Revolutionizing Maternal Health: Okkanti's Visionary Platform and the Future of Pregnancy Support

Discover how the intersection of technology and maternal health is fostering a new era of pregnancy support with Karen Laing, the visionary founder of Okkanti. Our enlightening conversation peels back the layers of Carefinder, a pioneering platform that's creating a cohesive network for expectant parents and healthcare professionals. Karen's journey from mindfulness to tech entrepreneurship encapsulates the delicate balance of driving social change while navigating the complexities of investor demands. She candidly discusses Okkanti's strategic blueprint to demonstrate how sustainable care support can lead to substantial savings for healthcare systems and paints a vivid picture of the company's commitment to equitable access, ensuring every expectant parent receives the guidance they deserve.

As we delve further into Okkanti's narrative, the thread of community and mentorship weaves through the discussion, underscoring the power of collective effort in shaping resilient social enterprises. Karen shares Okkanti's impressive growth trajectory, with projections to slash healthcare costs and the potential to imprint lasting benefits on generations to come through epigenetic influences. The episode also sheds light on the innovative application of generative AI for content management, a testament to the company's forward-thinking approach. For those captivated by the fusion of tech innovation, health equity, and the spirit of entrepreneurship, Karen's insights and Okkanti's mission will leave you inspired. Visit Okkanti.com to leap into this ecosystem of transformative care and join a movement championing a healthier future for parents and children alike.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hello, hello everyone. Welcome back to the growing Lean podcast sponsored by Lean Discovery Group. This is your host, Dylan Burke, also known as Deej. I'm happy to be here with Karen Lange, founder and CEO of Oconti. Welcome, Karen.

Speaker 2: 0:18

Well, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 0:19

It's my absolute pleasure. So, to get us started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your history, your background and how you ended up? The fund and CEO of Oconti.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Right.

Speaker 2: 0:33

Well, I have a path that has combined some a few threads.

Speaker 2: 0:39

I think I was introduced to mindfulness and caregiving 30 plus years ago and in that started a journey of thinking about how we care for people, and I ended up with a career in maternal health and working with pregnant and parenting people and providing models and innovations on how we deliver care in homes, and thinking about the care quality issue has been a through line.

Speaker 2: 1:15

So I've worked with doulas, midwives, lactation consultants in this whole ecosystem of pregnancy supports for the last 30 years and also was working with physicians and other care providers and how can we improve care quality.

Speaker 2: 1:32

And at the time, I actually was doing a lot of work around mindfulness and personhood and thinking about how we can help providers do better in the care of patients by taking care of themselves and having a method for self regulation and self care as they do the work so that they wouldn't burnt out. And now I've turned my attention to systems and building technology solutions that can deliver those models of support, filling gaps in the care system in a way that I think is needed in our maternal health crisis that we've been in for some time. So I know that was a bit of a long, a long way, but sometimes I'm a practitioner myself and have this background in mindfulness and and the fact that I now I'm leading and growing a technology company is an interesting, interesting step. But it all makes perfect sense to me that I'm trying to get at the root of some of the obstacles to creating great care.

Speaker 1: 2:45

Okay, amazing, amazing. So, in one or two sentences, what does a Conti do?

Speaker 2: 2:52

So Conti is building an ecosystem of pregnancy support systems through to. One is technology, and we've built the care finder, which is an all-in-one matching, scheduling, booking and practice management solution so that pregnant and parenting people can find and build their circle of support and that is known to improve outcomes. The other lever that we pull is community and thinking about how we can build a community of those very fragmented doulas and lactation consultants and physical therapists. There's a wide range of people that I call carepreneurs, that have long been serving and supporting their communities and now we're recognizing that that's a key driver of improving outcomes and integrating it into the healthcare systems. So Conti wants to solve for that infrastructure that's needed to be able to actually deliver those models of care.

Speaker 1: 3:55

Okay, amazing, amazing. And who is your ideal customer? What demographic is it? Is it all pregnant women or is it specific demographics?

