Maslow

Interviewer: All right, let's get started, shall we? I just wanted to start by introducing team Maslow, so I'm just going to hand it over to you guys, just to introduce yourselves individually.

Andrew Akib: Absolutely. Good day everyone, my name is Andrew, I'm the venture leader for Maslow, my background's coming from kind of a product design and strategy point of view, and going into Maslow I was really passionate about using technology to bridge the gap in terms of accessibility, and in terms of providing equal access to health care. It's something I'm really excited to be doing, as part of the Maslow team.

Nitin Fernandez: Hi, everyone I'm Nitin. By trade I'm actually an occupational therapist, so I've been working in acute tertiary hospitals, rehab hospitals, and in the community as a therapist. When I was working as a therapist, I was having some challenges around educating my clients, and then when they go home they were forgetting- clients were having difficulties with complying with therapy and quite often would readmit back into the hospital, so my focus around getting involved with this team at Maslow was in designing digital solutions to support patients when they get back home.

Steve Ralph: Hi, guys, my name's Steve Ralph. I am the customer insights lead with Maslow. By background I actually worked in marketing, I currently do a market insights role. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm doing with Maslow, but the way I met these guys was through a passion for accessibility and how tech can help drive that and improve the functional goals and the outcomes and what actually people are able to achieve, who have actually had a spinal cord injury. As we said in our demo pitch video, I've also suffered from a spinal cord injury a couple of years ago, so I know from experience that going through that rehab journey is quite clunky. There's a lot of things that you do forget. There's things that are really, really critical to staying out of hospitals, staying healthy, and strengthening yourself up as much as possible, both mentally and physically. I think a lot of that can be enhanced through more seamless integration about education that we're looking to drive through to our user base, and so thanks for joining our room and good to have you here.

Interviewer: Great. Look, I just wanted to do a bit of general housekeeping as well, so pertaining to all guests who have joined us, recently I would like to refer you to the Q&A section. You'll notice it's actually not the first magenta panel under the webinar live stream, but actually the second one. If you have a query in regards to that, just pop it into Zoom chat, we've got Joseph as well who's going to be moderating the Zoom chat so he will be able to guide you there as well. It's just a great way for you to post your questions and for team Maslow to answer them live . I just wanted to pass it back again to team Maslow to introduce the ways in which we can connect with them.

Andrew: Yes, absolutely so one of the fun things about doing this virtually, that we wouldn't normally have the opportunity to do is share things with you digitally. We've created a landing page where while you're engaging with us here you can have a little bit of a background search about connecting with our socials, seeing a little bit more about what we're doing and what we're looking for. Also, the big ask here is, you may have some people in your network that might be really interested in what we're doing. We would love it if you shared our story by going on maslow.io on Accelerate, connecting with us and sharing the LinkedIn post there. It's the broader ecosystem for some of the things that we need as a team to go through our next phases of growth, which we'll probably cover as this Q&A unfolds.

Interviewer: Thank you so much for that. I'm just in the next section, I would just like to do just a quick recap of team Maslow, just a bit more about them as a team in the way they've started this initiative and what's so special about their team?

Andrew: Yes, absolutely. The reason that we got quite stuck into this and the reason that we're all so focused on the accessibility and disabilities space and particularly the rehab space. For Nitin and myself we fell into this role in response to a friend that had a traumatic brain injury in 2011. Most people are lucky enough not to have to go through something like that, they don't have to experience something like that, but this friend went through this rehabilitation experience and spent some time in rehab hospital. It was when he was being discharged and trying to adjust back to the home that some of the really challenging things about adjusting to a new life really arose. We recognize that especially for younger people that are coming from a background of high digital literacy, services on demand, and high expectations for a lot of the services around us. When it came to information access and education in the health system, that wasn't quite met yet, and with something as important as managing your health or coordinating carers or communicating via therapists. For Nitin and I, that was enough for us to recognize that there's opportunities in here to change that experience for everyone, and in particular, make it as easy as possible to help young people that have suffered a traumatic injury or that are living with paralysis to be able to manage their health, because everyone should be able to manage their health from home, regardless of ability.

Interviewer: One of the follow-up questions to this is you've gone through the whole accelerator program, you've made so much progress. Could you give us a bit of a progress update since your last pitch?

Andrew: Yes, absolutely. We launched our product in January to our MVP user group. Since then we've now got 10 active users on the product, 7 of which are paying using their NDIS subscriptions, so 7 active paid subscriptions. That's really in our immediate pilot group. Yes, we've started taking in revenue from customers and we're looking to really step outside of that and partner with broader networks to see the value that some of our initial users are getting out of Maslow, such as time saved in terms of dealing with therapists, time saved dealing with carers, and being able to access therapy at home. We're looking ah to actually help us bring that to everybody that is running into some of the same challenges that our user group is having, and to support people domestically.

