Wellness is one of the latest crazes that everyone is talking about and Rah Rah Health has targeted a different market with its integrated wellness platform. Instead of focusing on the crowded corporate wellness market, this platform is built specifically for university students across the nation. Just as with corporations, whose employees perform best when they are happy, engaged, and healthy, universities have the same vested interest in their students’ wellness and Rah Rah is the digital platform that facilitites this at scale.
AlleyWatch had the pleasure to chat with Cooper Jones and Samuel Allen about the company and its future plans.
Tell us about the product or service that Rah Rah Health offers.
Rah Rah provides a holistic and integrated wellness platform for universities and students across the nation. We provide a number of services and offerings that directly integrate into student life on campuses across the nation. Helping student’s access the services being provided on campus and allowing universities new and greater insight into their student’s well-being.
What inspired you to start Rah Rah Health?
Before Rah Rah, my cofounder and I were working at a large consulting firm. During that time we received a firm-wide email notifying us that we had been enrolled in a corporate wellness platform. This firm has well over 100K employees and I realized that one of the main reasons the firm was paying for this service was because the happier and healthier employees are, the higher performing they would be and the more likely we are to stay at the company. While Rah Rah is very different than any corporate wellness platform…that same formula can be applied to the relationship between students and their respective universities. From there we started absorbing as much information as we could and realized that there was a market being underserved when it came to technology and the well-being of students.
How is Rah Rah Health different?
While building Rah Rah we had students and the reality of student life in mind the entire time. So many wellness products can be exhausting when it comes to tracking and rewards.
Rah Rah and the people behind it know that students are going to eat pizza and have fun on a regular basis, but we also know that they constantly care about how they feel and what they do. The reality is that what truly enables change is setting goals and committing to them via small steps forward every day. It was a difficult balance to find the in between these two realities, but we are confident in the strategy and design of our platform.
What market does Rah Rah Health target and how big is it?
Rah Rah is focused on universities here in the United States. There are about 2,675 four year universities in the US with around 20.5M students. Alongside that the digital wellness market is currently valued around $90.5B. We have ideas about other areas where we could grow and scale but currently, our main focus is executing and further penetration into the Higher Ed market.
Why focus on the university segment?
Because it matters… The majority of the universities in the US have realized that same formula I mentioned earlier but have yet to capitalize on any technology to further impact it. They would not be building these multimillion-dollar recreation centers or have these large wellness operating budgets if they didn’t already know what we are telling them, that the well-being of their students has big impact. More importantly than that…The users of Rah Rah are the future of our country. Having the opportunity to positively impact their (the students) overall well-being and to help universities out in their own goals is such a blessing and wonderful opportunity.
What’s your business model?
We offer our platform as a SaaS Model to individual universities.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We are fortunate to have developed strong relationships with a few large universities and we plan to leverage our success there to develop a solid pipeline of universities to partner with in the future. Outside of this we are really focused on growing internally. Developing a strong culture and team to continue impacting universities and students in a positive way.
What advice can you offer fellow NYC Startups?
Keep going and stay humble. So many people have incredible ideas but lack perseverance. Accept the fact that it’s going to be hard. Not all of your friends and family are going to believe in you and not every investor or VC firm is going to say yes or even be remotely interested.
The most important thing is to focus on the mission at hand while being open to any and all criticisms. That’s how you refine your product or idea early on. Some of my best friends didn’t believe in what my partner or I were trying to do and in a lot of ways I am thankful for that. Through their critique, I was able to learn so much about what we are doing at Rah Rah and what we plan to do…not to mention a lot about myself! If you do end up seeing light or success while on the journey, keep going and stay humble.
The most important thing is to focus on the mission at hand while being open to any and all criticisms. That’s how you refine your product or idea early on. Some of my best friends didn’t believe in what my partner or me were trying to do and in a lot of ways I am thankful for that. Through their critique I was able to learn so much about what we are doing at Rah Rah and what we plan to do…not to mention a lot about myself! If you do end up seeing light or success while on the journey, keep going and stay humble.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Upward and onward! We are so excited and blessed to have this opportunity in front of us.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
Out of all of the questions asked, this one maybe the most difficult to answer! I’d say it’s a tie between Jeffrey’s Grocery and Frank. Both put out some awesome food and nail the ambiance every time.
