The First Customer - Orchestrating Mental Health Masterplan with CTO and Co-founder Mark Allen

[00:00:27] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name's Jay Aigner. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Mark Allen. He is the co founder and CTO of Cobalt, a pretty cool platform that is growing in popularity. So, we met through, you know, mutual connections and his, you know, a bunch of businesses he's worked with.

So, Mark, thanks for being on buddy. How are you?

[00:00:46] Mark: Yeah, I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:49] Jay: Yeah, man. so where did you grow up? I know you're, we're not too far away from each other now, I think, but where'd you grow up and did that have any impact on you being an entrepreneur later?

[00:00:58] Mark: sure. so in a way, it kind of did. so I grew up in Bluebell, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, about a, you know, half hour, 40 minutes outside.and then in 2015, I moved to Conshohocken, PA, which is another Philly suburb, a little bit closer to the city.and, I mentioned Conshohocken because that is where I met my wife and she owns a couple of businesses in Conshohocken and I had, I didn't really have much of an entrepreneurial streak.

Until I met her. so, she really kind of taught me to start thinking and things of in terms of like, you know, hey, you can have your own business and stuff like that. And we had an opportunity to do that, and software here. Me and my partner, Mark Spence. So, we took it and ran with it 2021. So here we are.

[00:01:41] Jay: And what is Cobalt for those who do not know?

[00:01:44] Mark: Yeah. So Cobalt is it's a mental health software as a service platform. And the idea is that like a health care institution can take it and use it to service its own employees who may be struggling with mental health issues. The reason this came about, and I'm sure we'll get into this a little bit, was COVID was a very stressful time for health care providers.

So they're out there, you know, working 90 hour weeks, and they were trying to You know, help patients, but they themselves were experiencing, like, you know, burnout, depression, like, high levels of stress and anxiety.so pen, And wanted to figure out, like, how do we help our own people and conceptually what, what Cobalt does it gives you, makes it very easy to book, like, one on one appointments with health care providers and in your own system, you can get access to things like group sessions that are hosted by people in the system, self guided resources, you can take clinical assessments to learn more about what's going on with you and figure out, like, the right level of care for you.

That's kind of the product in a nutshell.

And where did the name Cobalt come from? from way back at the beginning of the project. we're trying to exude this feeling of, I don't know, like calmness, like sereneness. You can see other players in the space. Like there's one called calm, for example. they all try to have, these visuals that make you feel relaxed. And the idea of like, Oh, like the Cobalt shade of blue is a very relaxing.

Shade of blue, came up with like a neat little logo for it. And that's kind of what stuck. So Cobalt is kind of like a, the pen version of Cobalt is that same relaxing blue, other institutions of white labeled it with different colors. So the name makes a little less sense, but that's the idea.

like you said, if it was born during COVID, very common. Problem, I guess, or, you know, situation that mental health becomes a, and it's nice that it's just become more and more kind of mainstream, I guess, like taking care of people and their mental health, how competitive is the space and did that competition also kind of continue to grow as COVID and you guys, we came out of it and like, you know, we're now in the post COVID world, whatever that means. is there a lot of competition in the space?

there's a lot of like, I would say like adjacent competition. Like we're solving a much more, I guess, like directed competition. Problem where it's like your system, and you're bringing your own providers and your own resources to help your own employees. a lot of who I guess we'd consider as competitors.

It's more like the better helps of the world where, it's not your own people. It's just like, you get out your phone, and you're just texting with some random therapist that you've never met across the country. so it's, They have, I would say, like an easier path to, to scale because it's go just plug in any person doesn't matter who it is, but this is more of a, you know, we maybe don't scale as well, but I feel like we provide a more effective, you know, treatment mechanism, like someone who's working.

Nearby you. It's not someone you know, necessarily. It's, you know, someone who works in the same kind of environment is going to be able to empathize with you better, like, understand the things that you're going through as opposed to someone, you know, 3000 miles away who doesn't know you at all.