Interviewer: In terms of challenges, given the current state of life as it is, how has COVID-19 impacted your progress and your workflow? That would be one of the more obvious questions to ask, so how has that impacted you?

Andrew: Might pass that one over to Nitin to talk about how that's impacted therapy and access to that.

Nitin: Yes, so originally in January when we started with our pilot group, we had two focuses which was around care management and rehab management. Where users were able to create a care routine and hand it over to a carer to follow, so nothing was missed. when COVID hit, the behaviors and challenges significantly changed for our user group. They all lost access to their rehab clinics and they all had trouble connecting with their therapists, and that's when they started connecting digitally via Telehealth. A lot of the guys still felt unsure what to do at home around their exercise and rehab when they were at home, and they weren't being compliant or motivated to actually do their exercise and rehab which is critical for their health, especially for this condition like spinal injury. What we had done is we doubled down on their exercise and rehab management tool it helps to manage their home rehab programs at home, and connect them with their therapist, so they weren't too lost about what they were meant to do and they were able to track how consistent they were meant to be.

Steve: I've got to jump in there and just quickly add something to that, if that's all right.

Nitin: For sure, mate.

Steve: Just from the experience of somebody who has a spinal cord injury, who went through the whole coronavirus pandemic, and experienced probably heightened levels of anxiety and stress around that, given the fact that I'm probably with the injury a lot more susceptible to having like a chronically bad case of that, if I did suffer from it. Also, as you said, Nitin, there's a lot of inadequacies in terms of not being able to exercise because without very specialized equipment which is highly adapted for the use of somebody with a spinal cord injury, it's very hard to engage in that, and then you've actually got more of a chance of developing something else. It's a secondary complication. It was a double effect of there's this health crisis going on, plus you don't have access to keep yourself healthy so you're more at risk of getting sick from something else, let alone this. Then also, to be able to manage your carer or support worker network a bit easier through Maslow was really helpful. For me, it was super stressful because you've got multiple people coming into your house, helping out with personal care and tasks like that every single day. Hearing on the TV and on the internet, everything-- Don't come into contact with anybody within 1.5 meters, how is somebody going to help me with personal care, bearing that in mind. There was a very awkward and stressful and- I don't even know how to describe it. Quite an anxious time, I suppose. But having something like Maslow in my back pocket, and at my finger tips, to be able to see, look, this is something that can help me to stay motivated, stay engaged in the things that I can control, and what I can do, which was super beneficial during that time, so that's a bit of a shout out there to the tool there, from a user perspective.

Interviewer: Our next question is a little bit more granular in detail, from one of our guests. You're moving to a more core day response by the various health professionals, and, or the carers using your data portal. Can you elaborate on the details, as I can see many benefits?

Andrew: Yes, absolutely. At the moment, we've started having therapists from the other side of the portal and what we're seeing is that, it's exactly that, a more core-- So, for somebody that's living with high care needs or paralysis, that has ongoing care and rehab kind of needs, there's a lot of different touch points. It takes a team around you, and a coordination of that team in order to really get anything done effectively, and to really kind of meet some of the goals that you're after. We've recently started bringing on therapists to help contribute to, and input information into the in-home rehab content that a user is going to be following, and increasing that line of communication between those stakeholders has become added benefit for a lot of our users in the short term. In regards to other benefits that sit around there, it is our vision to bring care and rehab together in a single place. Care and rehab are not necessarily separate from one another, but are definitely intertwined. Some of the challenges with being able to do that at the moment come with dealing with multiple different stakeholders, a different care agency, a number of different carers, a number of groups focusing on different needs, but still contributing to what it means for you as an individual to meet your own personal goals. We can absolutely see many benefits that would sit around coordinating various stakeholders in a single place, and bringing all of that together.

Nitin: I think what I want to add onto is the crossover between care and rehab. Some of the comments around our users was that they have challenges explaining to their carers how to perform rehab or exercise routines that their therapist has told them to do, when they need to start their routine on their own, and need support from another individual. They find it difficult because of loss of hand function, to actually explain how the exercise is done. The value that some of the users have said to us is, it would be really valuable if there could be some content there to guide these carers on exactly how to do it, versus verbally trying to explain it, and not getting it through.

Interviewer: The next question is more around like a strategy. How does Maslow make money? What is your business model?

