Telluride Venture Accelerator: LifeDojo

18 Jun Telluride Venture Accelerator: LifeDojo

Corporate wellness programs. They are the new black dress of healthcare. Everywhere. All the rage.

Life Dojo team, Patrica Bedard, Chris Cutter, Varun Vummidi

The term refers to any program designed to improve and promote health and fitness behavior and to improve health outcomes, usually offered through the workplace, but also direct to enrollees by insurance companies.

In general such programs allow an employer or plan to offer premium discounts, cash rewards, gym memberships, and other goodies to participate. They generally aim to address specific, health-related life challenges such as stress, smoking, being overweight or having diabetes, but also offer preventative screenings and activities such as personal coaches.

It is a $6 billion industry and growing.

Why are companies of all stripes pushing wellness? We hold these truths to be self-evident: control health care costs and improve the bottom line is at the top of the list, but also reducing absenteeism, and improving morale. To that end, the Affordable Care Act offers guidelines to encourage such activities.

But are all workplace wellness programs created equal?

Not according to Chris Cutter, CEO of LifeDojo.

“LifeDojo,” explains Cutter, “is the cure for the common corporate wellness program. Instead of games, gimmicks or short-lived contests, LifeDojo delivers clinically proven, 12-week behavior change programs that work. The LifeDojo online platform engages employees in a structured journey of motivation, change-planning and daily action that in 90 days lead employees to permanent lifestyle change. Our programs save employers money, reduce absenteeism, increase productivity and create a ‘culture of wellness,’ that lasts for years.

According to Cutter, about 95% of new resolutions by participants in wellness programs fail within three weeks. The LifeDojo approach has been proven to work in double blind tests.

What’s Cutter’s secret?

“The story is about bringing the world’s best behavior change coaching into the hands of the average person. What until now was only affordable for Christina Aguilera and Kim Kardashian who wanted to lose their baby fat, LifeDojo gives everyone the chance to have world-class support every step of the way.”

There is a virtual pu pu platter of programs out there, but most fail, and the few good ones turn out to be offline and pricey. By aggregating the best of the best and bringing them online, LifeDojo offers an approach anyone with a mouse can use. It is also affordable. Most quality workplace wellness programs cost a company five-figure thousands to execute; LifeDojo removes many zeros from the expense. The bottom line is just $50 per employee per year.

For a very clear picture of the LifeDojo difference, click here and watch his video:

LifeDojo is one of six companies now in the sophomore class of the Telluride Foundation’s Telluride Venture Accelerator. The company joined the group with a leg up: 20,000 paid users in over 120 institutions – but these institutions were scattered. Cutter and his team needed help focusing. (The “team” includes Patricia Bedard, CTO, who brings 15 years of complex, enterprise level computer engineering and system architecture leadership to LifeDojo and Varun Vummidi, Head of Operations, with both entrepreneurial experience and a proven history of scaling both systems and teams of large, high growth companies.)

Click the”play” button to find out more about Chris Cutter’s professional history (that led to the development of LifeDojo) and how working under the TVA umbrella has made all the difference to his start-up.