MINDBODY Acquires Healcode

photo courtesy of getapp.com

The leading provider of cloud-based business management software to the wellness services industry adds locally-owned Healcode to its list of services. 

If you’ve signed up for a yoga, pilates, spin, or barre class via world wide web, it’s likely the reservation was made through MINDBODY. When Rick Stollmeyer and his longtime friend and business partner Blake Beltram founded MINDBODY on Jan. 1 2001, the mission was to simplify scheduling—particularly for fitness studios. Since then, the software company has seen tremendous growth and continues to expand, noting locally-based Healcode as its most recent acquisition.

While Stollmeyer and Beltram were building the success of MINDBODY, Austinite Steve Goldstein and two other programmers banded together to build a supplementary product. In 2006, Goldstein’s wife Shoshana became the owner of JoyMoves Pilates and shortly thereafter, the couple saw a need for improved functionality on MINDBODY. Goldstein had an idea to create widgets to integrate in the software, so he picked up the phone to run it by Stollmeyer.

“I explained my background and Rick said something like, ‘We consider integrating into websites with an application program interface (API) an extremely high priority but as high as it is, we have higher priorities, so we were thinking about having a partner do that for us. Why don’t you start a company to do that?” Goldstein remembers. 

And hence, Healcode was born. Adding an element of convenience became its forte, with real-time customer engagement and marketing tools, as well as other customizable widgets to make a seamless online experience for customers. It helped bridge the gap between wellness businesses and online scheduling, shopping, and messaging. Healcode serves over 8,000 MINDBODY business, so the merge seemed natural. After eight years of working alongside each other, Stollmeyer was faced with a choice.

“In these technology partner relationships, there always comes a fork in the road. We were faced with a few choices. First, we could create a co-dependent relationship with exclusivity. Second, we could build our own. Third option was to buy,” said Stollmeyer.

With all the experience Healcode has—plus already knowing the MINDBODY team and product—the decision is about as easy as it gets. Business acquisitions are likened to any relationship; it takes time and the stars need to align. Importantly, the entrepreneur who built the company being sold has to be at peace with selling the product and business he’s worked so hard on.

“We really did believe in their vision 100 percent from day one. Mentally, I always considered myself to be shepherding this business for MINDBODY,” said Goldstein.