Andrew: Absolutely. Our initial business model that we're really executing at the moment, because we're designing for users first, going hand-in-hand with the NDIS, which is meant that users and participants have been able to make their own decisions about what supports are relevant to them as an individual, and their goals as an individual, where a subscription from Maslow is paid for and subsidized under an individual's NDIS budget. So, in terms of the business model, it's a B2C subscription that costs $0 to the consumer, that's covered by the NDIS budget. In terms of- logistically, we've proven it's been a small group so far that are paying for their annual subscription using their NDIS budget, and the engagement and the value being initially to the individual fits with that initial business model. In terms of in the long run, some of the opportunities that are opening up, in regards to access to data around compliance, around what types of programs and interventions fit best for what types of individuals, and the commercialization of that, we see this has been really pivotal in helping to support spinal cord injury research, and improvement of interventions in spinal cord injury. So we see ourself engaging with not only key clinics, but also insurance companies as well to understand, how can we support groups of people and reduce the amount of risk, and reduce the risk and cost associated with readmissions? So, whilst we're focusing on a B2C business model at the moment, which we're engaging and pushing for further sales in, we're also exploring some broader B2B opportunities, and opportunities to commercialize our data.

Interviewer: It's a follow up question to that that's been asked throughout our Zoom chat is, with paying customers, how long will it take to get to break even?

Andrew: Absolutely. Our break even mark on our current situation basis would be around the 1,200 user mark. What this says to us is, yes, we're focusing on a beachhead market at the moment of spinal cord injury, however, improving traction within the area of spinal cord injury, and getting support from organizations that focus on spinal cord injury, we will be diverging out to other condition types as well that have similar types of care needs, similar rehab needs, and that Maslow is solving similar problems for. So, in order to reach that sustainability mark, we are going to have to push to diversion conditions as well, and potentially international markets, which is the next part of our roadmap.

Interviewer: The next question is, "Hey, team Maslow, are there any regulatory challenges your team are currently experiencing, which may affect steps leading to commercialization?"

Andrew: Nitin, do you want to touch on any of this from the therapy space?

Nitin: Yes. So, currently, at the moment, we're not seeing any challenges in terms of regulations. Where we sit, the user pays for this application via the NDIS. We're a life management tool, a rehab care management tool, so that would fall under the low assistive tech budget, which requires no approval from the NDIS or no approval from a therapist. The user itself can actually pay for the application, and get on board, and ready to use it. So right now, as of what we're aware, there's no challenges yet.

Andrew: Some of the things that are on our radar for the next steps of growth are, we're operating in this territory of being a support tool at the moment, however, further down the track we want to look into being able to make sure that every single individual has access to the best possible research and interventions that are happening globally, not just the one that your individual therapist or clinician knows about. In order to step into that territory, we're going to look into FDA and CPG approval, so that we can really operate in that outcome space, and not just the support space.

Interviewer: The next question is a bit more casual. How was the name Maslow inspired?

Andrew: Nitin, do you want to jump in there?

Nitin: Yes. It actually originally started from our friend Kevin, more around just his story. He had a seven to eight year recovery after his traumatic injury, and he accounted a lot of his recovery to through his support network, being able to have the foundation set around managing his health and his care, which his family, friends were able to do for him. Because he had that foundation managed, he makes this comment that he was able to transcend and start working towards what he really wanted to do, which is getting back into university, getting back into work, and that conversation around transcendence sparked the conversation for us around Maslow. We realized that someone with a traumatic injury sits at the bottom of Maslow's pyramid, where they're really looking after, trying to manage their basic needs, health, safety, security, a lot of those foundational stuff, but for Kevin, as he was basically understanding how he needed to manage his health, he was able to transcend and move towards the top of Maslow's pyramid, where he wanted to focus on what he needed. That's how Maslow started. It's around getting people who had a traumatic injury from the bottom of Maslow's pyramid, to the top, where they can focus on what they need to do, and enjoy the rest of their life.

Interviewer: Beautiful. How can Maslow be used to assist the mental health of its users? Has there been thought around digital integration of mental health support, Telehealth, or apps for example, into the system?

Andrew: Yes, absolutely. Again, on the philosophy of Maslow's pyramid, our focus is on more than just physiological needs, but mental, and emotional, and personal needs as well. In regards to how that's accessed, we're creating a line of communication, not just with physical therapists, but with all therapists, and all therapy content as well, and we see mental health as being a very, very pivotal part of that. What Maslow enables, in terms of access to mental health is 24/7 kind of preventions, and 24/7 interventions, so that if something does come up on someone's radar, or someone actually does potentially call out or do something that flags that interventions could be appropriate, Maslow can enable those connections to Telehealth services like Mindsport or Headspace or any other appropriate bodies as well. For us, the most important thing that comes before that is that first level of engagement. Without something that is useful every single day in somebody's life, then we don't get those opportunities to identify opportunities for intervention or to connect the appropriate resources. We're filling the gap of something that's engaging every single day, that opens up a layer of being able to further integrate with some of those services like Headspace and Mindsport and the like.

