish, ⁓ really wonderful guy. I met him also at Johns Hopkins. And while my background is more technical, his is more on the public health side of things. And, how can we actually bring something to fruition and have an impact on, on real people? So it's, it's been wonderful to work with both a close friend and also someone who's, who's got a great mind for this sort of thing. But, ⁓ in any case, the next layer that we added on and kind of the.

evolution of the problems that we were trying to solve ⁓ went toward, now that we have this data, how can we make these insights actionable and actually meaningful to essentially engage someone proactively? ⁓ my first reaction was, okay, let me just try to build something for it coming from this kind of engineering background. But through some great conversations with the early team, we decided really the best

best way to go about approaching this is let's talk to a potential customer first. ⁓ someone in the community that might actually be using something like this in the future. And then from there we can build around it. ⁓ so essentially kind of a consulting approach to get started. ⁓ and that's where we met Jennifer Bender. ⁓ and she was a perinatal nurse navigator here in my hometown of Morgantown, West Virginia. She was also doing something very, very special. She was.

essentially doing proactive text outreach to about a thousand patients that she had. So it wasn't just the patients that had screened high. It was all patients that were in that pregnancy and postpartum period ⁓ that she was building a real relationship and rapport with. ⁓ But she was doing that with kind of a personal cell phone and navigating it across 14 different spreadsheets. So it was super difficult.

Heath Fletcher (08:44)
Yeah, it's different annual.

Ataes Aggarwal (08:46)
Really manual and there's no one else in the world that could really do the type of work that Jennifer, we felt like Jennifer was doing. So what we did was we packaged up that kind of objective data piece with the amazing kind of outreach and proactive outreach idea that Jennifer had, and we put it into one platform. And Jennifer was the first user of it. And the goal really was to have everyone kind of be able to do the type of work that.

that Jennifer has done and continues to do and really to stop the silent suffering. So that's been the core of it, right? Kind of that behavioral health and chronic health condition basis, trying to stop the silent suffering of people afflicted in many different ways. And ⁓ the challenges, technical challenges that we've been tackling have certainly evolved even from, again, that objective data and subjective space from

essentially having some sort of CRM on top of ⁓ a remote patient monitoring system. It's continued to evolve and it's been very exciting since then.

Heath Fletcher (09:57)
very cool. And so that first sort of that first test project with Jennifer, Jennifer, right? you, you found, so the results of that were obviously successful and really what you did was you pulled the data and then where is it? You were able to organize it in a way that not only did it streamline her, her, ⁓ work, ⁓ flow, but also

was able to give her more analyzed results, is that right? Leverages AI, right?

Ataes Aggarwal (10:30)
Absolutely. I think it's

a little bit of AI. think we're going to have more more AI in it and we're going to have different approaches to AI than potentially other digital health companies that are trying to utilize AI. But yes, there is a good balance of AI in human and the loop, we like to think.

Heath Fletcher (10:50)
So how did it go from there? From there, that was your of tough subject. then how did you roll it out? mean, because now you had a business. Now you had something that, OK, this worked. She's a perfect example of the type of person or the type of organization that we need to work with. So how did you roll that out then? Now you're in business. So you're not just ⁓ coming up with an idea and proving that it'll work. You're actually now going into business.

Was that the next phase then?

Ataes Aggarwal (11:21)
Yeah, that was absolutely the next phase. We realized we had something, some sort of lightning in a bottle. And that was, again, it wasn't just, okay, we're able to make her process more efficient. It was, this is kind of, cause there's a lot of digital health companies that are really focused on, okay, how do we use AI for, ⁓ you know, efficiency purposes? And that's fantastic. And that's part of what we're doing. But it's also, how can we use AI to build a strong relationship between

provider and someone receiving care. ⁓ So that was kind of the idea once we realized that that was the real impact that we were making. ⁓ We tried to find other people that were, you know, as close to Jennifer as possible and, you know, try to work with them too.

Heath Fletcher (12:07)
And I think I read about you that you're actually an expert in effective and ethical AI usage, right?