[00:04:53] Jay: Got it. No, that makes sense. Um,so talk, let's talk a little bit about your background. I mean, you were, you're a software guy, you're the CTO. what was your journey from, you know, growing up in, in Bluebell and kind of, you know, just the outskirts of Philadelphia? how did you get into tech and what was your kind of, you know, a cliff note version of how you got to where you are today?

[00:05:16] Mark: Sure. So I was actually really fortunate, even though I went to public school, had some really great teachers that were very, I would say, like, tech forward. when I was in third grade, this is probably like 19 1990 or something like that. yeah. I remember there was one in particular that, she had, you know, in her classroom, there was a computer that had a modem and she could connect to online service like prodigy.

Like, I remember, like, the web wasn't even a thing yet until I want to say, like, 90, 91 or 92. but. You know, she had this and she encouraged the students to work with it. And I had, I think my fifth grade teacher was kind of similar where she had computers in her room. So really fortunate there to have like encouraging public school teachers, that really got me like turned on.

And it was like, Whoa, this is so cool. It's like this whole other world. And, it mapped very well to, I think, how my mind works. it's all I've ever really wanted to do with myself is do software. It's the one thing that really makes sense to me. Like my wife will tell you, I'm like, All thumbs dealing with anything mechanical, like, you know, you, you give her like a machine that's broken and she could just like walk up to it and fix it without thinking about it.

I can't, but a software is just always something that made sense to me. And that's what I'm really passionate about what I enjoyed doing. So, I went to school for computer science, at RIT, Rochester, New York. And, I was hired out of school. I did a couple of internships at Merck. They're like up in, like Lansdale, PA area.

So I did a couple of internships there. they offered me a job out of school and, I was there writing software for them, like from day one, once I was out of school. I was there for a year and a half and I kind of got Poached by, my current employer transmogrify, which was, it was two guys, Mark Spence and Ed Watkies.

They were working as consultants at Merck and our paths had crossed once or twice.and they approached me like, Hey, we're like, we're starting a consulting agency. do you want to come along for the ride? So I was like, yeah, okay. You know, you know, like whatever, 20, 23, 24, like, let's do it.

It sounds fun. You know, it's risky, but. You know, it sounds like a good opportunity and I've been there ever since. I mean, it's been over 17 years cause the work never gets old of, you know, being a tech consultant, but I really prepared me well, I think for what I ended up doing with Cobalt.

[00:07:28] Jay: That's awesome. Um,the part where your wife owned a couple of businesses and kind of convinced you or enlightened you, or however you want to say it of, you know, consulting and doing your own thing is Maybe the way forward. Tell me a little more about that. Like, did she, was it kind of just a natural progression of conversations and you're seeing what she's doing or like, how did like kind of her entrepreneurial thing, not rub off, but how did you kind of grow from that into being your own entrepreneur?

It's an interesting, like kind of, you know, fast forward along until you kind of hit, you know, your thirties or whatever it was, and you're like, Oh, now I have the experience. She's doing it. You know, I guess I could do it. Like, tell me a little bit more about like that actual story.

[00:08:12] Mark: Sure. So her path was, interesting. Like, so her parents are both doctors. She originally was going to med school and then, you know, she was doing things to prepare. Like, she was like, oh, volunteering as an EMT. And she's like, I can't like. Be around, you know, like surgeries and blood and things like, I don't want to do, you know, being a medical doctor is not for me.

So she got a degree in business and then went on to run a pretty big retail stores as a career. And then maybe, I guess it's over 11 years ago at this point, you know, she walked away from, you know, doing really well for herself, but it wasn't what she really loved to do.so she's like, you know what, I'm just gonna, You know, walk away from, you know, like six for your job.

And, I'm going to figure out how to run a coffee business. Something that's really, you know, I've always been passionate about. She grew up in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. so the coffee's always been a big part of her life. And so she just sort of, she's like, Hey, you know, why not? She's like a terrific, like problem solver.

It's like, you know, MacGyver. And so she started that business. yeah. She's expanded to do all sorts of things. You know, she roasts her own coffee. Now she has her own, like, you know, kitchen, other locations. She has a, she just opened a year and a half ago, a Brazilian bakery also in Concha Hock and, you know, and, but anyway, like, just even before the Brazilian bakery, you know, she gave me the entrepreneurial bug because it's a good, you know, Picture of like, like, why not me?

