Episode 13 now available!

Ep 13 - Ben Camp, CEO & Co-Founder, Recovery.com

​How This Website is Helping Solve the Mental Health Crisis​

Ben saw people in crisis turning to the internet for help, and finding websites taking advantage of them. So he built something better.

But he didn't start in the US.

Ben and his co-founder launched Recovery.com's first product in India, used revenue-based financing to avoid dilution, built their entire leadership team from a Madison coworking space, and raised a Series B, all while reaching only single-digit percentages of the people who actually need help.

This conversation covers fundraising strategy, the RedFox AI acquisition, rebranding from Rehab Path, and what "founder mode" looks like when you're trying not to undermine the team you've built.

Episode Topics

• Launching a freemium health tech product in India before tackling the US market
• Revenue-based financing as an alternative to VC dilution
• Building a leadership team through StartingBlock Madison's coworking ecosystem
• The strategic rebrand from Rehab Path to Recovery.com and what it unlocked
• Acquiring RedFox AI to stay ahead on artificial intelligence
• Balancing mission-driven healthcare with business incentives and patient trust
• What "founder mode" actually means in practice at a scaling startup

→ Listen to the Interview​

Key learnings

Test your startup in a market where nobody's watching.

Ben and his co-founder didn't launch in the US. They launched in India. It sounds counterintuitive, but the logic was sound: the US market had entrenched competitors dominating SEO, and going head-to-head with them right out of the gate would have been expensive and slow. India gave them a large English-speaking market with zero competition in addiction treatment directories.

That's where they refined their freemium model. List treatment centers for free, then upsell when centers want more visibility. By the time they turned their attention to the US, they had a proven product and a business model that worked. It's not the typical Wisconsin startup playbook, but it's a reminder that your first market doesn't have to be your biggest market. Sometimes you need a sandbox to get it right before you go after the real thing.

Revenue-based financing is underused by Wisconsin founders, and it shouldn't be.

Ben has done four or five loans with Lighter Capital since 2018. That's not a typo. He keeps going back because the math works. It's more expensive than a bank loan from an interest rate perspective, but here's the thing: most startups can't get a bank loan anyway. You don't have the assets, and personally guaranteeing one is a terrible idea.

What Lighter gives you is non-dilutive capital without the covenants and strings that come with traditional lending. Ben has used it strategically, sometimes to bridge the gap before hitting benchmarks that would let him raise equity at a better valuation. He was pretty direct about this: founders get enamored with raising VC at high valuations without doing the math on what that actually means for their outcome. Revenue-based financing isn't as sexy as announcing a funding round, but keeping more of your company is a pretty compelling trade-off.

Your coworking space might be your most important hiring pipeline.

Recovery.com spent four years at StartingBlock in Madison. During that time, Ben met their first seed investor, their CFO, their head of marketing, and their head of partnerships. Most of those relationships started as informal conversations or fractional work before turning into full-time roles. Their CFO, Scott, started by giving them free advice, then became a fractional CFO, then eventually joined full-time.

This is a pattern I keep seeing in Wisconsin's ecosystem. The people sitting next to you at your coworking space aren't just neighbors. They're potential investors, advisors, and future leaders on your team. Ben didn't run a national search for his C-suite. He built relationships with people he trusted over years, tested the working relationship through fractional arrangements, and then made the full-time hire when it made sense. If you're a founder and you're not spending time in your local ecosystem, you're leaving your best hires on the table.

A rebrand isn't always about marketing. Sometimes it's about mission clarity.

The company started as Rehab Path. It was a fine name, until it wasn't. "Rehab" boxed them into a narrow corner: residential treatment for substance use disorder. But the company was actually helping people find all sorts of care levels, including mental health treatment. The word itself felt heavy, clinical, and tied to the hardest part of someone's journey.

"Recovery" is a completely different word. It's broader, more positive, and applies to everyone. As Ben put it, "Everyone's recovering from something." Buying the Recovery.com domain was a significant investment, but it aligned the brand with where the company was actually going. For founders wrestling with whether a rebrand is worth it: if your name is actively creating confusion about what you do, it's not a marketing exercise. It's a strategic decision.

Build a business model where doing good and making money aren't in conflict.

Ben said something that stuck with me: he's never had to make a decision that was better for the business but worse for patients. That's not luck, that's design. Their freemium model gives treatment centers value for free. Paid upgrades happen naturally when centers want more visibility. Revenue grows alongside impact metrics.

The key insight here is about investor alignment too. Ben was deliberate about bringing on investors who appreciated the mission and weren't going to push him toward decisions that conflicted with patient-first principles. He also emphasized maintaining control as long as possible, reading the details of every deal, understanding the implications of dilution, and not getting swept up in the excitement of a high valuation without doing the math. For mission-driven founders, the business model isn't enough. You also need a cap table that supports it.

Founder mode is real, but the skill is knowing when to use it.

As Recovery.com has grown, Ben's had to let go of things he used to own. That's the job. And for the most part, it's rewarding. Watching strong leaders take ownership of areas you used to handle alone is one of the best parts of scaling. But there's a flip side: sometimes things aren't working, and you don't have the context you used to.

Ben's learned that jumping back into the weeds isn't always micromanagement. As a founder, you carry the most context about the business, and sometimes that perspective is exactly what a project needs to move forward. The skill isn't avoiding founder mode. It's deploying it without breaking trust with your team. That means communicating why you're getting involved, making it clear it's not about mistrust, and knowing when to step back once the project is on track.

You can be the market leader and still be in the first inning.

Recovery.com is the leader in their space. But when Ben looks at the millions of people who need mental health treatment every year, and the millions more who never get help because they don't know where to turn, he sees single-digit market penetration. That's the mindset that keeps this company moving.

Their current focus is becoming a household name among clinicians and therapists who make referrals. These are power users. If therapists know about Recovery.com and trust it, patient volume follows. They're also expanding from enterprise sales into the long tail of smaller treatment centers and individual practitioners. Even at the top of the market, there's a massive amount of ground to cover. For Wisconsin founders: winning your category doesn't mean the work is done. It might mean you're just now seeing the real size of the opportunity.

Upcoming episodes 👀

• Michael Ceely (Coaching for Entrepreneurs)
• Jillian Bichanich (Cubbi / Pocketchange)
• Russ From (Wayfi Wireless)
• Angela Damiani (Midwest Founders Community)
• Joey Friedli (Trashpoint)
• Justin Byers (Axio BioPharma)
• Jon Eckhardt (UW Madison School of Business)

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