Ataes Aggarwal (12:15)
⁓ I've published just a, part of a couple of publications for AI and, know, to be honest, when I, when I talk about the 10 years of building things, a lot of, lot of that has been related to artificial intelligence and machine learning and whatnot. So I've certainly been, been passionate about it. ⁓ you know, but expertise, I think in the space of AI is probably a title that's forever evolving. An expert of, you know, five years ago in AI or ML is maybe not an expert.

anymore if they're not keeping up. ⁓ But yes, I like to try to keep up and try to be as much of an expert as possible. I think it's pretty important in this day and age.

Heath Fletcher (12:54)
Yeah, it is. mean, it's being adopted in almost everything. Are you, ⁓ lack of a better word, cautious about it? Are you sort of, ⁓ I don't know, ⁓ probably thoughtfully cautious about it? Like you want to be sure that it's being used like I had read ethically. But are you finding that it's... ⁓

people are maybe rushing into it sometimes and maybe not taking the steps necessary to care for that efficacy.

Ataes Aggarwal (13:32)
Yeah, I think that's a fantastic question. And it really depends on the use case that we're looking at. In our case, I feel like ⁓ we're really able to measure that based on the way that the customers that are using the platform, how they've seen results. And I think a lot of companies that are using AI that aren't seeing the results and maybe conceptually it's fantastic, but it's just not actually executing the way that you're expecting it to, ⁓ they ultimately

Heath Fletcher (13:37)
Yeah, of course.

Ataes Aggarwal (14:01)
they don't work out. you can call that quote unquote death by pilot big thing in AI and digital health right now. But it's all about the efficacy. It's about proving that it actually works. again, think being cautious is probably a good thing, but at the same time, also feel like people aren't really recognizing the potential of AI in this day and age. think there's been a lot of incredible

innovations and tools that we've been able to build as, ⁓ you know, kind of humanity from, you know, the computer to the internet and AI is, you know, the next kind of phase of that. I like to think, but it's also got a really unique opportunity to evolve past just simply a tool that humans can use. It can essentially be, ⁓ you know, as crazy as it sounds, kind of a separate intelligence, a co-pilot, if you will, that can work alongside, you know, the minds of

of humans. I think it's really interesting. I don't think that's something that people are talking about enough. ⁓ Even within the highly sophisticated and fast-paced startup world, think we're still thinking about AI as a tool where it's really, there's going to be a larger question as AI becomes more more advanced of how do we coexist essentially with a separate intelligence that's like that. ⁓

Yeah, I think there's a lot to be super cautious about when it comes to that. I think it's going to be needed to, you know, learn how to coexist and learn how to have a proper balance of, you know, a human in the loop and AI and, how can we, can, you know, best support AI and AI best support humans and what that'll look like. That's a very large question that's out there.

Heath Fletcher (15:51)
I mean, it's early days. mean, everyone, we're all pioneers in the, world of AI right now. It's like, uh, you know, maybe back, maybe when they first brought out the radio, you know, and people were like, what is this? You know, it's like, wow, how can we implement this into our everyday life? So, you know, uh, a hundred years from now, uh, it'll look a lot different than it does today, but we're all kind of the pioneers in that aspect, but the technology and the

Ataes Aggarwal (15:53)
That's right.

Heath Fletcher (16:20)
The innovation behind it is growing constantly, isn't it? So you guys were, now you were kind of more quite focused on ⁓ areas of mental health, right? And is that still the case? That is kind of the niche area that you are focused on?

Ataes Aggarwal (16:25)
Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I think it was even more niche than that when we had first started, right? We were focused on perinatal mental health. that's mental health for pregnancy and then within one year postpartum. I think that's very good. ⁓ But we always knew, I think from the start, as we developed the architecture out for the platform initially, this can most certainly find a lot of value and even defensibility and differentiation in being

Heath Fletcher (16:49)
Right.