Interviewer: Speaking of everyday, what's a day in the life looks like for somebody who's using Maslow?

Steve: I might take that if that's all right, guys . For me, it starts the moment you wake up. It's engaging in it in a way that brings your care team, which is your primary support workers that actually help to do some morning tasks with you to get you up and get ready for the day. Bringing them on board with the program, in terms of your support plan, what you need to do and then also engaging all your exercise and physical rehab goals in there as well, so at this stage that's what I'm usually primarily using that for. Because as we've gone through this COVID thing there's a shift towards Telehealth as well. It's more normalized, the use of things like this and I think that's been really helpful and that's another thing that I've looked to utilize it with. I suppose that's the day in the life of it, at this stage. Is there anything else you guys want to add to that, Nitin or Andrew?

Andrew: I would say in the long term one of the things that functionally Maslow is solving is there's a lot of resources out there, there's a lot of different care tutorials and there's also how you as an individual want to have your life set up and having something where that's all put in one place and forever whichever stakeholders you deal with, whether it's other therapists, new carers which will shift and change all the time. It's having all of that in a single place so that it's not about re-verbalizing and re-educating those conversations it's just about saying this is the reference material that will carry through to me for as long as it's relevant and making that as easy as possible.

Nitin: That would be actually quite important specifically- very important at the onset of the injury when they're discharged back home to the community, around understanding one of those foundational health things that they have to manage, and also what are those personal care routines they need to do to make sure they are managing their day in the morning and night appropriately.

Interviewer: How does the user access and get started using Maslow?

Andrew: Absolutely. At the moment, on our website, maslow.io, they can jump on there and sign up for the product now. They'll download a mobile app which we can support the onboarding of and ensure that they're set up nice and smoothly, as soon as they've been set up on the app any of their therapists, any of their carers, any of their care stakeholders or even the user themselves can contribute to what is their core rehab content in there or care content so that all of their care stakeholders can start seeing it in the same place wherever you go. Jump on the website and sign up, and we'll get them rolling from there.

Interviewer: In your pitch you mentioned that you've got a couple of users on board already. Since then, what has been your traction so far?

Andrew: Absolutely. Through our core user group one of the most important things that's been happening is many of them have quite excitedly started showing it to their carers, showing it to their therapists, and taking it back to the clinics. The interest from some of the key clinics in regards to spinal cord injury here in Australia has been quite high. We've had therapists that are jumping on and saying, "I can see the value of these and I want to use it with all of all my clients." At the moment, the word-of-mouth referrals are spreading like wildfire, and we're trying to manage all of that as a team. Yes, I would say that the traction beyond our core user base has been referrals to therapists, referrals to their clients, and an organic word-of-mouth set of referrals, but it's also gaining the interest of some of the key support organizations and clinics around Australia as well, which we're hoping to engage with as collaborators and as distributors in the near time.

Interviewer: Would you say therapists are your main target customer base, or?

Andrew: I would say that individuals that have suffered a traumatic injury and are living with rehabbing candidates are the primary user base, and the secondary user base are the stakeholders that sit around some of those individuals. Care is family and therapist, but primarily we're about bringing things together for the user first and putting the whole human first.

Interviewer: Great. What are your next steps as a team?

Andrew: In the short term we're tipping out of this MVP group testing and iterating with the product and getting to product-market fit. We feel confident that we've created something that's valuable for our target customers and that's evident through the referrals, the excitement, and the testimonials and the active usage. The next steps are about marketing and distributing this at scale, and that involves a couple of things. One, it involves formalizing partnerships with key clinics and support organizations, and really figuring out with them how we can do this to reach all of their customers in the way that we've reached our initial MVP group. Secondly, we're focusing on using digital marketing to make sure that we can reach everybody in Australia that could benefit from using Maslow.

Interviewer: I guess that answers part of the next question, which is what is the long-term vision for Maslow? Where do you want to be in five years?

Andrew: I think we've all probably got a point of view on that, and we'll have to see what the traction market tells us, in terms of the direction. You never know, there's going to be plenty of things that shift and change. The details of that such as a global pandemic or something like that but broadly we want to make sure that everybody who's living with paralysis or other care and rehab needs, that it's as easy as possible to manage all of that from home, and systematically changing the way that care and rehab is delivered from-- At the moment there's quite an emphasis on consultations and needing to be in the clinic to gain expertise and sometimes even basic info. We want to turn that on its head and make sure that that expertise is always accessible to every individual that needs it, regardless of ability. What about Nitin and Steve, do you guys have any thoughts on where we see ourselves in five years?

