Today we’d like to introduce you to Joe Rapaport.
Hi Joe, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hi, my name is Joe and I am the co-founder of Kenko, a software platform that helps patients and physical therapists make the recovery journey easier. My co-founder, Allen Song, and I founded Kenko during the first year of our Master’s program at USC’s Marshall School of Business. Before starting the program, Allen worked in project management and in consulting and I worked in account management at a software company. Both Allen and I joined the program to learn about entrepreneurship and how to start a business.
We first started bonding because we would notice each other gingerly getting out of our seats. We would joke that it was because we were slightly older than the class average. However, the real reason was that Allen was on active duty when he sustained a lower back and knee injury and I was in my early 20s when I sustained a back injury while training for fitness competitions, like CrossFit and obstacle racing. We both went through physical therapy but still suffered from chronic pain years after our injuries. Our bond over our chronic pain lead to us being in the same group project, friends, and eventually business partners.
We started working on Kenko in one of our classes. And quickly learned that there are over 50 million people in the US (¼ of Americans) and over 2 Billion people globally who suffer from chronic pain. Physical Therapy is the best treatment, but the recovery rate is only 50%. After interviewing hundreds of physical therapists, patients, and clinic directors we learned that there were two sides to this issue. For patients it was confusing to know where to start the recovery journey and once on a program, it was hard to stay accountable to their recovery programming outside of in-person sessions. On the other side of the issue, Physical Therapists were trying to balance a high volume of patients, often between 10-16 a day, and admin work was taking an average of 20 minutes per patient.
After our project ended, Allen and I were determined to continue working on the problem. So we built Kenko, an end-2-end mobility prescription platform that increases the recovery rate by increasing prescription efficiency and providing access and education for people suffering from chronic pain. To further validate our idea, we entered USC’s New Venture Seed Pitch Competition where we placed 3rd out of roughly 300 participants. The prize money we won helped us get the ball rolling on development and we completed our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in December 2022. We are currently working with a few beta testers to further iterate before releasing our public beta.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, it has not been easy. One of the biggest challenges we faced was that we were not technical. We needed to find a way to build out a software platform, without either of us having the correct skillset to do so.. We were fortunate enough to find a third-party developer to help us with the initial product. However, we are now looking to work with more developers to help us make adjustments and build out additional features for our public beta.
As you know, we’re big fans of Kenko. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Kenko is an End 2 – End platform that increases the recovery rate by:
• Providing access and education for people suffering from chronic pain
• Streamlining the prescription process for physical therapists by increasing their operational efficiency
• Creating a continuum of engagement between patients and physical therapists by utilizing the time in between sessions.
Our features consist of the following:
– Patient progression tracking
– HD exercise video library
– Customizable video uploading
– In-app marketing (for Clinics and Physical Therapist)
– Scheduling
– Messaging
What makes Kenko special is that the problem is being solved from both lenses. The patient’s perspective as well as the physical therapist’s.
We’re the first product to connect both sides of the issue and we do this by focusing on 3 things, engagement, utilization, and outcome.
Our mission at Kenko is to help people move without boundaries and help physical therapists do more of what they love.
What does success mean to you?
We measure success based on impact. Our mission is to increase the recovery rate of physical therapy so that people are able to return to their lives pain-free. We would be thrilled to increase the recovery rate by just 10%, but we are driven to get as close as possible to 100% so that people can back to living the best versions of themselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: kenkopt.com
- Instagram: kenko.pt
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/
company/kenko-io/