Ataes Aggarwal (17:09)
something that can be used in a whole slew of other conditions. ⁓ So we've seen a little bit of expansion out to different types of conditions, right? So substance use disorder is one of them that we're also really hopeful and focused on and different types of patients and populations too. ⁓ I think being able to serve veterans is something we're super passionate about as well as supporting employer and employee health and wellness and student health and wellness too.

been a lot of evolutions and the conditions that we're looking to solve, the populations we're looking to support, along with the types of organizations ⁓ in our kind of B2B work that we're doing, not just health systems, not even just kind of insurance providers, but also these more community-based organizations that have their boots to the ground and work with people every single day. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (18:04)
So now, being involved with the business side of things with Moodr Health, what aspect of the business do you like playing around

Ataes Aggarwal (18:17)
⁓ I love every part of it. I think I, ⁓ myself and, you know, it's, it's a relatively small team. Everyone really gets their, their hands dirty and virtually every aspect of the business. But I'd say if I had to pick something to be my favorite, it would be the things that are closest to feeling the impact that we're making. ⁓ and that's of course, the, the work directly with implementations directly with customers who work directly.

patients. ⁓ So I enjoy that, especially the most, you know, being able to have something that we're building or have some sort of conversation and insight with a, with a customer and being able to see that translated to real impacted. That's really what I think gets myself and the rest of the team up in the morning every day.

Heath Fletcher (19:06)
Is there a case study or sort of an example that you're thinking of that you can share that would give us an idea of ⁓ what that outcome would look like and how an individual would benefit from this?

Ataes Aggarwal (19:22)
Yeah, absolutely. So I think this is a way, right, at its core to be able to connect a provider and a patient or member or student, ⁓ employee, veteran, ⁓ connect them better with, again, whoever is providing that care. So when we're kind of in maybe like an office hour type of call, learning from the customers and their implementation of the product, you know, we've heard a lot of different types of stories about

I've been trying to get in contact with this person through X, Y, and Z modalities or X, and Z different types of strategies and approaches, ⁓ but it didn't work. And then here comes Mootr. It's something that's kind of allowing you to be intelligent about the way that you're building this relationship and rapport and a health and wellness kind of focus. ⁓ And now they're kind of talking to us about ⁓ how there's a patient

that's maybe on an ED bed and how they were able to talk them through that entire situation while just kind of over text in a way that they've really never been able to reach someone before. kind of before we were kind of starting to record, I know we mentioned the people that go into healthcare and these spaces of ⁓ providing care to others, they do it because they're wonderful people. And that's kind of the basis of

why they do it, The empathy that they and being able to give people that have such a good heart a tool to do what they've always wanted to do is just such an incredible feeling. ⁓ So it's, yeah, it's, definitely the most fun part of what we do.

Heath Fletcher (21:04)
Cool. Is the feedback or the data that comes back, is it real time? are there, you know, the provider ⁓ is getting information as things are happening and in that aspect, is it something that can provide that doctor or provider, whoever's looking after that patient or person? ⁓ Immediate information, if there's like some sort of

⁓ scenario where there's an emergency or they need immediate attention or some sort of additional support. Does it also provide that ability?

Ataes Aggarwal (21:44)
So our focus isn't primarily on that immediate like, okay, there's some sort of change in the biometric. It's more, you know, they're building a relationship over multiple. And sometimes, I mean, we've, we've seen it on the platform. Someone reaches out, right? We're not, cause we, we ingest the data for different types of data have different, you know, frequencies that we're ingesting at maybe like sleep and activity from a.

Heath Fletcher (21:51)
Immediate change. Yeah, exactly. Yeah

Ataes Aggarwal (22:14)
wearable like a Fitbit is every night. We wouldn't get it. We wouldn't get it real time, which is a fantastic point. But we've seen it on the platform, unfortunately, where people are reaching out in that time of crisis. But fortunately, they are reaching out. And we've been able to intervene and do something about it. And when I say we, I really mean the people that are using the technology.

Heath Fletcher (22:37)
incredible. Yes, of course. Yeah. But you're working as a team, right? It's your you're together. I like the way you feel that way. You're you're part of their team as much as they're part of your team, right? So it's it's that working together piece, which is really nice. ⁓ So now where ⁓ where are you at now in the in the progression of business and and where are you at in as far as development goes now?

Ataes Aggarwal (22:39)
Absolutely.

Yeah, I think it's a never-ending cycle, really. It's kind of when we're talking about business, it's about getting more customers so that we can build more. Because, I mean, on one hand, we can anticipate the needs of the customers in ways that they don't already know. But sometimes we can take it too far such that our anticipation isn't actually building to the direct things that the customers need. So we have to strike that balance.