Steve: I'll go. For me, I think you're bang on with that, Andrew, in my opinion. I see just opening up the accessibility of health information for people, no matter where they live or their mobility requirements and things like that. I think that's where the real benefit for this comes and sort of where the value will be for people and the end-user. For example, you're sort of thinking about just something as an example, you've got specialist doctors that have to do regional trips in remote areas and things like that. That's basically been stripped out overnight with coronavirus, I think. Something like that, where it's just pushed the adoption of technology has actually really played to the strengths of something like this and it shows that it can be done. I think that's where the benefit of Maslow will be to people, is the fact that you can bring things into the home where it's easily managed and where it's accessible in a timely manner. Where there's information and education around chronic injuries or conditions where you need ongoing interventions or management. It gives that timely you're not waiting for the ones you trip out where the doctor can see you or your six-monthly visit, you can actually give that 360 degree feedback to your care network on the go, and I think that's amazing. As we said in the video, I was readmitted for something that had I a bit more awareness and education around, I could have stayed out of hospital, you know what I mean? That's huge. That took me a huge back step in my recovery, and that's very common for people with spinal cord injury to be readmitted for things because your life's turned upside down overnight and you've got to just learn all these things on the go, and it's overwhelming, and it's emotional, and it's hard and it's something you don't want to have to deal with but you just need to bite the bullet and deal with it. To make that easier and more accessible and I think to push that forward, I think that's in five years time to see that higher adoption rate of technology like Maslow in the hands of people that need it, I think is where we want to be.

Nitin: For me, as a clinician- and Steve touched on it, around readmitting back into the hospital and it being a step back, a lot of the reasons people who have a spine injury readmitted to the hospital are for preventable conditions. I was recently talking to a therapist at one of the- Prince of Wales hospital. They did a study where 75 of their patients, retrospectively they looked, was admitted with a pressure sore, which is avoidable. The total bed stay was 20 years. Their comment to me was if we could just remind them to reposition, or someone did a skin check that potentially could have been prevented. Ideal world is if we can just structure some of the basic health routines to ensure it's being managed hopefully we could prevent readmissions and management of health in a better way in the community.

Interviewer: Do we have a question around stakeholder engagement? Are there any stakeholders in the health/medical sector you wish to connect through to, that have been difficult to reach?

Andrew: Yes, I would say one of our key asks and next steps being to start partnering with some of these key clinics and key support organizations. On our radar is we really want to be collaborating with Royal Rehab. We see Royal Rehab as an almost world leading institution in regards to rehabilitation and predischarge education. We see Maslow as being an opportunity to help therapists, clinicians and people that have suffered a traumatic injury. You'd be prepared for the transition from the clinic to home. So that they're taking all of that expertise and all of the great work that all of the therapists and clinicians do is going home with every single person that's discharged out of rehab hospital. I would say yes on our radar, Royal Rehab as a collaborator would be really, really valuable. If anyone has any introductions to leadership from Royal Rehab, we'd love to make an introduction. Some other examples of the support organizations that really do share envisioning us or with us, such as Spinal Cord Injuries Australia who advocate for ensuring that everybody living with a spinal cord injury in Australia has the support- has the tools and has the information that they need to live a holistic and fulfilling life. In terms of vision alignment, we are very, very focused on that and that's what we believe in as well. We'd love to look for opportunities to distribute and partner with them. Beyond that, any of the key clinics that focus on paralysis and neurological conditions. To name a few, NeuroMoves, there's some therapists from NeuroMoves using our product as we speak, Making Strides and any of the other neuro and paralysis support clinics that exist as well.

Steve: Just to back up what you're saying, Andrew. Through my rehab journey, I went through Royal Rehab and have to definitely give a shout out to them, in terms of the programs and the education that they do provide while you're inpatient and all of it. If you could remember all of it, it'd be amazing. As we've got on it's super traumatic and you've gone through this life changing moment. Everything's a bit of a blur at that point. There's so much to take on board. To be able to like put that into a digestible and accessible way for people that they can take all that home with them and put that into place when they go back into the community. When they go to move on with their life, I think that's where it's super critical . That's a huge opportunity and would be of great benefit to people with spinal cord injury.

Andrew: Certainly. I think something really important to call out is in no way are we trying to replace the role of the therapist. We see what we're doing as enhancing the relationship between a therapist and an individual and all of the stakeholders that sit around our user base. It's about increasing the shelf life of all the really critical knowledge that therapists have built up over time. Making sure that that knowledge doesn't disappear as soon as the user leaves the clinic or leaves the rehab hospital. That it can actually follow somebody home and be accessible every single day, not just to a user, but to their carers and to their family, everybody that is involved in supporting somebody through the rehabilitation and care process.