Like for her, it's like, you know, why not? I could just go and do this. And I never really thought in those terms. I was always like, okay, both my parents and my brother, you know, they just have like white collar jobs, you know, they, you know, live in a really nice house and everything, but if they don't. In my head, I guess I was just, I never really thought about it.

It sounds stupid now that I'm older, but it's like, I was just like, Oh, that's how it works. It's just like, you know, you have the one house, you know, and you have the white collar job and you do that until it's time to retire.

[00:10:08] Jay: Right,

[00:10:09] Mark: And then I'm just like, wow, you know, I could, you know, why not me? Like, I feel like I'm pretty good at this stuff.

Like I could go out and give it a shot and do my own thing. And I really like to do that. I mean, it's a lot of work and a lot of stress. Cause I, you know, see with her, like you have to deal with so much stuff as a business owner. but it was just like, She was a great example there. Cause it was just like, I could see the ins and outs of everything, you know, like dealing with the lawyers, accountants, you know, all the moving parts of running a business.

I'm like, Hey, you know, if she can do this. I can, you know, I can use her as a sounding board for stuff. It's like, she didn't have the same support that I do now. Like she had to figure everything out on her own. She had a much harder path. so, yeah, just watching her, it was like, wow, that's really.

You know, inspirational, I suppose. Maybe think about things in a different way.

[00:10:53] Jay: And how do you, how does that relationship work today? Like, is it, uh,it's funny cause it's almost the opposite. My wife, is working on a business with one of her friends and she comes to me and it's an interesting dynamic where you have to like be husband, but like not be business guy and then like be business guy and not, and you have to say things like you normally wouldn't like probably say, because, you know, so how does that dynamic work with you guys?

Is there like stuff that's just. Do you just ask whatever and she gives you advice for whatever, or is it all like unsolicited, what's the actual relationship?

[00:11:26] Mark: No, I mean, it works pretty well because she's a very, I'd say very blunt and very direct. So there's no, you know, like tiptoeing around things. It's like, things aren't really off limits, which is nice. It's kind of refreshing. so we have pretty direct conversations. The biggest thing that's tricky is that our worlds are so different.

and, but at the same time, it's like, she can still, you know, she can give good advice to me. And I, Vice versa. I hope I'm giving good advice to her when she asked about things for a sounding board. so, we can't get into, like, the technical nitty gritty of each other's businesses, but we can talk more like high level about things.

Or if we, you know, like, oh, you know, this lawyer was great to work with, you know, you guys should check them out like that kind of stuff. it's nice to.

[00:12:10] Jay: No, that is, it sounds like a good balance. and speaking of balance, how have you balanced, you know, keeping your nine to five and being such a big, you know, important part of obviously of transmogrify I've been there for like 17 years, I think you said, that's a long time, have they given you kind of the freedom to do it as you've just been like after hours, like what's the actual, like Here's how I went out and built this business while I'm working a nine to five.

[00:12:35] Mark: So it's, the reason it can work is because, Mark Spence, who owns Transmogrify. He's my partner in Cobalt. So, The idea is that, you know, transmogrify does consulting work and that can sort of, we do some Cobalt consulting work through transmogrify. So it's like, I can kind of pay my own way doing the day job.

and then we're trying to grow the portion of the pie that is the Cobalt work to take over all of the transport. Like, There are a couple of big clients for transmogrify that I think would never go away. Like that's going to stay around for, you know, you know, hopefully another 17 years. but, yeah, we can, that's really the only reason we could get away if it were, there's too much to do for it to be like a nights and weekends thing.

And just because Mark is, we're on the show at transmogrify and as a partner in Cobalt, like he has a vested interest in seeing Cobalt succeed as well. So we get lucky in that respect.

[00:13:29] Jay: No, it sounds like a good, it sounds like a good recipe, for success. so, Was Penn the first customer for you guys? Who was the first customer for Cobalt? How did you get them just in, like, I'm curious, like, did you build a platform first? Did you have the problem first? Like, what was the order of operations?

