Pauline from Bodhi Holistic Hub

In this interview, we sit down with Pauline Romao, founder of Bodhi Holistic Hub, to discuss her journey building a vetted marketplace for holistic health practitioners. 

From bootstrapping alongside her full-time role at Airbnb to expanding across Australia, Pauline shares insights on:

• How she built up the platform as a non-technical founder
• Why she bootstrapped the business in the beginning
• How she hired 2 senior engineers through SkillsRobin
• How her vision for the company has grown from through conversations with customers and investors

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your background?

My name is Pauline. I'm originally from Paris and moved to Sydney over 11 years ago. I've always been passionate about holistic health and holistic practices in general. Professionally, I've worked in different tech companies, with my current one being Airbnb, where I've been for over 8 years now. I'm in the Supply organization, which looks after the host community. We founded Bodhi three years ago and officially launched in April 2023. Since then, I've been building it alongside my full-time job.

What exactly is Bodhi Holistic Hub?

Bodhi Holistic Hub is a platform that helps people discover and instantly book sessions with vetted holistic health practitioners and learn the benefits of different holistic practices, instead of spending hours searching online, or needing to depend on recommendations from friends.

We’re bringing together local holistic practitioners from over 70 specialties such as Breathwork, Ayurveda, Reiki, Holistic health coaching and Kinesiology into one centralised marketplace for the first time. Practitioners have all been carefully selected and have gone through our verification process that includes a background and credentials check, an extensive interview and if needed a test session.

We are also aiming to be the first vertical SAAS solution dedicated to supporting holistic health practitioners with tools adapted to their needs and ways of working.

So there are three components to your platform, right?

Yes. The first part is the marketplace. We offer a way to find practitioners, whether you know what you're looking for or not.  You search for a specific modality and choose from a list of vetted practitioners or you can also search based on a specific health concern.

Let's say you've got a migraine and you've tried the well-known treatments without success. You'll start to think about exploring other options and finding the root cause, because treating just the symptom often doesn't make it go away long-term. For migraines, there are various approaches, so we suggest different practitioners who might tackle that specific concern in different ways. Each person can choose based on what resonates with them and what they're comfortable with.

The second aspect is our learning hub, which is focused on education and helping people understand holistic health. We want to make these practices more trustworthy by helping people understand how they work, what to expect, and the science behind them. This transforms someone from thinking, "I've heard about it but don't really understand if it's right for me" to "I have a better understanding of how it works and how it can help and maybe I want to explore it." This education is provided through articles, events online and in person, podcasts, videos, and interviews. 

The third element is our practitioner community. Practitioners often work alone, from home, feeling isolated. We created a community for them to connect, collaborate, support each other, and make referrals. We organize events and create ways for them to connect. We’re also looking into building a SaaS tool to help them manage bookings and the administrative side of their practice. 

What's the overall mission of your company?

To make holistic practices simple, trustworthy and accessible to everyone.  Our vision is for holistic practices to work alongside conventional medicine.

Sadly, at the moment, it's often one way or the other. People come to holistic practices after exhausting everything else, as a last resort option, which is a shame because these approaches could have helped much earlier and worked alongside their conventional treatment. The reverse isn't great either. We want to bring both together so they can work in tandem for better outcomes for everyone.

What motivated you to start Bodhi?

I‘ve seen the benefits of holistic practices in my own personal life and around me as well. I wanted to help more people benefit from them. 

I had also always been the go-to person for many of my friends for recommendations in this space. I had a lot of people asking me, "I know you're knowledgeable in this space, I'm curious, what do you suggest? Do you have a practitioner you recommend?" Then it started extending to friends of friends and wider connections. I felt there was a need to create a platform to facilitate that process. I can only do so much in my own circle, but the power of a platform is much bigger.

What was your first step to turn it into a platform? 

The first step was to assess if my initial idea was just a hunch or if there was a real problem and market for it. I spent a lot of time doing interviews, talking to clients and practitioners.

Interestingly, when I interviewed practitioners, I realized they needed help as well. Many were super passionate about what they do but struggled with marketing and technology. Their websites were often confusing, you couldn't book online, you had to send emails—lots of issues like that.

Through these conversations, I realized I could help both people find practitioners and help practitioners with their marketing and admin. This validated my idea because with a marketplace, you need to grow both sides. If only one side is interested, you'll struggle to build the other side. I discovered practitioners needed this platform and would be keen to try it. That proved true—we had a lot of interest from practitioners very early on.

These practitioners have been excluded from the digital platforms and progress made in conventional medicine. But it's not a small niche—Australia has approximately 32,000 holistic practitioners, and the number is growing every year.

What has your journey been like since those initial customer interviews three years ago?

It took a year to go from the initial idea to building and launching the platform. For the last two years, we initially focused on building the supply, ensuring we had enough practitioners on the platform. Then we worked on improving the product, understanding what people need, and testing different marketing channels.

Initially, we used an external contractor to build the platform but quickly realized we wanted someone internal who would be committed to the company. We hired a CTO, and more recently another engineer.

Over these two years we realised that practitioners need even more help with practice management. We're now building a SaaS product so they have tools to manage their direct bookings and can offer services on our platform but also. This will be released in a few months. 

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How does Bodhi make money?