Interviewer: The next question is just around personal data and collection of personal data for your users that you show application, what personal data does Maslow collect about end users, and how do you use that data?

Andrew: Yes, absolutely. One is something that we've really got an emphasis on is security of individuals' personal data. Secondly, that sharing in opting in to sharing that data with stakeholders and other relevant parties is entirely user driven. That sits at the forefront of everything we do. However, it's also using that data to support the individual themselves. For example, adherence data. A in home program may be recommended by a therapist. The therapist might seek to support that they do IMT respiratory triage training every day with their carer at home. Things like adherence data become really, really important, not just for therapists and and the broader ecosystem but to help motivate users and to help actually see the small and incremental improvements that are being made in health and that are being made through rehab. I don't know about anyone else who's listening, but I'm personally a huge sucker for a good run streak in my Dualingo or another type of app. It's using adherence data and using the goals that have been set out by our users enables us to gamify being healthy, and gamify rehabilitation, and increase motivation and provide transparency into what's actually happening. Because it's very, very easy to forget that some of the little improvements that they made, it's very easy to not to recognize those but through adherence data and through user goal data, we're able to actually play that back to users and really show progress and show improvements to keep people motivated.

Nitin: I don't know if it's worth mentioning also like the feedback and being able to track that over history of comments.

Andrew: Yes absolutely. I mean for anyone it's really hard to say in an instant "Where was I exactly one year ago?" What were my goals a year ago and what was I sticking to? How hard was it? It's being able to really compare where you are now, that is where you were three months ago, six months ago. It gives that lens to show that you are making progress. You are making improvements and you are moving closer to your goals and life is getting easier and you're freeing up time.

Steve: Also to add to that, that's relevant to anybody in any walk of life. After spinal cord injury, I don't know if anybody who's listening if they've ever fractured their ankle or done some sort of damage like that where you've gone to a physio and they've gone, "Right here are your exercises for six weeks and you've got to stick to that." That is super incredibly tough to stick to. I think just having that internal motivation to keep on track with that. That's over a short period where you know things are going to get better and you can feel it and you can see it getting better, and you know it's going to be an endpoint but with a spinal cord injury, currently there's no treatment for it. You've got a potentially lifelong journey with this injury and without any kind of motivation, that gets pretty old pretty quick. I think to make this kind of more adherent and by gamifying it like that, by keeping people engaged and motivated, you're going to get such better outcomes in the long-term because it's a snail's pace for the rehab. You don't see leaps and bounds overnight. You need to keep at it, sustain it and high repetitions of everything. That's where you see the benefits over time.

Interviewer: Yes definitely I agree on that point, just have experience in myself in breaking my own arm. Having physio definitely needed Maslow back then to help me to keep on top of things. Our next questions are around partnerships. Have you ever considered partnerships with any indigenous health groups?

Andrew: Yes. I mean first and foremost, what we value as Maslow is providing equal access to health care for everybody, regardless of ability. That also means embracing all types of diversity and ability, whether it's cultural, whether it's physical, whether it's socioeconomic or whether it's geographical. One of the things that we see Maslow enabling is better access to best practice, health information in rural and remote areas. We see this as being a potential value and a potential opportunity to collaborate with indigenous support organizations as well. Some of the things that we've heard from our users across Australia are that for those that may have suffered a traumatic injury in rural areas, they tended to be a little bit of a fork in the road and that fork in the road looks like A, do I relocate to one of the key institutions in Sydney like Royal Rehab so that I can get best practice therapy, and I can make that accessible to myself, but you know, pick up my entire life and completely change. Or do I, B, stay somewhere that might be more rural and remote and have access to only two therapists, none of which may have ever worked with some of the spinal cord injury ever in their life before. We saw this as quite problematic. We also saw this as an opportunity where remote interventions like Maslow can help level out that playing field, so that it doesn't matter if you're next-door to Royal Rehab or a NeuroMoves or somewhere that there's real expertise on the table, or it doesn't matter if you're somewhere remote or rural, where they may not be as much expertise. It still provides equal access to best practice health education, an equal playing field when it comes to educating care in terms of what you should be doing, and an equal playing field in terms of just answering questions about what it means to manage your health and manage your condition.

Nitin: Just on that note, Andrew, one of our users, their therapist is moving to the US this week, an unfortunate random time to go, but he’s moving forward for job reasons, but he's managing his client from the US. He's going to remotely provide home exercise programs for that individual to follow and track his progress while in the US.