[00:13:47] Mark: So I don't know how helpful this advice is going to be for your. Listeners, but, the reason we got the work at Penn was, at the beginning of the pandemic, this was in, geez, it must have been February of 2020 late February, early March, the first week of March or something like that. We got a call from a friend of ours, Roy Rosen.

He's the chief innovation officer at Penn Medicine. We've worked with him forever. You know, he used to run, you know, quicken it into it. Like he's like an old school Silicon Valley, you know, startup guy. but now, you know, he works at Penn Medicine. We've been doing work at Penn Medicine, like various projects for them for seven, eight years.

So pandemic starts. I remember because we were, my wife's house at the time. We were like laying down new floor in her kitchen. Get this phone calls. The guy better take this. So, you know, it's Roy. and he was like, Hey, we need to, we have the green light. Now, like, funds have been released to build a system that does this.

And he described Cobalt. We need it like yesterday, but realistically, you know, can you guys do this in two weeks, like build the whole thing?so just talking to Mark Spence and, you know, Joe Fritz, a person, that it was like a Sunday afternoon or something that we got this and just thinking about the go cheese, like we're to do this in two weeks.

It's going to be like 78 hours, weeks. we're going to have to clear the decks and figure this out. So, and I was just like, you know, let's do it. And you just don't think about like, you know, We really trust Roy and Roy's coming here asking us to do this. So like, let's do it and not look back. so in that way, Penn was our first customer.

and it really was having established relationships, like. And doing that, I mean, like, it requires a lot to establish relationships and so you have to hit it off with the people that you work with. But you also, like, you need to make sure you can deliver. Like, Roy really trusted us because we had like a track record.

We've worked with him before and we always deliver on things for him. So that really, the trick is getting your foot in the door. And luckily we had the foot in the door through him. So he. Brought us on. He was like, okay, good. Let's have these guys do it. And you know, the rest is history.

[00:16:05] Jay: And how has that changed as far as you're, I mean, you're not going to get a call, every Sunday for somebody to be your next big client, but how has that client acquisition process matured as you guys have gotten, you know, your feet under you,

[00:16:20] Mark: So that's one of the things that we are figuring out. We've engaged, like we're putting feelers out with some marketing firms to help us with this or some sales firms. because it's a very like highly specialized, very specific space. it's not like, Oh, we like slap up a website and then people find us organically.

it's more like, it is very much like a relationships business. And the, because it is like academia, or most of the medical centers are like related with like an academic institution. it's very like weirdly incestuous. so the way that we've grown outside of Penn is by, you know, people like People we've worked with at Penn actually leaving Penn to go to another institution, or it's like people, at other institutions, like talking with their colleagues at Penn and they like hear about us.

So we get super lucky in that, like, Hey, we're doing something right. And then people are like stumbling on us, which is great. But if we had a better strategy, which is something like our new year's resolution for 2024 is figure out a better way to like, okay, let's get some like real actual salespeople who know what they're doing in here.

Put ourselves out there because if we're doing this, well, just like kind of like almost like word of mouth.I think there's a lot of upside there to have someone help. but it's tricky because the sales cycles are so long. there's, you know, it's not like, oh, you know, go to the website and, you know, click a few times and, you know, sign up.

Like, it doesn't work. Like, HR department is not going to go through that process to roll some product out to their employees. There's a lot of like legal stuff that has to happen. You know, yeah. a million little things that need to happen. so that's another thing we're going to look at.

Optimizing is how to shorten the sales cycle.

[00:18:02] Jay: Would you have done anything differently? If you had to start over tomorrow with this platform that you guys did.

[00:18:12] Mark: that's a good question. I would say, I feel like we got a lot of the considering how quickly we built it. Initially, we got a ton of the details, right? And for example, the product is built to be like, you know, not specific to pen. It's like institution agnostic. And we did that from like day one, we built it thinking like, Hey, this might go out of pen, even though we only have a very short time to build it.

Like, let's do it in the, I'm called like a generic way.and that has really paid off for us. The one that just like one example of things that like, Oh, you in hindsight, it's like, I can't believe we did that. That was a great idea. It worked out the thing that we did not do that. I would like to. Have redone is, having really good analytics day one.