We charge practitioners a sign-up fee and then take a commission on bookings. When we introduce the SaaS product, we'll add an optional subscription fee for those who want to use those additional tools.

What were your biggest challenges?

Definitely not being technical myself. I come from a business, operations, and sales background, so I understand marketplaces, growing supply, and similar aspects. But figuring out the technical side was much more challenging.

This meant we initially made mistakes with technology choices, the people we worked with, and how things were built—which we later had to rebuild differently. That was a big challenge.

Looking back, I would have sought a technical co-founder from day one. Doing everything without a technical background, using external contractors, then finding someone later... Having someone with expertise would have avoided many issues and costs, saving a lot of wasted effort.

What impact did bringing on a technical co-founder have?

He's someone who doesn't just build features but thinks about what needs to be done for the company's longevity. That's something you can't really see without a technical background.

It's crucial for everything behind the scenes—the right structure, systems in the backend that you don't see but are important, security, privacy, and architecture. These are aspects I wouldn't have been able to address without a CTO.

How did you recruit your technical talent?

We actually recruited both of the engineers through SkillsRobin. It's been a surprisingly smooth process—We only spoke to two candidates through SkillsRobin, and both ended up joining our team. I'm not sure if that's typical, but it worked incredibly well for us.

Initially, I tried going through my network. When you have someone recommended by people you know, it's usually better. Even though I'm not an engineer myself, I have many friends in the tech space, so I reached out to them first.

When that didn't yield results, I connected with SkillsRobin through a NSW Tech event. They helped me find our CTO and later our second engineer.

Having engineers who really understand our mission has made a significant difference in our development process. If you're a non-technical founder, I'd definitely recommend finding partners like SkillsRobin who understand your specific needs and can help you find not just technically skilled people, but those who connect with your company's purpose.

What advice would you give to founders trying to bring on engineering talent for the first time?

Most engineers join startups either because they're passionate about what the startup is doing or because of an interesting technological challenge, even if they're not as passionate about the overall mission. You need to articulate one or the other to potential engineers.

Also, in a startup environment, you need people with an entrepreneurial mindset who can think strategically beyond their specific role - this is something to look for in any new hire.

How are you funding Bodhi? You were bootstrapping at the beginning—is that still the plan?

It's still the case. We're also generating more revenue through the platform now, which funds what we want to do. 

We're also planning to raise funds by the end of the year though we want to have the SaaS product in place before going down that route. With the SaaS product, our pitch becomes more comprehensive for potential investors. 

From my conversations, the feedback is that marketplaces are considered risky investments nowadays, even if they're working well. But SaaS products are attractive to investors. There's a real need for our SaaS product, which is why we're building it, but from an investment and fundraising perspective, we know having it will help our case.

Was bootstrapping a conscious decision?

It was. Raising funds can be amazing, but it can also be detrimental early on. Bootstrapping allowed us to build the company in a way that made sense for us. Others might disagree with me—but I'm glad we did it this way.

Now we've established the company and know what we're doing. While I'm open to advice and recommendations, I have a much deeper understanding of our industry. We have a stronger offer and can negotiate better terms.

 If we had raised investment very early, we wouldn't have had much leverage, leading to difficult terms. If we pursue fundraising now, it's a different story—we have traction and are already working. From a proof-of-concept perspective, if you don't absolutely need funding early on, don't do it. Fundraising takes a lot of time, so the decision comes down to: do you want to spend time seeking funding or building your company?

What would you say were your biggest wins so far?

Definitely expanding outside of Sydney. It happened naturally and organically. People started reaching out to us looking for practitioners outside of Sydney, and practitioners wanted to join too. We even have practitioners outside of Australia wanting to join.

This has been great because it shows there's a real need when you're not actively trying to expand but people are coming to you. 

And while it might not count as a big win - for me - every time I see a review from someone whose decision to see one of our practitioners had positive results—solving a health or wellbeing issue they've struggled with for a long time—that's what matters most.

I once randomly met a man on the street who had heard about us at a market. Since then, he'd been seeing one of our practitioners, a naturopath and acupuncturist. For the first time, his chronic skin issue was actually improving! He was so thankful that we'd connected him with that practitioner! For me, that means the world because we're having a genuine positive impact on people's lives.

What are your plans for the future?

This year we have two focuses: first, releasing our SaaS product for practitioners, and second, expanding to all of Australia, starting with key cities like Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. 

We're also beginning to explore B2B partnerships with corporate EAP (Employee Assistance Programs) and insurance companies that are starting to look at holistic practices.

Where do you see Bodhi in 10 years?

In an ideal world, it could be a platform available worldwide. I see the platform as the go-to place for holistic health and practices, whether for practitioners starting out—providing education, tools, community, and clients—or for someone exploring holistic practices.

I envision full integration with insurance systems and GPs, creating a real integration between different practitioners. As a client, your health history would be in one place, regardless of whether you've seen someone in the conventional system or through our platform.

I'd also like to work on research. There isn't enough investment in researching many of these practices. Research brings legitimacy, understanding, trust, and acceptance. I'd like to contribute to making these practices more accepted and understood.

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This interview was conducted in May 2025. Bodhi Holistic Hub continues to expand across Australia, connecting clients with trusted holistic health practitioners while building tools to support practitioners in growing their practices.

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