AnswersNow founder Jeff Beck (left) celebrates with fellow RVA 25 honorees at last month’s awards ceremony.
It took a global pandemic to prove that Jeff Beck was on to something.
In 2017, while working as a licensed social worker, he had the idea for a company that would offer virtual therapy and support sessions for children with autism and their parents.
“I just in my core felt like access to care is a huge issue. I really couldn’t shake that,” Beck said.
That same year, he took the leap. The Randolph-Macon and VCU grad launched the venture and called it AnswersNow. It was initially a text message-based service before it traded up to be video-based.
He got the company off the ground through local startup incubator Lighthouse Labs and then landed the AnswersNow app on major app stores and started serving clients in 2018.
But Beck had one main issue that wasn’t easy to work around: it was the pre-pandemic world, video chats had yet to become ubiquitous and virtual healthcare had yet to catch on in a major way.
So, while revenue had started coming in mostly through subscriptions from parents willing to pay out of pocket, health insurers were still skeptical of many telehealth services and largely wouldn’t cover AnswersNow’s sessions.
“They said you could not serve a kid with autism virtually. The vast majority of payors (insurance companies) told us to take a hike,” he recalled.
That all was turned on its head two years later.
“The pandemic struck and all the payors changed their tune on virtual,” Beck said. “We got our first payors check in 2020.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, like it did for many facets of societal interaction, ratcheted up the adoption of all sorts of virtual services into hyper speed.
For AnswersNow, the jolt has continued nearly five years later and landed the company atop this year’s RVA 25 list of the fastest-growing companies in the Richmond region.
Beck’s firm earned the honor based on AnswersNow’s three-year average annual growth rate of 881% from 2021-2023.
AnswersNow is headquartered in Startup Virginia in Shockoe Bottom.
The company has raised $30 million from venture capital investors and now has nearly 100 board-certified behavior analysts on staff. They’ll serve more than 1,000 kids this year through 8,000 hours of therapy each month.
“I would have cut off a pinky to do that many hours in 2018,” Beck said.
The company’s geographic reach has also continued to spread.
About 40 percent of kids it serves are in Virginia, followed by Georgia and Texas, with more states to follow next year. That’s a result of more insurance carriers and Medicaid programs buying in and paying the reimbursements that make the numbers work for all involved.
Another new frontier that’s beginning to open up is school systems, which are beginning to tap AnswersNow to offer services to students with autism. Beck said the company recently signed its first few contracts with school systems, including in Florida.
The company’s therapists are now based all over the country and it has another few dozen non-therapist employees, including six who work with Beck out of the company’s headquarters in Startup Virginia’s incubator in Shockoe Bottom.
For Beck, 38, the momentum means a list of responsibilities that are different from his early days nearly eight years ago as a founder.
“My job has shifted to absolute firefighter at all times. It’s a different challenge and it’s something I’m still learning,” he said. “The thing I’m most focused on now is setting the direction and putting people in place who can get us there.”
A screenshot of AnswersNow’s website.
He’s also focused on his role of pitching investors, which he admits also came with a learning curve.
“It’s just a ton of repetition. I remember the first big investor presentation I had. I was terrified,” he recalled. “The old adage of practice makes perfect is really true. I have plenty of those scars and bruises from the hundreds of ‘no’s’ we’ve gotten. They certainly can fuel you to some degree.”
He expects to don his pitchman hat at some point next year, as AnswersNow prepares to embark on its next big milestone.
“I would suspect we likely would do one more fundraise before pushing toward profitability,” he said. “We have not hit profitability yet. Our adjusted EBITDA is close.”
And while it has wind at its back thanks to the increasing levels of adoption of virtual services, Beck said there’s still work to do to reach more parents of kids with autism to let them know such a service exists.
“These things unfortunately don’t snowball on their own. It’s constantly trying to spread the word,” he said.
At last month’s RVA 25 celebration, Beck said he got an award that was just as sweet as going onstage in front of the crowd as the top company on the list.
A parent of an AnswersNow participant happened to be at the event with another group. Beck said they celebrated with a photo and the fact that the kid recently graduated from the AnswersNow program and is preparing for college.