⁓ So right now we're focused on expanding to essentially new logos, getting more customers onto the platform and ⁓ hearing their needs while also being able to build out the things that we have on our technical roadmap ⁓ to anticipate the needs that they're maybe not even seeing. But building, again, building out those things that people may not understand they need without having those new customers isn't always the most...

fruitful of things. So really in this growth phase of trying to get new customers.

Heath Fletcher (24:07)
⁓ Is that for you right now one of your biggest challenges that you've hit so far or has there been other things that have been more impactful as far as being an obstacle in your way?

Ataes Aggarwal (24:22)
Yeah, I think this, this stage of growth, I can't imagine it gets, ⁓ I mean, I, I'm sure, I'm sure the challenges are going to evolve maybe greatly, but I think this is going to be a continual thing growing and getting customers. I think it's like a, probably a layered cake, right? You have the fundamentals of you've got your team, then you've got the implementation and the tech that you're building out. And then all those things are running smoothly. You know, you've, you've got a marketing engine, you have a sales engine, all those things.

working smoothly, then you can start to add more and more people onto the platform. But if we don't have the basis of that kind of layered cake, then it's going to be hard. it's really just a matter of how can we expand the team out to have the bandwidth to take on new clients while also keeping up with a really, really high level of excellence and attention to detail to all the other lower levels of the cake.

Heath Fletcher (25:23)
A seven layer cake probably. ⁓

Ataes Aggarwal (25:26)
It's tasty.

Heath Fletcher (25:30)
Glad you ⁓ brought up scalability because that can be a challenging time for some companies to be able to scale, particularly if demand starts to really take a steep incline. ⁓ How would you approach that? All of a sudden there just was a surge in activity. Are you scalable? Is it something that would require you to take

⁓ you know, not baby steps, but toddler steps towards.

Ataes Aggarwal (26:06)
Yeah, that's a fantastic question. And I think, you know, I'll just start with the technology itself, the way that we architected it, designed it, all these different things at the very outset was meant to scale to millions of people. so that part of it really isn't a difficulty for us or a challenge. It's good to go. It's totally good to go. It's more of, again, like when you have a small team and you're trying to be very

Heath Fletcher (26:25)
It's good to go.

Ataes Aggarwal (26:34)
selective and smart about bringing in the right people to that team. And, you know, for myself, as I'm also, I'm just in every single implementation that we're doing and all the other kind of lower levels of the cake. How do I abstract myself out to be part of the other, you know, areas of growth? Cause at the end of the day, I think it's really a time game. It's absolutely a time game. If, if you want to grow a new area of the business, you just have to put the time to it. ⁓ So if

if you don't have the bandwidth to do that, then it's quite difficult. But I think, fortunately, I do feel like it's a time game. I think we have the mind and the talent. And probably most importantly, we've seen the results. This thing works. People love it. It's making an impact, which is completely wonderful. It's just about how can we, as a team, structure ourselves around in a way to be efficient with those lower levels and also

be able to kind of insert ourselves into that highest level of the cake in terms of growth.

Heath Fletcher (27:36)
And professionally for you, as ⁓ not only a co-founder, you're also on the technical side, but now you also find yourself on the business side. How do you ⁓ motivate yourself? How do you keep up to speed with everything? what do you use to support you as a professional through that, whether it's mentorship or watching

listening to podcasts or whatever. What do you tap into for that?

Ataes Aggarwal (28:10)
⁓ So I think there's probably two parts to the question if I'm understanding correctly.

Heath Fletcher (28:15)
Maybe

three.

Ataes Aggarwal (28:19)
The two that I at least picked up upon would be, how do I continue going, continue moving forward? What kind of motivates me to do that? then the second, how do I continue learning and having the time to learn? ⁓ Both really good questions. I think in terms of the motivation, ⁓ really simply put, it's probably about the vision, continuing to be there and having clarity on that vision. ⁓ It's about the team and the impact that we're making with

the real people seeing that day to day. can't tell you if I, if I didn't have my co-founder or my other teammates that I was able to talk to you and building this out, um, I might go insane. So it's really good to have a fantastic team that, you know, you can call on late in the night, early in the morning. Um, this is for better for worse, sometimes a 24 seven sort of business and operation.

