HealthTech member
Discova
Co-Founders Lizzy Hodcroft (CEO) and Emma Reilly chat to us about their company Discova.
Tell us about your business.
Discova is an anonymised, AI-powered mental health and resilience application sold to public sector and corporations; which are currently losing over £1000 per employee annually to mental health related issues. For less than the price of a cup of coffee and within just 5 minutes of sign up, Discova can provide personalised, evidence-based self-help interventions and action plans for the most common mental health & wellbeing problems.
When did you start your business?
2018.
What's been your biggest highlight?
Winning the Innovate UK SMART grant - over £300k in grant funding. Competition was fierce with over 1600 applications and only a 4% chance of being successful. Discova was one of those successful with one of the highest graded scores for the grant round. Also - working with Jhub (Joint Defense Hub), RAF and RAF Intelligence to support personnel mental health and wellbeing.
What's been your biggest challenge?
Ensuring that we are not spreading ourselves too thin - identifying opportunities but knowing the right ones to put time and effort into!
Advice for entrepreneurs starting out
To find confidence in your mission, passion, purpose and self. Unfortunately, so many you will meet on your journey will try to plant seeds of doubt and you will be told why your idea will not work, cannot work and should not have money or time invested in it.
Don't get me wrong - you must be honest with yourself and find the viability in your business. However, you are much smarter than you give yourself credit for. And you have more drive in you than the majority of the top male CEOs around the world (TRUST ME).
Try not to be angry. And remember to be polite.
But be ready to cling on to your focus and those that support you while you let the rest of the world burn.