Today we’d like to introduce you to Hooman Fakki.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Hooman. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
As a serial entrepreneur in the healthcare industry, I had just sold my 3rd company, Neurolink Diagnostics in 2004 to the principals at Healthcare Partners. With the momentum of success, I set my sights on building a solution for “population health”, before this was a recognizable term. Recognizing that lifestyle is the cause of most illnesses and that changing consumer habits were not the focus of health professionals, I set out to start a digital health company that guides and coaches consumers throughout their health journey.
For months I was materializing the concept as there was very little precedence in the digital health space. One night, over drinks at a frequent hangout, the Skybar on Sunset, I was explaining to one of my best friends (with the same first name, Houman) about the grandiose concept. The liquor had freed up my creative energy that night and I enthusiastically framed the vision of this business. Little did I know that this seemingly ordinary conversation would change the fate of our lives forever. The following Monday morning, unexpectedly, Houman comes to my office and tells me that he has quit his job as a VP of a mortgage company to join me in forming this new venture.
A bit shocked and confused, I explained that I was not looking for a partner for this venture and he joyfully replied that it was too late as he was so inspired that he left his nice cushiony job. I eventually agreed and H2 Wellness (“H2”) was founded in August of 2005 as a self-funded, R&D project to prove that continuous digital intervention can help increase education, compliance and ultimately improve health outcomes. As much as I want to believe the “H2” stands for Health Habits, I can’t because it was simply for Hooman and Houman. Creative branding was not our strength.
The first 2 years were spent planning, building, testing the solution with users. We finally proved that a digital solution can better educate, increase compliance, and measurably improve health outcomes. Once we had positive results and felt the system was ready for the scale we launched to our initial target, the healthcare industry. We quickly recognized that our interactive digital solution for patients was way too early for that industry. So, with a few years passed and significant capital investment, we set our sites on other health-related markets that had less obstacles and landed our first nutrition product company out of North Carolina.
This led us to focus on health, wellness or fitness organizations that had a product and/or service to sell to a captive user base. Since then we deployed our solution to many market leading brands such as Atkins, Jenny Craig, Curves, Lifetime Fitness, Thorne Research, Designs for Health, Philips Electronics, Health Dialog (RiteAid).
Because of our end-user focus, the system was built to identify the health goal, status, and habits of an end-user and render that data into an action plan that users can follow throughout their health journey. This workflow is needed and consistent across all health-related markets with the only difference being the brand, “program” that is prescribed, the supportive content and the integration of the products and/or services of our B2B clients into the recommendations/coaching.
Great, 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?
As nearly every entrepreneur will attest, there is almost never a smooth road when building a new business. It’s especially bumpy when building a new business in a young, new, emerging category. Because the category of digital health was just forming, we struggled to find the “right” technical talent that can really understand the vision and build a scalable platform according to the strategy of the business. This initially caused us to waste a great deal of time, money and cause us to miss many opportunities; but, we eventually found the right team, learned, and optimized the product to match the vision and strategy.
Please tell us about H2 Wellness.
Today H2 is a leading digital health platform company that delivers a new generation of modular, interactive health engagement and management solutions for health, wellness and fitness organizations of any size or geography. As a B2B solution, the H2 Platform delivers advanced digital solutions with the flexibility to accommodate any brand, health program(s), content, or interactions between our client and their captive consumers.
Over the years, H2 incorporated proven behavior change techniques to drive increased consumer engagement around their health, leading to improved outcomes and fulfillment of key business objectives of clients. In summary, our clients get an advanced solution, that can go to market quickly, at a fraction of the cost of any other option.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Watching my mom and dad sing, tell jokes, and dance at family parties.
Contact Info:
- Address: 10250 Constellation Blvd. Ste. 100 Los Angeles Ca 90067
- Website: www.h2wellness.com
- Phone: 310-362-1888
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: H2 Wellness
- Facebook: H2 Wellness
- Twitter: H2 Wellness
- Yelp: H2 Wellness
- Other: H2 Wellness
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