So it's really good to have that sort of support and definitely wonderful mentors and advisors that have in some ways, you know, been there and done that and can provide that reassurance or that, you know, hey, take a step back. You're looking at this really oddly. Let me tell you how I did it. And then it changes your perspective and direction. ⁓ But yeah, I think those are things that definitely motivate me and keep me from not running into a corner.

and getting in the wrong ⁓ kind of direction that I'm supposed to be going in. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (29:50)
And we're just crawling under your desk in the fetal position.

Ataes Aggarwal (29:54)
Hope.

No, yeah, we got it. We definitely have to have to stay strong in the work that we're doing for for the people that we're serving. So ⁓ but yes, yeah, this it helps. It helps me stay focused on the right areas as opposed to getting sidetracked on kind of side quests that are aren't too important ⁓ in terms of finding new ways to keep up to date. I think I've got to probably evolve in some ways. I think

I'm fortunate that I have a lot of people on the team that kind of send things in the chat. And I also listen to a lot of podcasts and, you know, maybe sometimes a couple of, of audio books, but it's, it's really, I would say I'm, I'm a little bit more traditional in old school, the way that I learned about, ⁓ technology and coding and AI and, ⁓ a lot of other things that I use as kind of the basis for my knowledge has been through textbooks. So I know.

Heath Fletcher (30:52)
That's great.

Ataes Aggarwal (30:53)
I

am you know what I'm

Heath Fletcher (30:56)
school

you go hang out at the library

Ataes Aggarwal (30:58)
extremely old

school, when I'm really interested in something, I just sit down for many, many, many hours and just read a textbook. Because I think it's really tough, at least for me, I get really curious. And if there's something that I read and it's not a full story, I have to go off into the kind of a web of other things to get to that full story and that clear picture. So having a textbook that kind of builds up is sometimes the best thing for me.

Heath Fletcher (31:01)
Love you.

Ataes Aggarwal (31:27)
I don't know. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (31:28)
Is

there a textbook lane you like to stay in?

Ataes Aggarwal (31:32)
I mean, usually the textbook, the technology types of things, I want to say. Maybe, I mean, other types of books, not textbook related, they could be for anything. It could be for learning about how to set up the business about, as an investor, how to kind of create deal sheets and whatnot. yeah, it's kind of a range too.

Heath Fletcher (31:58)
⁓ I'm glad you brought that word up, actually, investors. Did you require investors ⁓ to get Moodr off the ground?

Ataes Aggarwal (32:06)
Not yet. We've had a lot of organizations that have been critical to our growth. But for the most part, not yet. I think it would be beneficial. Probably. That's a great idea. For those investors.

Heath Fletcher (32:18)
Great.

⁓ Let's talk about marketing a little bit because ⁓ marketing is part of running a business and I you even brought up the word logos once already. So tell me how do you get involved in the marketing aspect as well? You like that part and ⁓ how did you roll that out?

Ataes Aggarwal (32:47)
Yeah, absolutely also involved in the marketing aspect. When I say I'm involved in everything, it really is everything. But again, there's a lot of wonderful team members that I have to rely on. It's nice that they let me talk to them about different things. But for most part, yes. ⁓ Getting involved in marketing and the brand is critical. feel that a lot of startups are starting to realize more and more, especially social media.

is becoming more and more important, just the value of marketing and having a strong kind of marketing team and engine behind you. ⁓ So yes, I think having my mind and the vision of the company and essentially the taste and heart of it and being able to translate that to marketing is something I'm super passionate about. I absolutely love it. you know, the logo and the, I guess the tagline for it.

Those are things that I rack my brain a lot on and I was able to talk to the marketing team and they made those things a reality for us. So, yeah.

Heath Fletcher (33:54)
So I've had many conversations with founders, CEOs and founders slash CEOs and founders tend to have this real passion around around the marketing side of things. I think it's cause it's like their babies, right? It's like they need to be part of every step of the evolution of the business. And so they have this real passionate side about the marketing thing. And so, ⁓ whereas a CEO who's not necessarily a founder,

can come on board and is happy to just sort of hand off the marketing stuff to the marketing people and carry on with their day doing their own thing in the CEO world, right? So as founders, it's interesting, it's quite a common thread that they like being part of the marketing side. In fact, a lot of them like to think they're logo designers. ⁓ is that same for you too?

