High Five - How ‘Give Me Five’ Got Transacting In Multiple Global Markets
Society needs better tools for assessing people’s well-being. Poor communication is one of the major barriers to better mental health support: many people simply aren’t connecting to the right services. The Give Me Five platform aims to change that by delivering frontline intervention through an app.
Deployed as part of an early-detection system for mental health, Give Me Five’s measurement-based approach to well-being assessment has the most impact in large organizations such as universities, schools, enterprises, and mental health services.
Co-founders Dr Lisa Fahey and Brendan Fahey saw a partnership with Microsoft as an opportunity to support well-being on a global scale. To make it a reality, they needed a partner to help them navigate the technical complexities of the Microsoft marketplace, which is where WeTransact came in.
“We’ve had a great experience in terms of understanding how to connect our goal with Microsoft. We’ve landed into an ecosystem that’s ready to sell our product. There’s no way we could have interacted with that system without WeTransact.” - Dr Lisa Fahey OAM, Founder & CEO, Give Me Five.
Wellbeing goals aligned with Microsoft
Co-founded by Dr Lisa Fahey, a psychologist with 30 years in the field, and her husband Brendan Fahey, an entrepreneur with a wealth of experience in human services, Give Me Five streamlines the overly complex process of mental health screening.
Their goal is to create a community of care, customized to the individual, that leverages different stakeholders for a 360-view of mental health. Meeting Dr Simon Kos, Chief Medical Officer, Worldwide Health, at Microsoft over a decade ago, helped shape their belief in the product – and the good it could do for society.
With their combined experience in psychology and business, together with a robust and scalable product, Lisa and Brendan were well-seasoned in the Australian human services market. What their Give Me Five platform needed was the right channel to bring it to a much wider audience.
A partnership with Microsoft, and leveraging the market reach of IP co-sell, were key drivers for entering the marketplace. They saw Microsoft’s network of resellers and co-sellers as a great fit for their offer. But the technicalities of selling and billing proved to be a steep learning curve. So, working closely with Microsoft, they looked for the right marketplace partner. They settled on WeTransact after connecting with Sylvia, who they found to be extremely helpful.
“WeTransact has been absolutely fantastic. They have a sequential, logical way that they go through it, and we’re going through that process. It’s been really good.” -Brendan Fahey, Founder & Executive Chairman, Give Me Five
Landing in new markets around the world
People today might be better educated, but their mental health literacy – understanding how to maintain a healthy mind – is low. Give Me Five is a ‘communimetic’ tool that uses a combination of mental health metrics and customized question banks (instead of ‘one and done’ screening) to evaluate wellbeing. Where relevant, it also takes into account ‘performance data’ from sources such as fitness trackers and observations from nominated stakeholders.
Give Me Five solves the problem of early screening for mental health problems, and guides people toward the right support track for their needs. The universality and scale of this societal challenge mean the product is able to serve broad and diverse markets. It caters to everyone from young children to military veterans.
The company found its first customers in the education sector – schools and universities. Since then, a number of different organizations around the world, from India to Canada, have adopted the technology. New use cases – and new markets – are emerging all the time, but there’s a common theme: people of all ages, at different stages of their lives, feel increasingly disconnected.
With a global reach and a broad range of applications, Give Me Five encountered another challenge – compliance with local markets and regulations. For a startup, navigating the regulatory labyrinth in multiple markets is a potential barrier to growth.
The great thing about the Microsoft marketplace – and working with marketplace experts WeTransact – is that the billing and terms of agreement are all handled on their behalf. At the same time, Give Me Five can lean into the trust and security associated with Microsoft.
As a small start-up with a social mission, Give Me Five needed a bigger runway to deliver its offer and become commercially viable. That runway was the Microsoft marketplace, and the crew that prepared it for take-off was WeTransact.
“We’ve had a lot of friendly, around-the-clock assistance, and a lot of opportunities where doors have been opened and conversations have got going.”- Dr Lisa Fahey OAM, Founder & CEO, Give Me Five
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