Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves briefly!
Catalina Turlea, Nilo.Health: Nilo.Health was officially founded in April 2020. We are three co-founders: Ines Räth, Jonas Keil, and me, Catalina Turlea.
Nilo.Health is a safe space for mental health in the workplace. We offer companies a platform where their employees have access to tools to support their mental health—from one-on-one sessions with psychologists to digital interventions and meditation.
Ines and Jonas are co-CEOs, and I'm the CTO. Ines (30) studied business administration with a focus on innovation management. In the past, she worked on various products in startups and consulting projects. During this time, she became very interested in developing things from scratch and solving real user problems.
Jonas (31) has a business background and worked in consulting, venture building, and startups before founding Nilo.Health. Since graduating, he wanted to start his own company and use an entrepreneurial approach to address an important issue.
I, Catalina (32), have worked for many different startups in Munich, such as Freeletics, Everskill and TeleclinicI have extensive experience building and scaling teams and technologies. I studied computer science in Romania and then completed a master's degree in Austria before coming to Germany.
The starting point for Nilo.Health
Ines and Jonas studied together and, through their mutual circle of friends, discovered that it was difficult to find support for mental health issues. This was the starting point for Nilo. After extensive research into the market and speaking with psychologists and companies, they needed someone from a technical background who could help them bring their vision to life, so they turned to me. I, too, found the topic very interesting, and we decided to work together on our first project—our first website—to see how we would get along and collaborate.
At the beginning of 2020, we decided we wanted to do this together and applied for a digital health incubator in Berlin. Ines and Jonas then moved to Berlin. We worked from both Munich and Berlin from the beginning. We founded the company in April 2020, and on April 20, we had our go-live with our first company, Westwing.
Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?
Catalina Turlea: Mental health is important to each of us, and we all struggle with stress, insecurities, anxiety, or other issues from time to time. We want it to become normal to talk about and work on our mental health, just as we do with our physical health.
It is not always easy to get the necessary support, and we offer employees an easily accessible way to proactively address their challengesWe want to become their first point of contact for working on their mental health.
Focusing on the mental well-being of employees
Our partner companies demonstrate that they care about their employees' mental well-being and support them in this process. Once employees have these tools and their well-being improves, their contribution to the company will also increase.
We also relieve the burden on HR departments and managers, as most of us lack the tools and experience to support colleagues struggling with mental health issues. Nilo.Health offers an external, neutral, and personalized service for companies.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Catalina Turlea: Our offering consists of two parts. First, we offer 1-on-1 sessions with psychotherapists. Based on individual challenges and preferences, which we collect via a short form, we match users with a suitable Nilo.Expert. We currently have more than 80 Nilo.Experts who speak more than 15 different languages, across three different time zones.
Second, we provide psychologically sound digital content to support our users with various topics such as stress, anxiety, sleep improvement, and more. Our self-guided interventions were developed by psychotherapists and are highly flexible; they can be used at any time, in any order, and in any combination.
“We had to be a fully shared team from the beginning”
Munich Startup: What have been your three biggest challenges so far?
Catalina Turlea: In March 2020, Jonas and Ines moved to Berlin as Nilo.Health was part of the Vision Health Pioneers incubator. Initially, we planned to meet every few weeks, but when the pandemic began, that was no longer possible. We had to be a fully distributed team, working remotely, from the very beginning. This meant making a conscious effort to spend time together as a team, even if it was only online. As our team grew, we maintained this structure, so we now have one team in Berlin and one in Munich.
The biggest challenge is making everyone feel like a team, working together toward a common goal. We encourage everyone to connect with their teammates at the other location and host coffee mornings so they can connect on a personal level outside of work. We also just held our first full team event in Berlin at the end of July. It was great to be together as a team in the same place.
Bringing the first customer on board was a huge challenge. Without any references and without a working product, it was quite difficult for us to convince a company to give us a chance. After months of cold calling and reaching out to former colleagues and friends, we finally convinced Westwing to launch our product.
After our first round of funding at the end of 2021, we were able to expand the team. Hiring has been a major challenge for us this year. All three of us have been actively looking for the right people to help us realize our vision. We currently have a team of 30, and we're still looking.
Nilo.Health aims to become the leading mental health provider in Europe
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Catalina Turlea: In a year's time, we see ourselves as a partner to most medium-sized companies in Germany, all of which support their employees. We want to make our platform even more personalized and engaging, and are therefore constantly developing it further.
In 5 years we will be the leading mental health provider in Europe and will provide our support and tools to international companies.
Munich Startup: How do you rate Munich as a startup location?
Catalina Turlea: We are actually split between Munich and Berlin, meaning we have parts of the team in Munich – mainly in the technical area and part of the sales team – and the rest of the team is in Berlin.
As for the Munich team, we're currently part of the Werk1 community, which is one of the most founder-friendly places in Munich. It's really nice to be around so many other early-stage startups, see all the cool ideas, and hopefully soon share experiences and learn more from each other.
Munich Startup: Bicycle or e-scooter?
Catalina Turlea: Bicycles for the Munich office.