Ataes Aggarwal (34:47)
I

mean, I wouldn't think of myself as a logo designer, but I completely understand the sentiment for wanting to be involved in essentially the way that you're crafting a story around your brand. ⁓ Because I mean, at the end of the day, think founders and the founding team have maybe the best pulse on, what is, you know, in my case, what is Moodr Health, right? Why is Moodr Health? What are we doing? Who is this for?

⁓ And having a logo that represents that, having a tagline that represents that, having a website or whatever external facing materials that represents that, it's highly, highly important, I think. And I think it manifests that kind of, ⁓ I feel like I understand what the heart of this is. It manifests in a lot of different ways too. Marketing is probably one area of that. Obviously the product is another. ⁓ But I think it's...

maybe the most impactful when you see other members of the team clinging onto it and also changing what that heart is of the company. And it's wonderful to get different perspectives from the marketing team, from the product team and others to also kind of add on to that vision. I don't think I'm arrogant enough to think that I know absolutely everything about what should be right. Not even our team knows everything.

We need the customers for that too. And we need other people that are out in the market to share different insights. But ⁓ I think it's wonderful to take in all the data points, work super, super duper hard to figure out the best kind of needle in the haystack to pull out in terms of a marketing message, in terms of a feature to build. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (36:33)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I like how you speak to your team a lot. You know, it sounds like ⁓ there's a lot of trust in there, which is really quite important and ⁓ at any stage in business, but particularly in the early days, like you where you guys are at and you're because you're what five years? ⁓

Ataes Aggarwal (36:54)
Probably dated to five years, officially two and a half years, but I mean the idea started five years ago. Absolutely.

Heath Fletcher (37:01)
Okay, that's where I got that. ⁓ But building that team, that team that you can really lean into and trust, ⁓ particularly when it comes to the point where hopefully there is a time where you actually have to start handing other things off to other people. And that can be a tough moment for founders as well, where they actually have to let go of certain things and say, okay, look, I can't get involved this. I've got only so many hours in a day.

Ataes Aggarwal (37:25)
safe.

Heath Fletcher (37:30)
I got to focus on these things. So I'm going to hand this off to you. ⁓ It's a good place to be. means that the growth has happened. But do think that'll be a difficult time for you to kind of let some of the things go? are you already building that sort of anticipation and creating the team that you want so that you will have less of a resistance to do that?

Ataes Aggarwal (37:54)
Yeah, most certainly, I think that is the biggest bottleneck for scaling, Essentially what the founders and the team can be focused on is exactly what we were talking about with the seven layer cake or whatnot. ⁓ Definitely, I mean, it's not been, I think, easy for any of the founding team to let go of certain parts of it because there's a way that we've seen it and feel like we've done it right. ⁓ And when we bring someone new on to execute on it, we want it.

Heath Fletcher (38:05)
Yeah.

Ataes Aggarwal (38:23)
see it done to that same level of excellence. So it's, I think you're spot on. It's, it's a big part of it, but I think my, my approach to, this whole thing is building independence for people. ⁓ If we have been successful ⁓ in a certain domain, it's best if we can find a way to kind of give the general things that have worked for us and, you know, make that repeatable, but also allow someone to essentially run it on their own. ⁓

And it's just hard to find essentially teammates that are able to execute super independently like that. So it's most difficult part. ⁓ I think micromanaging, that might be a style that works for other people, honestly. But that's not something that really plays to the strengths of a lot of the different team members that we have.

Heath Fletcher (39:14)
So I just want to clarify what you mean by that because people are sort of working independently with the Moodr Health. they've got, you've set them up and they're operating it on their own basically.

Ataes Aggarwal (39:29)
Sure, like if there's somebody that's working in, let's just say marketing, since we were talking about that, they'll have ownership of that domain ⁓ and responsive things to be executed on would ⁓ kind of be on them. Of course, it bubbles up to everyone on the team since we're all... Yeah, that is, so it's just difficult to find people that are going to have that same care

Heath Fletcher (39:35)
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Gotcha.

over some. Sooner or later, yeah.

