From the Founder | 5 Things Grow Therapy Looks for in Every New Hire

From a conversation with Henrique Coelho, Senior Director of Engineering at Grow Therapy.

🎥 Watch the full interview on YouTube | Spotify

Grow Therapy helps people find therapists covered by their insurance. It's a deceptively simple pitch for a technically complex product: a two-sided marketplace with claims automation, AI-assisted matching, and session transcription built into the back end.

Henrique Coelho leads the Match Success team as Senior Director of Engineering. He joined after several years at Uber, drawn by the mission, the founders, and what he calls a "founder's mindset" culture. In his conversation with Wellfound CEO Amit Matani, he got specific about what that actually looks like and who fits.

Here are the five things Grow Therapy actually looks for when hiring.

1.  Bias for Action

Henrique described Grow Therapy's cultural values directly when Amit asked how ideas move from concept to production:

“That's part of our cultural values — bias for action, ownership, accountability, critical thinking. There's a set of values on our company that go along with the bias for action.”

The contrast he draws is with what the company is not:

"If someone joins and they were looking for a process-oriented company, or more like a waterfall kind of company, or a kind of thing that's like 'I will just do my work as I'm told' — that's not probably the environment that they will find here."

Speed matters. So does taking responsibility for what gets shipped.

2.  Ownership

Ownership comes up again and again when Henrique talks about how his team works. He uses it as a filter, not a talking point.

“They will find an environment where you can come and you can own. And the fact that the opportunities are so big right now in this space in tech in general with AI — we are looking for people that are going to explore and even take risk.”

End-to-end ownership is built into the team structure itself. Henrique's Match Success team is responsible for the full experience: search, booking, and provider back-office. "My team has an end-to-end ownership of that experience," he said. People are expected to see work through, not hand it off.

3.  Curiosity

Curiosity became a named hiring criterion for Henrique's team as AI started reshaping how engineers work.

We are looking for curiosity now as well. We are looking for people that are going to explore and even take risk... I think there is a real opportunity right now in the market for engineers, managers and leaders to really be curious about how to evolve with this technology versus potentially wait and see what happens, or even fighting it. Whoever may be fighting it may be on the wrong side of history.

Henrique runs AI agents at home to manage his own calendar and is leading developer experience initiatives at the company. The curiosity he wants to hire is something he can point to in his own work.

4.  Pride in What You Build

One of Grow Therapy's values is phrased as "we build for the loved ones": the product should be good enough that you'd be proud to put it in front of the people you care about. Henrique mentioned it unprompted when talking about culture:

“We build for the loved ones. So we are proud of what we build. And so we don't just trade off speed or bias for action with low quality. That is really reflecting here as behaviors that we want to celebrate and we want to embrace.”

It's also what drew Henrique to the company personally. "I want to work on something that when I explain to my friends and family, it's easy," he said. "They were like, I would use this. I would love to get into this." He wants to hire people who hold the product to the same standard.

5.  Mission Orientation

Grow Therapy operates in mental health. The stakes in that space are not abstract. Henrique's pitch leans directly on that:

“If you are looking for a place where you want to create, you want to innovate, you want to grow as a leader, you want to have ideas and honestly funding to explore those ideas — and then on top of that, if one is interested in mission-critical initiatives, this is it. You are affecting positive people's lives. People are getting on the other side stronger and enabling that potential.”

The product involves real clinical relationships. How AI gets introduced in sessions, how the matching algorithm works, how provider tools reduce administrative load: these decisions have effects on care. People who aren't motivated by that tend to leave.

Grow Therapy is growing fast and hiring across both its New York and San Francisco hubs. The company is expanding from therapy into other forms of care, investing heavily in AI infrastructure, and building out its offices. Henrique's summary of who the company is right for: "If you want to be in a founder's mindset environment, this is kind of it."

Browse open roles at Grow Therapy on Wellfound and apply with one profile here.

Final tips

For Founders:

The five things Henrique listed as hiring criteria are the same things he said drew him to Grow Therapy as a candidate. If you want to attract the right people, get specific about what you reward in practice, not what reads well on a values page.

For Recruiters:

Grow Therapy is hiring across New York and San Francisco, growing into new care categories, and building AI infrastructure. Candidates from marketplace companies with two-sided dynamics experience (Uber, Airbnb, DoorDash) translate quickly. The mission-driven angle is real and worth leading with.

For Job Seekers:

Ask directly how the company defines ownership. Henrique's answer (end-to-end responsibility for an experience, not just one component) tells you more about the day-to-day than any job description. If that sounds right, Grow Therapy is worth a serious look.

Explore more healthtech companies in this series:

• OneImaging
• Tennr
• Thatch

Why Work Here is a series in which Amit Matani, CEO of Wellfound, has honest, behind-the-scenes conversations with founders, executives, and employees about why their companies are worth joining.

Click here to watch more Why Work Here.