Photo by Gregory Cortez – @OHHHWAVY
A company co-founded and led by an alumnus of the Naveen Jindal School of Management was recently selected from thousands of startups worldwide to become one of just 11 companies in the Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth Accelerator Class of 2024. The selection comes with $120,000 of funding.
Leon Jacobson, MBA’22, is CEO of Nerveli, a mobile application that provides users with an empathetic and interactive pain recovery assistant by combining proven medical science, gamified cognitive behavioral therapy and machine learning.
Jacobson said his own experience having to navigate chronic pain shaped the company’s vision and development.
“My desire to find a solution to the pain management experience is deeply rooted in my own harrowing experience of having to see twenty-three doctors to get to the root cause of my pain,” he said. “In that process, I saw a number of issues in the treatment of pain, and I knew there had to be a better solution. That’s when Dr. Ted Price and I formed a team of extraordinary doctors, psychologists, pain scientists, and developers to tackle these issues.”
Dr. Ted Price, director of the Center for Advanced Pain Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas, is senior advisor to Nerveli. Price first met Jacobson while the latter was an MBA student at the Jindal School.
“I immediately recognized that the combination of Leon’s personal story, his unique background and training, and the way we clicked on the idea of creating a better way to help people deal with chronic pain issues made him the perfect person to bring this idea to reality, Price said. “I knew very quickly that I could bring my expertise in the neurobiology of pain to Leon’s mission and we have never looked back.”
As complex as chronic pain management is, Nerveli can make a big dent in addressing several issues, Jacobson said. For one, the trend toward specialization among physicians results in having them view their patients only through those relatively narrow lenses of specialization. Not only that, but according to findings published in The Journal of Pain, U.S. medical schools do not offer enough pain-management training, only 0.3% of the total medical school curriculum hours.
“There is just not enough education around how to come up with non-prescription or invasive options to help patients who suffer from chronic pain,” Jacobson said. “The vast majority of the 50 million Americans who suffer from chronic pain on a daily basis don’t have a great understanding of how they can handle their pain more effectively. Many of them end up having to Google their symptoms.”
Finally, Jacobson said, there is a significant gap in the physician-patient relationship. The average time a patient has with a specialist is just 8 minutes and it usually takes three months to get an appointment.
“If your pain doesn’t fit in a perfect box, it may be hard for a physician to diagnose and gameplan around chronic pain,” he said. “That leads to either patients being bounced around, or sometimes addictive drug prescriptions such as opioids. Our mobile app helps solve these issues by first, helping users have a better understanding of the root cause of their pain through a video guided sensory test, and interactive survey questions that our team of doctors have developed, which are based on proven medical science.”
Jacobson said that the core of Nerveli is a proprietary gamified cognitive behavioral therapy combined with machine learning.
“It provides daily recommendations and education for users on how to more effectively manage their pain and is a supportive coach every step of the way on the patient’s journey to live more pain free,” he said.
Until recently, Jacobson was the assistant director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UT Dallas. He said his time in that role combined with his time as an MBA student at the Jindal School helped shape his leadership approach.
“I can’t speak highly enough about UT Dallas,” he said. “Not only did I have an amazing opportunity to help run the non-academic programming for the entrepreneurship program, but also as an MBA student I was able to work with so many amazing students, faculty, staff, and alumni and see a tremendous number of innovative ideas coming out of the University. They were all major sources of learning and inspiration for me. After learning so much as a graduate student, and then being able to apply that to my role at the institute allowed me to have a unique perspective on entrepreneurship and the discipline, work-ethic, and ambition I needed to have to create a company from scratch.”
Nerveli’s innovative use of machine learning and gamified cognitive behavioral therapy allows Jacobson and his team to create a tailored and personalized experience for each individual user who interacts with it.
“Based on the type of pain the user is experiencing as well as with data the app collects around key factors in the patient’s everyday life that can relate to pain, we are able to provide an empathetic and compassionate approach to pain management,” he said. “Being in tremendous pain for a long period of time can create a plethora of mental health issues and having that empathetic support system is so necessary.”
Jacobson plans to leverage the Techstars investment dollars to scale Nerveli. He said what excites him most about this partnership is the hands-on support provided not only by Trey Bowles, Jordan Warnement and the Techstars Ft. Worth team but also the cohort he and his company are now a part of.
“They are second to none,” Jacobson said. “Techstars is a Tier 1 accelerator that provides tremendous support in the way of mentors, strategy development, fundraising capabilities, and resources to ensure long-term business success. Building a company is one of the hardest things anyone can do, so it was a no-brainer for us to be part of a program that has been proven to vastly improve the chances of success for startups. It really turns you into an entrepreneur extraordinaire.”
Jacobson strongly believes in the power of having a strong support system of an in-person cohort of fellow startup founders.
“They all are incredibly talented entrepreneurs who are going through a similar journey,” he said. Being an entrepreneur can be a journey with really high highs but also extremely low lows and being around other founders and learning from seasoned entrepreneurs like Trey is invaluable.”
As a UT Dallas alum, Jacobson advises any current JSOM students who may be budding technology entrepreneurs to take as many entrepreneurial classes as they can and take advantage of the tremendous professors at UTD, whom he said have a lot of combined real-world experience.
“Spend your time in school to learn as much as you can while taking advantage of potential opportunities, whether that is building relationships with mentors, or interning in a venture capital firm or with a startup to have a really good understanding of what it takes to succeed,” he said. “Take the time to learn what investors are looking for since many startups need some type of outside funding. You need a thick skin as you will hear ‘no’ many times as an entrepreneur. Resilience is so important. Lastly, get out of your comfort zone, apply to pitch competitions and get used to pitching your idea to strangers.”
Jacobson said his long-term goal for Nerveli is to become the go-to resource for pain management.
“That will only be accomplished by building a trusted solution and brand over time that makes a significant impact for not only people in pain, but also health insurers, employers and other future avenues of revenue generation,” he said. “If someone is dealing with chronic pain and wants to have a better quality of life and get back to partaking in activities that they enjoy, they will know they just need to get the Nerveli app. Unfortunately, chronic pain is a growing problem in the United States, and the system for treating pain is broken. However, this creates a timely opportunity for Nerveli to be a solution for many stakeholders.”