Ataes Aggarwal (39:59)
for the

Heath Fletcher (39:59)
That same buy-in,

Ataes Aggarwal (40:02)
independently and

do things that are going to be ⁓ kind of surprising you for the better. They're going to be proactive and thinking about different things on their own as opposed to, hey, make sure you do this, this, this, and that. Because again, that's also part of the bottleneck. If you have to manage and micromanage every little thing, it's going to be difficult. ⁓ I think clarity and clear delineation of things that need to be done is good, but there's only so granular that you can get with that. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (40:30)
Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓ There's no, far as growth goes and scalability for you, there's no real limitation geographically. I mean, you could, this is a, this is a global business. Yes.

Ataes Aggarwal (40:31)
taxing.

Yes, I mean, definitely the vision is one day to have every single person have someone that's looking out for them. ⁓ So that would be every person in the world that I feel and I think the rest of the team feels that's an inevitable vision that will come to fruition, whether that's from us or from another organization. So ⁓ really looking forward to the world being more interconnected like that.

Heath Fletcher (41:11)
Right now, so far you're primarily United States.

Ataes Aggarwal (41:15)
Yes. Yeah. I'm merely an Appalachia too. And that's a big part of our identity. ⁓ Myself, I'm from West Virginia, Morgantown, West Virginia, and a lot of the rest of the team is from Appalachia and from West Virginia as well. And within our wonderful state, there's a lot of rural health challenges and healthcare challenges as a whole. ⁓ lot of lack of funding also. So it's been really difficult to build and

you know, essentially develop customers in a space where there's again, a lack of funding, a lack of resources, but at the same time, that kind of provides us a little bit of an edge when it comes to kind of going into the market outside of our region too, ⁓ built for maybe one of the most difficult to reach populations in the country. ⁓ So it's been, you know, really wonderful to be able to

both impact my community that I've grown up alongside and also build something that's super kind of difficult to build.

Heath Fletcher (42:21)
Is that due to the remoteness? Like for those that aren't familiar with the Appalachia, what is the remoteness, the ruggedness of that area or what is that?

Ataes Aggarwal (42:30)
Yeah, it's a whole slew of different things. mean, there's a lot of just things that make us number one in all the ways you don't want to be number one in. So, remoteness is one of them. could say it's also, you know, obesity, a lot of drug usage. think Huntington, Virginia at a time was kind of considered the epicenter of the opioid epidemic. Okay. challenges that people hit first and hit hard in West Virginia.

Heath Fletcher (42:54)
wow.

Ataes Aggarwal (43:00)
⁓ So we just see a population that can be quite challenged at times.

Heath Fletcher (43:06)
the highest, sometimes the highest need but with the least amount of resources.

Ataes Aggarwal (43:11)
That's a perfect way of putting it. People like

Jennifer know it's all about finding a way in this state, in this region, to do more with less. And that sounds a lot, heck of a lot like efficiency, right? So being able to provide something that's scalable to a large kind of range of a population for someone that doesn't have, you for an organization or for, that doesn't have a lot of care providers, it's super meaningful.

Heath Fletcher (43:41)
So to be originating in a place where you have that kind of crossroads, really kind of prepared you for expansion to the rest of the country, maybe even into developing countries. So you kind of have almost a playbook to do that with.

Ataes Aggarwal (44:01)
Yeah. every demographic, every region that you go into is going to be different. And I think we're aware of that. being able to be adaptive to those different regions and such is something that we've seen even within the smaller region of Appalachia, since a lot of those areas are also quite distinct and quite different with their own set of challenges. ⁓

So yeah, it's a mix of being able to work in maybe a highly under-resourced but highly challenged region while also being able to be adaptive to a lot of nuances and ⁓ different geographies might have.

Heath Fletcher (44:41)
So give us a little bit of a list of the kinds of organizations and ⁓ situations where Mootr Health is actually assisting. So that way, if listeners who are in similar types of professional roles or ⁓ healthcare areas can identify with that, they would be like, ⁓ I need to contact these people.

Ataes Aggarwal (45:05)
Yeah, absolutely. think one group that we've had a great impact on already within the state has been an MCO. So that's a managed care organization, an insurance provider that works with the Medicaid population. ⁓ Their care managers use the platform day in, day out. And it's been wonderful to see ⁓ they have the largest population in the state. When we're talking kind of about a hierarchy of care, it's...