So it's like now we have a much better solution in place to it's like information in the aggregate, like what are people, you know, what parts of the site are people using, you know, like how to do data analysis, all that kind of stuff. When we launched, it was like, let's just like slap Google analytics up there and call it a day.

And like, we have to focus on other things. I really would have liked in hindsight, it's like, cause once the time passes, you can't go. You know, back into history and be like, Oh, you know, like let's track all the stuff. It's like we missed the opportunity. So that's the big thing for me that they're missing analytics, from the earlier, like, you know, the first like year or two of the, this is, I mean, analytics are there, just not to the level that we would like them.

That's something that I would like to redo if we could.

[00:19:43] Jay: who is your, ideal customer?

[00:19:48] Mark: I think it's, health systems that take the product seriously. and I think, you know, Just a Dartmouth, Dartmouth health is 

[00:19:58] Jay: saw that Yeah. I saw it. It's very cool.

[00:20:00] Mark: yeah. just using as an example here, they, they hired people to. You know, to be like full time, like working, you know, on the platform, like, you know,you know, psychotherapists,social workers, you know, a psychiatrist as well.

And they have dedicated people that are set up to work on Cobalt, which is like a huge investment on their part. It's a bit of a risk. Like, you know, from our part, it's like, awesome. Like we're really jazzed. Like you guys are. Taking this so seriously, they think about stuff, they'll like pitch things to us.

And they're really like, they're always really well thought out. I was like, Hey, like we would like to, you know, do X, Y, Z. Is that something you guys support? Sometimes it's like, yes, we do that. Other times it's like, no, we don't do that, but that's a really great idea. So, and so then we work on, you know, collaboratively with them.

It's like, we'll design how it's going to look, you know, our designer and walk through with them. They give feedback and it's like, okay, cool. We're going to build this out. so just like having institution that's excited about and like, like excited about helping people. It's not just like, you know, it could be something and just.

Making this up, but like, you know, it could be an institution. It's like, oh, we just want to check off this HR checkbox. Like, yeah, we're, you know, we're helping our employees. We, you know, we just threw some money at these, you know, these people. We don't really care. Dartmouth in particular is just like, wow, they really are making an investment and they really, they care about it.

And it's re it's really exciting

[00:21:22] Jay: That is cool. I can stickiness of a product like that. I mean, just exponentially increases if people are hiring people to, to You know, specifically to work through your platform. that's a pretty cool model. all right. Last question. non business related. If you could do anything on earth and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?

[00:21:47] Mark: to do anything on earth. And I knew I couldn't fail. I think I would.

I would like to spend the rest of my life traveling and living in different parts of the world. let me say like, like getting your BNB for a month and, you know, like, you know, Barcelona or whatever, just hang there, eat all the food, drink all the drinks, experience what life is like there, and then it's like, okay, you know, so next month, like, let's go to like New Delhi, India or whatever, and check that out.

It was just like,

[00:22:19] Jay: love that.

[00:22:21] Mark: see the world. I don't know, like have, it's almost like a food or travel blog or something like that. I would love to, you know, have something to document all the things like, Oh, you did this really cool, you know, this really cool pastry shop. And, you know, here are the pictures of the things that we ate.

if I could just do that and. Succeed at it. And that paid the bills. that would be for me, that would be a ton of fun. My wife would enjoy that as well.

[00:22:45] Jay: do love that very much. kind of an Anthony Bourdain kind of lifestyle. I think that's a, I think that's where it's at. All right. Well, you're awesome, man. I love the story. if you want to find you and reach out directly or they want to find out more about Cobalt, how do they do that?

[00:22:58] Mark: so we have a website it's Cobalt innovations. org C O B A L T. That's how it's spelled. yeah. And it has a contact email on there and you can learn about the products on the site as well.

[00:23:12] Jay: Perfect, man. All right. Well enjoy your holiday season brothers. Great talking to you. And I'll talk to you again soon. All right.

[00:23:17] Mark: Okay. Thanks. You too, Jay. Take 

[00:23:19] Jay: Thanks, Mark. See you, buddy. 

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