Steve: There are so many aspects to Maslow, so it's not just the personal care, it's not just the exercise and it's not just the education stuff. There's different aspects that are relevant to different people in rural or remote areas. Because when I had my injury, I was living in a regional Western Australian town and I-- [sound cut]

Andrew: That's really interesting. A global pandemic is a really interesting example of that. However interestingly enough, prior to COVID happening, our conversations with therapists and our push for them adopting remote health tools, was a very new and novel concept. It was very much like, that seems like a really good idea for our users, but I as a therapist don't necessarily need to do this at the moment. It was a more challenging conversation prior to COVID. However, on the side of our users who were the ones that were going home, losing access to therapists, they were very much advocating for, pre-COVID, I need access to best practice information at home. COVID is an example of something that disrupted that. Instead of having a challenging conversation with therapists about adopting digital tools, the lens completely changed. Therapists were now speaking to us and saying, how can I continue to access my clients in the home who can no longer come and visit me in the clinic? That was something that turned the market on its head, and in terms of what we're doing really highlighted the value proposition of remote health and proved that it's not just a luxury or it's not just a novelty, but it's a necessity, going into the future. That's a disruption in more recent experience.

Interviewer: We've already spoken just about your future plans in the next five years, of what you think you guys would look like in the next five years, or in five years’ time, sorry. Just in the meantime, what are you hoping to achieve, let's say over the next 18 months?

Andrew: Anything from your side, in regards to therapy or customers?

Nitin: Well, for us, it's just about scaling our adoption with our user bases. We’re really doubling down on that management of the home exercise programs, and being able to track and comply with that. Then starting to partner with institutions that are supporting people with a spinal injury in the community and managing their rehab and their health. Andrew, anything else on your end?

Andrew: Yes. For me, the, one of the things that keeps me going is our conversations with our initial user base and seeing the happiness in the stories that are coming from them, in regards to not only what Maslow is now, but also what it could be in the future around saving time or just-- We had one user saying they’re more confident throughout the day that he's done everything. He doesn't have to think about it anymore. That's huge for us, and for the short-term. In terms of the next goal, it's about making sure that we can scale that to everybody- to everyone we want to see that value as well, not just the people that we can reach, but the people that are experiencing similar types of challenges to the ones that we're trying to address. For us, it means breaking out of the pilot product market fit kind of mindset and really leveraging scale distribution channels, partnerships and reaching people everywhere, making it as easy as possible for them to say those benefits as well.

Speaker 3: Within investment in mind, will you be seeking to raise money? How much and when?

Andrew: Yes, absolutely. We're starting to build relationships with investors now, especially those that are focused on the digital health space. Whilst we're not going to be seeking investment right now, as we start growing our user base and showing a more natural sense of traction and customer acquisition, we will be engaging investors to open up a seed round. We'd be looking to use that seed round to support our growth to our next thousand customers over the course of about 9 to 12 months. What that would look like is approximately $500,000 seed rounds to gain that support, which we’ll be seeking in the near future, but at the moment, it's just about showing that way, continuing to acquire more customers, that there is a valid need in the market and that we are able to onboard a scale. That seed investment would be about accelerating that marketing, accelerating that reach. It also accelerates the return on investment.

Interviewer: Sorry. Next question is a bit more generally, how is your project any different to existing verbal based applications like Siri or Alexa?

Andrew: In regards to that, I think that's a really interesting point. It's voice enabled software like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant that have actually enabled something like Maslow and made it more normal and commonplace. During our customer research, we learned that most of- well, actually all of the young people that had suffered, or especially younger people in the millennial age bracket, that have suffered a spinal cord injury or that are experiencing some kind of paralysis, all of them brought on a Google home and Alexa or Siri as a means of interacting with their wider environment. It's been a huge enabler for people that are living with interactivity challenges or mobility challenges. In terms of how what we're doing is different, we're integrating with those platforms to create new users for them. We're turning the Google Home via Alexa and Siri into something that you can not only turn your lights on and off with and create reminders with, but now something that you can coordinate with your entire care team around, that you can communicate with your therapists around, and that you can wake up and be confident that you're doing everything you need to do with their help around. It works in conjunction with hardware and software like that, not in replacement of.

Interviewer: Is there anybody else that's operating in the same space, and how are you different, if there are?

Nitin: I think I might mention around currently what the status quo looks like, and currently at the moment, in terms of education and the state that you might be able to mention as well, we provided folders, which a lot of the young people would've worked with haven't actually opened, in terms of information around health and how to manage that. Some of the pamphlets as well, which can be challenging to transfer over to a family or to an individual. Beyond that, the therapist's relationship is quite verbal, so we educate verbally to our patients, and then the patient will go back to their home and then converse that same message toward carer or family. I'm saving anything on your note form that end.

