About the company

A small studio in Oakland.

Six people, two cats, and a shared conviction that the next thing the nervous system needs is not another app that asks for your attention.

TheraJoy started in a therapist's office in Berkeley in the winter of 2023. Our cofounder Sana, an EMDR-trained LMFT, was loaning her handheld tappers to clients between sessions and asking them to remember to bring them back. The clients who did, did better. The clients who forgot, lost a week.

The obvious thing was an app. The less obvious thing was to build an app that didn't make itself the center of a person's practice. The hardest part of the last two years has been figuring out what to leave out.

We are self-funded for now, with a small seed round from friends who understood the assignment. We charge for the product because we want the product to answer to you, and not to an ad market or a data buyer. We do not sell or broker your data — ever, for any price.

We think about our work as building quiet software: tools that sit where they're needed, that do one small thing well, and that go back to their corner when you're done.

"We're trying to build the opposite of a habit loop."

If that resonates, you're probably going to like the app. If it doesn't, we are genuinely not the right fit, and we hope you find a tool that is.

i.

The app should shrink.

Every release, we look at what we can remove. Screens, settings, prompts. The best version of TheraJoy is one you think about less.

ii.

Clinicians first.

If a feature would make life worse for a working therapist, we don't ship it. Full stop. Every quarter we show roadmap to our clinical advisors and listen.

iii.

No streaks, ever.

Gamification belongs in games. Calming tools should not make you feel worse for missing a day.

iv.

Paid, not harvested.

You pay a simple fee. We don't run ads, sell data, broker PHI, or train any third-party model on you.

The studio

Six people.

Sana Rao, LMFT
Co-founder · Clinical
Twelve years in private practice. Still sees clients Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Eli Chen
Co-founder · Engineering
Previously on small-team products at Apple. Lost a parent young; that's where this comes from.
Maya Lindqvist
Design
Industrial designer by training. Designed the Pebble over the course of many walks.
Jonah Park
Engineering
Writes most of our haptic code. Believes firmly in doing fewer, quieter things.
Iris Mendez
Operations & trust
Runs our clinician onboarding, our BAA process, and our support inbox.
Ravi Iyer, PhD
Advisor · Clinical research
EMDR researcher at UCSF. Reads our research notes before we publish them.