Speaker 2: 4:06

Well, as a marketplace, we have a trajectory of first building our network effect Sorry about that, the phone is going off here and so actually the primary user and customer of our platform are the doulas themselves, and we're looking at people who are providing home and community-based supports a lot of not-for-profits that are forming, as well as small organizations, worker-owned collectives so we really want to think about designing our solution around those workers, and we have and we're excited about how it's being received by them.

Speaker 2: 4:51

When it comes to pregnant and parenting people seeking care, yes, you know, we usually don't say our product is for everyone, but anyone who is pregnant, we want to have access, and one of the things that we're getting at is the bias that takes place when physicians tend to refer. Who can afford to pay, who deserves care. We want to be sure that everyone has access to those support systems and that ecosystem of providers out there. And then our phase two growth strategy is to really be working with payers and demonstrating that we can save them millions, if not billions, of dollars by leveraging this disparate and fragmented workforce.

Speaker 1: 5:41

Okay, that's awesome. Love to hear it. And what stage of your business are you in right now? You told me offline that you had just launched your MVP, so you're still in very early stages.

Speaker 2: 5:54

Yeah, we are. We are early stage. We launched the Care Collective, which was designed to be a support system where there's an exchange of learning and mentorship within the care professionals, and we launched that in January. We launched our MVP in more or less September, and some of the early traction that we're excited about is that we are thinking about how we can really get regional markets to. You know, are they interested in collaborating over competition?

Speaker 2: 6:31

Basically, is our big thesis right? Well, all these providers who have been kind of developing their own thing, will they be interested in being a part of an organization that preserves and really honors their autonomy while at the same time, creating ways to collaborate? And so our early traction is exciting because we have four states. We have 56 members in four states right now and we've got an event that we're doing in Arkansas, so we're in Midwest states, but we're already seeing their strong interest in other areas as well. So, yeah, we're just starting our fundraise and all of those things that are particularly challenging for founders at this point. Right, you're driving and engaging with your members and building the solution so that they get value and, at the same time, of course, trying to raise the funds that you need to keep it going. Thank you 100%.

Speaker 1: 7:37

Yeah, that was actually my next question is what have been the biggest challenges that you faced in getting this started? I guess you did answer them mostly. Are there any other like big challenges that you faced?

Speaker 2: 7:52

Well, you know, I think that we're in clearly in a social impact space, but we're also really can can be a very successful company and and give a return to our investors. So I think, finding that way of communicating our message that we're we're in a space that's growing, this is a very timely opportunity. We're finally turning our attention to solving the crisis that we've been in in our maternal health system, and pregnancy supports are so key, and there's a lot of money that's going towards, not for profits and training, but I just I know that without an infrastructure and without the kind of support system that we create we are, we're risking another industry that relies on underpaying care workers, and so I think my biggest challenge has been speaking to our really big heart and our mission driven focus, and also finding the right funders who can also see that this is a no brainer opportunity when it comes to saving money in our care system while improving outcomes and saving lives.

Speaker 1: 9:19

Okay, yeah, I appreciate that, Thank you. And if we were to meet again, let's say in 12 months, and everything that could have possibly gone right has gone right? What does your business look like today?

Speaker 2: 9:35

Well, we, we would have 500 members, we'd be expanding into at least eight markets, although I'm excited that we're already more, we're already well on our way to that milestone and we would be, we would be serving families in a way that would, I think, our first. Our early milestone calculations are that, you know, even in our early years, we can be saving $500,000 in healthcare spending on preventable complications, right and the other side of that dollar amount, our lives that are impacted by having better outcomes. We also know that there's epigenetic effects. So a pregnancy today that we can save from being complicated is laying the groundwork for a healthier generation.

Speaker 2: 10:33

Down the road we would be really proving our network effect, and building up that workforce would would allow us to be really digging into the, the payer partnerships that were in the midst of of of being of starting. I don't want to go too much into it, but right now we're in. We're in a really wonderful place where we didn't think that we would have opportunities to work with big payers until we were maybe in year two or three or four, and we're in a situation right now where we think that that could be expedited. So that's very exciting. So our growth trajectory is is still to build that network and and then to prove our value with the payers.

