Edge App
”There's this huge gap for a low cost solution that can scale in a way that AA did successfully over the course of 100 years in person. Digitizing learnings from AA and also making this much more affordable than the traditional rehab model is our sweet spot and what we're going after.”
- Brooke LeBlanc pitching Edge App
In our third episode of Closing Time, Founder & CEO Brooke LeBlanc pitches her startup Edge, building for the next generation of sobriety. Brooke got sober during the pandemic living in New York, and has been creating content around what its like to be sober in your twenties. She's now leveraging her audience to build a company around her mission to empower millions of people to lead healthier lives.
Our guest VC in this episode of Bob Kocher, GP at Venrock and investor in Devoted Health, Virta Health, Aledade, Lyra Health, and more. We dive into the business and discuss:
Building a community-driven coaching business
Should coaches be employees or contractors?
Achieving differentiation
Pricing a consumer product to align incentives
Listen to her pitch her new startup, and why she’s building a pain killer and not a vitamin.
Meet the Founder
Brooke LeBlanc is the Founder and CEO of Edge Health, a platform to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. Brooke has been sober for 3 years and started sharing her sobriety journey online. She's now built an audience of 30k+ and bootstrapped a coaching and community program of Gen Z sober and sober curious audience. She's preparing to leverage this by productizing her learnings into building a tech app launching in Dry January, breaking into the Consumer digital health space.
Prior to building Edge, Brooke was an operator at early stage tech startups and ran Sales teams for financial services/Fintech space. Brooke is based out of New York.
Meet the VC
Bob is a Partner at Venrock and focuses on health tech and services investments. He currently serves on the Boards of Devoted Health, Virta Health, Aledade, Lyra Health, Need, Sitka, Accompany Health, Candid, and Premera Blue Cross. He is a Board Observer at SmithRx, Stride, Suki, and The Public Health Company.
Additionally, he is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow and Advisory Board Member at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at USC. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the National Institute of Healthcare Management (NIHCM).
Prior to Venrock, Bob served in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Healthcare and Economic Policy on the National Economic Council and as a Partner at McKinsey & Company.
Bob received an undergraduate degree from the University of Washington and a medical degree from George Washington University. He completed a research fellowship with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health, and went on to complete his internal medicine residency training at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Harvard Medical School.