Steve: Yes, I guess just to add to what you're saying. The relationship that you have with your support network is super informal, and this gives a platform so people can engage with it, in terms of of your close friends, or your family, or your partner that need to be across the things that you also need to be across, in terms of like that early discharge stuff, like you're mentioning. It just helps to bring everybody together on the same page there, and as you were saying, Nitin, it doesn't really- when you're asking the question around Siri, Alexa, et cetera-- It doesn't, yes, like you're saying, Andrew, it doesn't replace it. It sort of sits underneath that and works with that to enhance the applications of that. I think it's more tailored in terms of your care needs and what you need as opposed to trying to put the user in a place where they have to think of all the applications that they could potentially be utilizing something like Siri for. This kind of puts it into a box and says, "Right, here's a package of things that kind of help you to be in the driver seat when it comes to understanding and moving forward with your rehab needs." It just packages it in a way that makes it more accessible, understandable, and doesn't leave you in the dark, in terms of like what are the- out of the billions of functions of Siri, what are the ones that I could use, how can I apply those? It kind of just like puts that into a box that makes it more accessible and understandable, for somebody with an injury.

Andrew: In regards to- I think it's worth touching on what the market of digital products that are focusing on spinal cord injury education has looked like so far as well. Traditionally, it's in clinics and research institutions that have tried to spin up some things that helps build access to in-home interventions and in-home education for people that are living with spinal cord injury. The challenge with that is that traditionally, research institutions and clinics will go, "All right, let's do a six-month trial. We'll bring in a couple of clinicians. We'll do a lot of legwork, in terms of theoretically what we can do." When that trial's over- see all laid out, the clinic runs the IP, it never gets spun out. That's one of the biggest challenges in this space. However, many of those trials have shown that in-home visual interventions, like the ones that we're building, do in fact improve health that comes in the long run. They do in fact increase adherence, and they do in fact reduce cost for the health care system. The difference that we have is we've got everything that we need at our disposal in terms of our team to actually drive this and the incentive to do so. We're coming from an area of putting the user first. Some of the things that the clinicians and the clinical institutions don't prioritize that enable engagements, such as designing for the user first as a user-driven tool- it's about your life, not as a clinical diagnostic tool, are some of the things that we prioritize as a team. That combination of digital product expertise, the lived experience, and experience going through the rehabilitation system, and also having the clinical and therapy mindset, we have that in a way that's unique and that clinics don't necessarily have to roll out a tool like this.

Nitin: Andrew, I think it's probably important to comment as well that a lot of their research projects in the past that was involved in this space didn't actually have specialized designing tech teams to scale this out, which is the element that we have within our team, which is it's a combination of clinical design and tech skills.

Andrew: Yes, absolutely.

Interviewer: We've reached towards the end of the Q&A session. Just want to thank all our guests for attending and for reaching out to team Maslow with your questions. The team actually has a little small ask of you now.

Andrew: Yes. A little bit of shameless self-promotion. Connect with us on our socials. Follow our individual LinkedIn profiles and our company profile so that we can expand our network through yours as well, because you never know who might be on the other side of your network that we really, really need to meet. Go to maslow.io/onaccelerate, it will have all of our social links there. LinkedIn and Instagram are probably our biggest priorities. Two is, right off the bat, if you can share the post on that landing page through your networks, that would be really valuable for us. It calls out some of the things that we're looking for. It calls out where we're at in our journey. You never know who's going to see it, but might be really valuable for us in terms of relationships and bringing Maslow to the next level. Finally, if you're on the call and you're listening and you're interested in engaging with us, don't be shy. Reach out. My email's there on the screen. You can contact us that way. You can hit us up on LinkedIn and message us. We will respond because we are actively seeking new users to use the product, that's primary users, therapists, and carers. We're actively seeking partnerships through the health ecosystem, such as with some of those key clinics that we mentioned like Royal Rehab, NeuroMoves and Making Strides. We're also looking into how we ensure that we scale this in the right way, financially and commercially, and anyone who could help us in that expertise in commercializing digital health products. That would be really valuable. Although we're not raising money right now, we are building relationships with the right investors that can bring the right skills and resources to the table. If you know anyone that's interested in the digital health space, which is going to be the new normal post this pandemic, we'd love to be introduced to them so that we can work together to scale what we're doing and impact young people and, well, everyone living with various conditions and care needs globally .

Interviewer: A final thank you to everybody and all our guests that have attended and shared their questions for team Maslow, just remember again to connect with Maslow and to share the love. [laughs] Any final remarks from you, guys?

Nitin: Thanks for everyone for attending. It's been fun, it's been great. Looking forward to potentially connecting with anyone interested in having a chat.

Steve: Yes, just take care with that. Thanks very much, everybody. Appreciate as well.

Interviewer: Thank you.

Andrew: Yes, really appreciate everyone being here. [00:58:14] [END OF AUDIO]