Holistic health startup Kenshō secures pre-seed funding and launches private beta to disrupt the $4.2 trillion global wellness economy

According to The Global Wellness Institute, the global wellness market was $4.2 trillion market in 2017. Their research reveals wellness market is growing at historic rate, nearly twice as fast as global economy.

Kenshō is a health company that lives in LA, operates on the internet, and promotes a whole-person philosophy of care: mind, body, and spirit. Unlike Goop, which is profiting on pseudoscience, and giving natural health practices a bad name. Kenshō pairs scientific research with personalization technology to take the guesswork out holistic health, whether you’re looking for an honest answer or a trusted provider.

With a pre-seed funding co-led by Female Founders Fund and Crosscut Ventures, Kenshō launches private beta. The invite-only subscription-based platform provides a place for holistic healthcare providers to list their services and share knowledge. The pre-seed funding was co-led by Female Founders Fund and Crosscut Ventures. In addition to the funding, the startup also announced research partnership with Authorea.

Kenshō launches at a time when national health is at an all-time low, forcing consumers to explore new care options as the Centers for Disease Control is now reporting that 70% of deaths in America are the result of preventable, chronic, and lifestyle-driven illnesses. Meanwhile, navigating holistic health is difficult, with Kenshō research showing that 7 in 10 people characterize it as “difficult” or “very difficult” to find a trusted provider.

Founded in 2018 by co-founders Danny Steiner (COO) and Krista Berlincourt (CEO), Kenshō is the first personalized research-backed holistic health discovery platform. The company was born out of Kenshō CEO & Co-founder Krista Berlincourt’s own frustrations navigating holistic health after she left her last company, Simple, a fintech pioneer, to heal the adrenal failure that left her hospitalized.

Two years later, Berlincourt met Danny Steiner, a health industry veteran, who developed and launched Brami, a breakout superfood company product backed by Lerer Hippeau and Accel Partners. The two initially bonded over their mutual interest in behavioral science, then discovered a shared mission to help people get better by making holistic health more accessible.

Today the two are solving for holistic health’s provider curation and consumer trust challenges with a personalized discovery platform that leverages in-depth scientific research to customize provider recommendations based on a wide range of considerations, including a user’s symptoms, goals, lifestyle, and preferences.

“People are increasingly interested in a more holistic approach to health,” said Anu Duggal, Founding Partner of Female Founders Fund. “They’re also understandably confused about how to tell if a provider is qualified to support their unique needs. Kenshō does the hard work of doing all the research and carefully vetting providers so that customers don’t have to. In addition, Kenshō’s personalized discovery platform helps every customer find just the right answer or provider with unprecedented ease, care, and confidence.”

Kenshō co-founders Danny Steiner (COO) and Krista Berlincourt (CEO)

To better inform consumer perspective around holistic health, Kenshō is partnering with Authorea, an open research publishing platform within Wiley, one of the world’s leading scholarly publishers. The partnership pioneers open access to scientific research that validates the efficacy of holistic health practices.

“When it comes to health, knowledge is power,” said Kenshō CEO & Co-Founder Krista Berlincourt. “Many people think of ‘holistic health’ as pseudoscience when in actuality many of these practices have existed for millennia and today there’s plenty of scientific evidence to support their efficacy. Kenshō’s excited to have Authorea as our partner in making this information, scientifically sound, transparent, and accessible for the people it can help most.”