Probably the MCO and then there's your hospital systems below that. Let's see people maybe more frequently. And then below that, you might have other types of community-based support organizations that are out there with boots to the ground. But the MCO is kind of the top of that hierarchy. At least from my perspective, that's the, you

Heath Fletcher (45:52)
Mm-hmm.

Ataes Aggarwal (45:54)
largest number of people. So this was a good value for them considering that it's all about doing more with less. So their care managers to essentially use the platform as has been one area ⁓ hospital systems as well has been a huge area for organizations that are looking for ways to reach their patients better, which is going to drive engagement, drive more people into their hospital systems, maybe even drive different ways for getting reimbursement, which is.

super helpful for ⁓ places like places in West Virginia. And then finally, like I alluded to as well, we're working with a couple of different employers, some veteran service organizations, and then ⁓ also ⁓ higher education. ⁓ nursing students have been, we have a couple hundred nursing students on the platform as well that we've been having the chance to work with. And that's been a super wonderful experience too.

Heath Fletcher (46:52)
Wow. So cool. Matias, thank you so much. just, it's been awesome just listening to you ⁓ explain about Moodr Health and your passion for what you do is inspiring. You know, I think people are gonna, there's gonna be some people who will want to reach out to you. So what's the best place for, you know, obviously the website and anybody else or anywhere else that they can reach out to if they want more information.

Ataes Aggarwal (47:18)
Yeah, the website is a fantastic place to reach out to not just myself, but the team as a whole. that's mooterhealth.com. And then it should be pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. I haven't found anyone else with my first name, but Ataes Agarwal. And if you just try to send the connect, I can reach back out to you and we can get a conversation going. But whether it's someone that's looking to be a customer or not,

doesn't really matter, anyone that's passionate within this space, those are the types of people that I look forward to talking to.

Heath Fletcher (47:55)
Excellent. Any last takeaways or things you want to say that maybe we didn't cover that you want to make sure gets out there?

Ataes Aggarwal (48:04)
⁓ Yeah, I mean, I guess if there's anything else I would say ⁓ in terms of maybe advice for other people that might be in a similar position as myself, as kind of concluding thoughts. ⁓ I think when it comes to serving our patients and our customers, every single tiny detail matters. ⁓ And then... ⁓

there's anything else I would say that I've learned, would be from maybe the 17th century French philosopher Blaise Pascal ⁓ when he said that if he had more time to write a letter, it would have been a shorter letter. So I think simplicity is something that's super hard to achieve when we're talking about all these different things, the right marketing message, the right feature to build out. ⁓ It's all about kind of pulling a needle out of a haystack.

choosing the right direction to move into. And that's super, super duper difficult. But I hope people don't get discouraged and think it's about, oh, I just don't have the right mind for it. I don't have the background or experience to anticipate kind of the needs within the market or whatever it may be. I think we converge toward that simplicity, toward that right action to take just through putting more time into it.

So we can write that shorter letter if we put more time into it. So ⁓ yeah, that's maybe the last kind of hopeful piece of ⁓ maybe inspiring things that I've learned throughout my time working on this wonderful business of Moodr Health.

Heath Fletcher (49:42)
It is, think that was the icing on the southern layer cake.

Ataes Aggarwal (49:46)
Really well set up. I loved you pulling that back in the end there.

Heath Fletcher (49:50)
Thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed meeting you and getting to know a bit more about you, but I hope we can talk again someday. So ⁓ we will definitely stay in touch.

Ataes Aggarwal (50:02)
Thank you again.

Thank you. It's been a true pleasure. Really appreciate it.

Heath Fletcher (50:08)
Okay, that's a wrap on today's episode with Ataes. I love the seven layer cake analogy because building a digital health platform really does take a layered form of thinking, you know, a strong clinical foundation, relationship centered care, AI, the ability to scale without losing that human touch. So I think from that prenatal mental health area to a broader behavioral care, think Moodr's approach shows that what happens when tech, empathy and strategy all work together.

So if this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone you know, who will be interested, don't forget to subscribe ⁓ so you don't miss future conversations with people who are reshaping the future of healthcare. Catch you next time.