GrepBeat last wrote about Theralinq in June of 2024. Theralinq is a Raleigh-based startup providing digital health solutions that extend the impact of pediatric therapy into households.
For this piece, we caught up with Co-Founder and CEO Brennan Barber to learn more about him, Theralinq’s evolution, and the process of turning a promising idea into a growing business.
GrepBeat: Before we get started, for readers who may not be familiar, what’s the elevator pitch for Theralinq?
Brennan Barber: Theralinq is a digital health platform built specifically for pediatric therapy. We help PT, OT, speech and feeding therapists extend the impact of therapy beyond the clinic by giving families personalized, clinically guided activities they can do at home and giving therapists the tools to monitor progress and adjust those plans over time.
The simple idea is that a child may spend one hour a week in therapy, but what happens during the other 167 hours is what really determines how much progress they make. Theralinq helps therapists and families make those hours count.
GB: When we got in touch, we asked you to look back on your last feature in GrepBeat, from 2024. Reading about where you were then, what stands out as the biggest change?
Barber: The biggest change is probably how much more clearly we understand the business we’re building. In 2024, we were primarily focused on proving that families and therapists would use Theralinq to extend therapy into the home.
Since then, we’ve learned that the opportunity is much bigger than simply delivering home exercises. We’ve evolved into a B2B platform that helps pediatric therapy clinics improve clinical outcomes, engage families between visits, create new revenue opportunities, and reduce some of the administrative burden that comes with running a therapy practice.
We’ve also gone from validating the concept to actually building a company around it.
GB: How has your team grown or evolved since we last spoke?
Barber: The team has grown both in size and in depth. We’ve continued to build around the idea that Theralinq needs to be equally strong from a clinical, technology, and business perspective. Bethany Darragh, our Chief Clinical Officer and co-founder, continues to provide the clinical leadership that makes sure we’re solving a real problem for therapists and families. We’ve also added significant product and technology expertise.
We’ve supplemented the core team with advisors, developers, students and clinical partners. One thing I’ve learned is that an early-stage company doesn’t necessarily need a huge team but it needs the right people with the right expertise at the right time.
GB: What milestones or accomplishments are you most proud of?
Barber: There are a lot of them, but I’m particularly proud that we’ve moved from an idea to something that therapists and families are actually using. As part of our B2B pivot, we’ve established clinical partnerships and continued to see strong engagement from the people using the platform.
I’m also proud of the external validation we’ve received, including being awarded an NC IDEA SEED Grant and receiving the Stephen E. Sallee Assistive Technology Award. Our work with the Duke OT Doctorate Program has also been particularly meaningful because they reinforce that we’re building something with real clinical and social impact.
As a team I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve been open to embracing new challenges and adapting in response. We’ve listened to customers, changed our model, changed our pricing, and changed our strategy when the evidence told us to. That willingness to adapt has been just as important as any other milestone.
GB: You’ve been on the scene for a little while now. People may know you as a founder (and from your time at CED!), but perhaps less so as a human being. Tell us something we don’t know about you that has nothing to do with your life as a founder.
Barber: I grew up in New York state playing lacrosse from a young age, and I’ve always loved the indigenous history and traditions behind the sport.
Early on, I taught myself how to string lacrosse sticks, and over the years I’ve built a collection of dozens of sticks dating back decades. I still custom-string sticks today, working with both traditional leather pockets and modern mesh. There’s something almost zen-like about the repetition and craftsmanship of stringing a pocket that I find incredibly relaxing.
GB: What partners or organizations (service providers, advisors, investors, if any) have been most helpful to you?
Barber: We’ve been fortunate to have a really strong community around us. NC IDEA has certainly been an important part of our journey. The MICRO and SEED Grants have helped us accelerate the growth of the business, and opened up connections to the broader ecosystem.
CED has been a very important player in our journey as well. Starting with my time as an employee and really seeing behind the proverbial curtain of what it takes to start and grow a business, along with the support they’ve provided Theralinq through GRO and our startup partnership.
We’ve also benefited enormously from advisors and other founders who have been willing to share their experiences, make introductions, challenge our assumptions and occasionally tell us when we’re making things harder than they need to be.
The Duke OT Doctorate Program has been particularly valuable in keeping us connected to the next generation of providers, and increasingly, our clinic partners themselves have become some of our best teachers. There’s no substitute for sitting with a practice owner and understanding what actually keeps them up at night and how our product is helping and can help them alleviate those problems.
GB: What is your next, biggest challenge?
Barber: Turning everything we’ve learned into repeatable growth. We’ve spent a lot of time validating the product, refining our business model and figuring out exactly where Theralinq creates the most value for clinics. Now the challenge is taking that model and scaling it.
That means building a repeatable sales process, continuing to prove ROI for our clinic customers, expanding our partnerships, and making sure the product can support a much larger number of therapists and families without losing the clinical value and personal experience that made people want to use it in the first place.
GB: If you could go back in time to speak to yourself on the day you founded your startup, what advice would you give your younger self?
Barber: I would probably share that some of our biggest breakthroughs have come from realizing that something we believed six months earlier wasn’t quite right and being willing to change is really the name of the game. The goal isn’t to prove your original hypothesis correct. The goal is to build something people genuinely need.
I’d also give some advice on building intestinal fortitude because it truly is a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows and some of those lows will absolutely make your stomach drop, but staying focused on mission will get you through it.
GB: People ask founders about their startups nonstop…. Is there anything about Theralinq that you don’t get asked but that you’d like to speak to?
Barber: I’d probably talk more about the problem we’re ultimately trying to solve rather than just the technology we’ve built.
Pediatric therapy is an incredibly human field, and there’s a huge disconnect between the amount of care a child receives in the clinic and everything that happens between appointments. Therapists are doing an incredible job, but they’re often trying to influence a child’s development with very limited time and limited visibility into what happens at home.
We don’t think technology replaces the therapist. We think technology can make the therapist more effective. Our goal is to give therapists better visibility, give families better support, and ultimately make the entire therapy experience more continuous.
That’s the part of Theralinq that gets me most excited: we’re not trying to replace something that works. We’re trying to extend the reach of something that already matters tremendously.
GB: Finally, you finish a long, grueling day of starting up. You’re hungry and/or thirsty. Where in the Triangle are you headed?
Barber: I’m probably not heading anywhere other than my backyard, building a fire in the fire pit, grabbing a drink, and sitting outside for a while. There’s something about a fire, being outside, and having a little quiet time that makes it pretty easy to decompress and put the day behind you.
