One-liner: The AI reimbursement back-office for private psychotherapy practices in Germany.
2-liner pitch: Germany is short ~7,000 insurance-covered therapy seats, so patients wait ~20 weeks while licensed private practices sit on empty chairs they can't easily bill to public insurance. We route those patients into private practices and get the practice paid — running the public-insurance reimbursement claim (Kostenerstattung, §13 SGB V), every legal deadline, and the appeal (Widerspruch) end-to-end, so AI does the work a practice manager does by hand today.
For team-finding (shorter): Therapists in Germany have empty private slots; desperate patients can't get covered care. We connect the two and automate the insurance-reimbursement fight that unlocks the money. Building it live at the hackathon — need a [technical co-founder].
- ~7,000 missing public therapy seats (Kassensitze); ~20 weeks until a spot is free.
- Patients can legally use a private practice and be reimbursed (Kostenerstattung, §13 Abs. 3 SGB V) — but it's manual and insurers reject hard: approval fell from ~81% (2016) to ~47% (2018).
- The practice either eats the loss, chases reimbursement for months, or turns the patient away.
- Private-practice therapists without a public contract (Privatpraxis, kein Kassensitz) treating statutory-insured patients via Kostenerstattung. Real money, recurring need.
- Patient = acquisition channel, not the payer.
- Capture patient demand → match to a private practice with an open slot → run reimbursement end-to-end: intake (PTV-11), deadline engine (insurer's 3/5-week clock → deemed approval / Genehmigungsfiktion §13 Abs. 3a), 1-month appeal (Widerspruch, §84 SGG).
- Value metric = approval rate (Bewilligungsquote). We get paid to lift it.
- AI collapses the paperwork/appeal labor (on-device OCR + LLM: read the rejection, compute the deadline, draft the appeal).
- Direct hit on YC RFS Summer 2026 #1.1: AI-native service companies — sell the completed work, not the tool — naming insurance and healthcare administration.
- Live search engine of ~all psychotherapists in DE + a two-sided demand hook: patient clicks "I want therapy with you" → therapist gets a yes/no/waitlist email → self-onboards → real-time slot data on both sides.
- No directory has this supply+demand signal. The reimbursement billing relationship is the recurring touchpoint that stops normal marketplace leakage (a therapy match otherwise goes off-platform for 1–2 years).
- SaaS per practice + success fee on recovered reimbursement.
- Expansion: all private billing (GOP/GOÄ) → broader outpatient reimbursement → payments / take-rate on the reimbursement flow → EU.
- RDG (Rechtsdienstleistungsgesetz): auto-generated legal argument could count as unauthorized legal service → mitigation: patient-filed templates + lawyer partner for the litigation stage.
- Insurers actively restrict reimbursement → which is why the value is measurable: we sell a higher approval rate.
- Fresh on June 6: the reimbursement engine (on-device OCR + LLM, deterministic deadline logic).
- Existing directory shown as evidence, not demoed (integrity rule).
- Have: [you] — domain + already shipped the directory & two-sided demand engine.
- Need: [technical co-founder — on-device/mobile ML + full-stack].
- Traction: [N therapist accounts, live patient demand]. ← strongest single line; use your real number.
Sources / honesty note: ~7,000 seats and ~20-week wait are the solid, defensible figures — lead with these. The 81%→47% approval drop is a 2018 Landespsychotherapeutenkammer study (official Kostenerstattung statistics were discontinued in 2013), so cite it as directional, not current.