Speaker 1: 11:22

That's amazing. I'm so excited for you.

Speaker 2: 11:24

Hopefully we'll be. We'll be talking about those partnerships a year from now.

Speaker 1: 11:28

So amazing, amazing. And if you have to choose one metric of your business that is most likely to help you get there, what would that be?

Speaker 2: 11:40

I think that you know it's really those, those matches or those bookings right that we want to see people using care that's available to them. We want to get the opportunities to our members and and so that's that's a key driver that we're doing things right, that we are supporting the ecosystem of the workforce and also getting care to families.

Speaker 1: 12:09

Okay, that's, that's awesome. I love it. And do you have any advice for other business owners looking to succeed in your industry?

Speaker 2: 12:23

Well, in the industry of the pregnancy support systems, we are actually launching a birth plan for birth workers program this spring. We really want to see that these organizations, like I said, they might be small groups of five people in a collective or they might be a not-for-profit organization. That's a community-based doula program that may have 20 or 30 providers and some organizations may have up to 150 or more providers. We really want to give them the tools that they need to succeed and to maintain their autonomy. So we'll have lots of advice for them and they should follow us and look for some of the offerings that we're going to have in the new year. We really want to build a community of meaningful mentorship for those providers to be successful.

Speaker 2: 13:21

If someone is in a space like me, trying to have impact on solving a pervasive problem and thinking about how to use a for-profit vehicle to do that in social impact spaces, I think it's really important to be in an ecosystem of support. There are ways to match our passion with profit and creating sustainable businesses, but it's harder I mean right now fundraising is harder for everyone. There's no easy way through and I think we just need each other. I mean, our motto for O'Canty is stronger together, and I know that. I am incredibly grateful for all of the people that have had my back and cheer me on and give me good, sound advice, and so I hope to always be that for other people too.

Speaker 1: 14:20

Amazing 100%. There's this saying that I like, which you just reminded me of If you want the world to be a brighter place, you've got to light other candles with your flame, and I think it's such an amazing quote. I'm not sure where it came from, but I've just loved that quote for a while, and it sounds like you also do.

Speaker 2: 14:43

Oh my gosh, yes, I love it.

Speaker 1: 14:46

Yeah. So I also wanted to ask I see you launched about a year and a half ago which was right like slap bang in the middle of chat GPT being released, of all these generative AI tools coming to market. Are you making use of these tools that are at your disposal?

Speaker 2: 15:06

Well, you know, because I've been a creator, a trainer, an entrepreneur in this space, I have volumes of content, like so much content that it's a huge asset, but it's also like having an attic full of all these things, right, and you know that you don't want to just throw them out. They're valuable, but how do you repurpose them? And so I think that one of the ways that we've been using AI is really looking at repurposing content and thinking about how that can further our digital marketing outreach. You know we want to bring value to the community, whether they're members or not, and I think that you know we. Yeah, it's just it's really hard to stay on top of content, even when you have it.

Speaker 1: 16:13

Yeah, 100%. Oh yeah. So I really appreciated your time today, Karen. It was been amazing and I'm super excited to see what the future holds for you. So we are unfortunately out of time for the interview, but what is the best way for people to reach out to Karen Lange, if you have any offers for them or if they're just looking to follow your journey?

Speaker 2: 16:40

Yeah, for sure. Well, you can visit our Ocanticom website and sign up for our newsletters, and we also are having info sessions for providers and people who are what I call care preneurs and community builders in the space, people working for health equity. And then the Ocanti, the carefinderocanticom, is where our community can just sign up and get a listing so that their work serving their communities can be recognized.

Speaker 1: 17:18

Amazing, amazing. Thank you so much, karen. I really appreciate your time and insights. Thanks, deesh, thanks Thanks.