Our investment in Noala

We’re so excited to be backing Emilie Spire and Noala building a community & content SaaS-enabled marketplace for Speech Therapy.

• Communication fuels our relationships and is vital for helping us thrive, yet 20% of us will experience communication difficulties at some point in our lives.
• In the UK, 2 students in every class of 30 — have a Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and 81% with emotional and behavioural disorders have unidentified communication needs.
• Children who experience issues with speaking and understanding are more than more than 4x less likely to pass Maths and English GCSEs, while vocabulary difficulties at age 5 are significantly associated with poor literacy, mental health and employment outcomes at age 34.
• By adulthood, 88% of long-term unemployed young men have been found to have Speech and Learning Communication Needs (SLCN).

Enter Noala…

• Noala’s platform takes a multistage approach to the therapy journey. It combines the power of Noala’s digital tools with real-world expertise of its clinical team to help both sides — families and Speech and Language Professionals — achieve the best quality outcome for themselves as individuals, and also the wider community.
• For patients and families, Noala is a coaching platform that brings benefits as a standalone treatment option, or it can be used while patients are on waiting lists, and alongside existing NHS, or school-led treatment plans.
• For Speech and Language Professionals, the Noala platform can be used by any professional practicing across the UK and US to onboard and manage their existing caseload. By helping SLPs work more efficiently, they are less likely to experience burnout. A recent survey of 1,000 healthcare professionals showed that 28% had quit because of burnout.
• And we know that Telehealth is the new norm: $250bn post-COVID US market according to McKinsey, and we have seen the rapid adoption in the US and locally via AccuRx.
• We’ve also seen vertically focused virtual care platforms building very large businesses including Livongo (chronic care), Noom (diabetes), Musculoskeletal (Sword).
• And we are big believers in B2B networks, having already invested in Rekki, Compa, Melio and Libeo.

As always, we’re backing the surfer…

• Emilie saw first-hand the impact that communication disorders can have on a person’s quality of life after her niece Ambre suffered from a stroke just before she was born. Emilie has spent her career in investing and product building at Partech, Felix Capital and BlaBlaCar, Emilie was inspired by her niece’s journey to build a platform that meaningfully supports the needs of millions to get back their voice.
• We are in awe of Emilie — the team she is building, their relentless focus on execution, their speed of learning, and impact they are having — a joy to partner with.

We’re so proud to be on this journey with you alongside our friends at Cocoa, and angels including Nicolas Brusson (BlaBlaCar), Josefin Landgard (Kry), Adrien Nussenbaum (Mirakl), and Xavier Louis (Peak).