AnswersNow founder Jeff Beck (left) celebrates with fellow RVA 25 honorees at last month’s awards ceremony.
It took a global pandemic to prove that Jeff Beck was on to something.
In 2017, while working as a licensed social worker, he had the idea for a company that would offer virtual therapy and support sessions for children with autism and their parents.
“I just in my core felt like access to care is a huge issue. I really couldn’t shake that,” Beck said.
That same year, he took the leap. The Randolph-Macon and VCU grad launched the venture and called it AnswersNow. It was initially a text message-based service before it traded up to be video-based.
He got the company off the ground through local startup incubator Lighthouse Labs and then landed the AnswersNow app on major app stores and started serving clients in 2018.
But Beck had one main issue that wasn’t easy to work around: it was the pre-pandemic world, video chats had yet to become ubiquitous and virtual healthcare had yet to catch on in a major way.
So, while revenue had started coming in mostly through subscriptions from parents willing to pay out of pocket, health insurers were still skeptical of many telehealth services and largely wouldn’t cover AnswersNow’s sessions.
“They said you could not serve a kid with autism virtually. The vast majority of payors (insurance companies) told us to take a hike,” he recalled.
That all was turned on its head two years later.
“The pandemic struck and all the payors changed their tune on virtual,” Beck said. “We got our first payors check in 2020.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, like it did for many facets of societal interaction, ratcheted up the adoption of all sorts of virtual services into hyper speed.
For AnswersNow, the jolt has continued nearly five years later and landed the company atop this year’s RVA 25 list of the fastest-growing companies in the Richmond region.
Beck’s firm earned the honor based on AnswersNow’s three-year average annual growth rate of 881% from 2021-2023.
AnswersNow is headquartered in Startup Virginia in Shockoe Bottom.
The company has raised $30 million from venture capital investors and now has nearly 100 board-certified behavior analysts on staff. They’ll serve more than 1,000 kids this year through 8,000 hours of therapy each month.
“I would have cut off a pinky to do that many hours in 2018,” Beck said.
The company’s geographic reach has also continued to spread.
About 40 percent of kids it serves are in Virginia, followed by Georgia and Texas, with more states to follow next year. That’s a result of more insurance carriers and Medicaid programs buying in and paying the reimbursements that make the numbers work for all involved.
Another new frontier that’s beginning to open up is school systems, which are beginning to tap AnswersNow to offer services to students with autism. Beck said the company recently signed its first few contracts with school systems, including in Florida.
The company’s therapists are now based all over the country and it has another few dozen non-therapist employees, including six who work with Beck out of the company’s headquarters in Startup Virginia’s incubator in Shockoe Bottom.
For Beck, 38, the momentum means a list of responsibilities that are different from his early days nearly eight years ago as a founder.
“My job has shifted to absolute firefighter at all times. It’s a different challenge and it’s something I’m still learning,” he said. “The thing I’m most focused on now is setting the direction and putting people in place who can get us there.”
A screenshot of AnswersNow’s website.
He’s also focused on his role of pitching investors, which he admits also came with a learning curve.
“It’s just a ton of repetition. I remember the first big investor presentation I had. I was terrified,” he recalled. “The old adage of practice makes perfect is really true. I have plenty of those scars and bruises from the hundreds of ‘no’s’ we’ve gotten. They certainly can fuel you to some degree.”
He expects to don his pitchman hat at some point next year, as AnswersNow prepares to embark on its next big milestone.
“I would suspect we likely would do one more fundraise before pushing toward profitability,” he said. “We have not hit profitability yet. Our adjusted EBITDA is close.”
And while it has wind at its back thanks to the increasing levels of adoption of virtual services, Beck said there’s still work to do to reach more parents of kids with autism to let them know such a service exists.
“These things unfortunately don’t snowball on their own. It’s constantly trying to spread the word,” he said.
At last month’s RVA 25 celebration, Beck said he got an award that was just as sweet as going onstage in front of the crowd as the top company on the list.
A parent of an AnswersNow participant happened to be at the event with another group. Beck said they celebrated with a photo and the fact that the kid recently graduated from the AnswersNow program and is preparing for college.
Amazing work, Jeff Beck! Excited to see where the next step takes AnswersNow!