Robby Knight, co-founder and CEO of Bentonville-based healthcare technology startup Soda Health, wants to help people overcome challenges and improve their lives.
It’s the startup’s goal as it targets health plan inefficiencies and billions of dollars in lost benefits by increasing access to needed benefits and adapting them to changing needs.
Soda Health was founded to disrupt the fringe benefits system with a technology platform that allows health plans to reimburse for goods and services not supported by traditional medical claims. It works with employers and health plans to help consumers pay for necessities, such as healthy meals, transportation to doctors’ offices and utility bills.
“What we fundamentally believe is that the existing solutions that are in place today are one size fits all,” Knight said. “You have broad-based benefits that are available that people don’t use because they don’t know about them” and don’t meet their needs.
“We have a much more individualized approach,” he added. “We’re inventing the payments infrastructure that doesn’t exist to support that new application … that ability to address needs longitudinally for the member as their individual needs evolve.”
Since launching in 2021, the startup has raised more than $31 million. Knight said the recently announced $25 million in Series A funding will be used to partner with retailers and expand its benefits, including offering healthy foods and better helping people identify and enroll in necessary benefits, such as housing assistance or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP).
Asked why the startup has been so successful so quickly, Knight said people are excited to help address fundamental challenges and realize the company’s revenue growth potential.
“We’ve heard time and time again that in the market today, there’s no one who’s even thinking about the approach we’re taking, which is why investors have been so excited about what we’re doing, other than our partners. We’re getting ready to launch over the next few months,” he said.
Knight said Soda Health has started generating revenue and its technology platform will go live with its first external customer in November. An application is in the works, but no timeline has yet been set for completion.
Soda Health has a secondary office in Chicago and has employees in 15 states. In the next 12 months, the company is expected to serve more than 500,000 people. During the same period, its headcount is on track to double to 80, he said.
In five years, Knight said the goal is to serve 10 million people and maximize their resources. He said success would be demonstrable improvements in health outcomes and savings for employers and health plans.
ORIGINAL PURPOSE
The company’s existing focus is on Medicare Advantage and Medicaid recipients, but it also works with employers.
After Soda Health agrees with an employer or insurance company, it identifies the strengths and weaknesses of health plan recipients for healthy living and prioritizes immediate and long-term needs. For example, the plan can provide access to healthy foods for someone who is hungry and has diabetes.
Knight noted that plans can’t afford food benefits long-term, but Soda Health can help people find and enroll in resources, such as SNAP or food stamps.
“It is our belief that the approach we are taking will not only allow for better use and understanding by members of what their benefits are, but second and most importantly, it aligns our incentives as service providers with the human being.” that we are. Ultimately it serves to help them identify and get the resources they need, which will ultimately keep them healthier, which allows the health plan and the employer to save money,” he said.
Employers and health plans pay Soda Health based on performance. Knight said the company is better off financially when consumer health outcomes improve. He declined to name the companies and health plans Soda Health will work with, but said they are some of the largest employers and health insurance companies in the United States.
SOCIAL WORK
Born in California, Knight lived for several years in southern Lebanon before growing up in Alabama, including Mobile and Birmingham. He was a social worker for about six years, focusing on behavioral health, substance abuse and community social work.
“I’ve seen firsthand the challenges that people face in the system that we have in the US,” he said. “Going into the field of social work, I wanted to make a difference.
“The challenge I saw in the space was the systems that exist in today’s world create unnecessary tension that makes it incredibly difficult for people to access the basic resources they need.”
For example, he said 40% of Medicare and Medicaid recipients eligible for SNAP do not receive benefits. He said these recipients can cut their medication in half to make ends meet.
As he became increasingly frustrated with the challenges of accessing needed resources, Knight set out for the private sector to learn how it worked and create a model to help people access needed resources.
About 10 years ago, he moved to Northwest Arkansas and joined Walmart. He worked for the Bentonville-based retailer for nearly eight years before he and several associates founded Soda Health.
Co-founders Daryl Risinger, president and chief growth officer, and Jared Dauman, head of operations, previously worked in leadership positions at Walmart. Co-founder Chris Brown, chief technology officer, was an executive at digital wellness platform Rally Health, which UnitedHealthcare acquired in 2017.
Liz Baker, vice president of customer development, worked with the co-founders at Walmart. They tried to solve the challenges that people faced to get the necessary benefits, but they could not find a solution. Baker was asked to join Soda Health shortly after it was founded. She is working with employers and health plans to get them the benefits they need.
ENTRANCE IN
Baker works closely with health care consultant Jim Bailey, a retired Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield executive.
“We’re a young company,” Baker said. “We’re trying to get into health care, which is a tough space.” She said the company is leveraging Bailey’s experience and the contacts he has developed in his career to reach her.
Bailey said he had worked with Walmart’s benefits division since 1994. He began working closely with the co-founders when the retailer created its clinic strategy. As they talked more, he said it was “a natural fit” to help Soda Health.
In 2021, Bailey formed Client Focused Strategies LLC, and he is using the relationships he developed in his 41 years at Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield to introduce people to Soda Health.
Asked about the company’s goals over the next five years, he explained the post-pandemic transformation in health plans and how Soda Health is trying to address health plan benefits at the member level instead of the group level. He expects employer-sponsored plans to eventually be addressed at the member level, especially with the rise of telecommuting post-pandemic.
“I have been involved with the Alice Walton Health Foundation for several years, particularly among employers,” he said. “What Northwest Arkansas is trying to accomplish is not far off [from what] Soda Health is trying to catch up. These two efforts can complement each other.”
Baker agreed that Soda Health is focused on changing the health care system to focus on members instead of the group level.
“Health care will be transformed by seeing people as people and figuring out how to identify what drives their unique health and well-being,” she said.
