Thank you!
We loved being here to help.
Hi friends!
This post has been a long time coming, and I personally apologize for not updating you all sooner. We value every member of our community as friends, users, investors, and more. Thank you for your support, kindness, and love of Better! We did amazing things over the years! We helped so many people!! And you all made that possible.
I’m sorry to inform many of you that my co-founder, Better’s CEO, and my best friend, Rachael Norman passed away on July 17th 2019, surrounded by loved friends that were her family. Like many, Rachael struggled with anxiety and depression. Perhaps that is one of the things that gave her such resolve to give back to the world. To build Better. To make health care more accessible. To get us paid back by our insurance for care.
Rachael Norman was the smartest person I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. She saw the best in individuals, and built the good she wanted to see in the world. Rachael was one of our brightest lights. She was my family. And even though our journey in building Better was far from over. Rachael was a great success. She proved that our broken healthcare system can be fixed one claim at a time. With hard work. And lots of phone calls.
Although Rachael was under the care of world-class doctors, therapists, and was her own strongest advocate for care, the stress and workload were getting to be too much. She started self medicating sometime in 2019. Rachael accidentally overdosed on July 9th 2019.
We very much need to have a conversation in Silicon Valley about the dynamic that encourages founders to put everything on the line to build a company that changes the world, an investment community that empowers the journey, and yet doesn’t provide sufficient tools to weather the storms along the way.
Better itself ceased all patient operations August 15th 2019. I was able to place all of our employees with job offers and thank our partners in the wind-down. All patient data is secure and I am the sole custodian of our remaining records; no-one except myself has access to any patient data. Additionally, the website remains operational for the immediate future. Better users may go to https://getbetter.co to login, view, or archive their data for their own records. I continue to work to wind down the remaining obligations of the company.
Thank you everyone. For your support of Better’s journey. Godspeed Rachael. You were an exemplary human being. I miss you every day.
Sincerely yours,
John
Co-founder and CTO, Better
john@getbetter.co
