Digital health · Online therapy
In Your Corner
An online counseling and coaching marketplace that began as Pretty Padded Room in 2011, went through Y Combinator in 2014, and closed in 2016. Its web address now forwards to a competitor.
Twenty one thousand dollars, on national television
In an episode that aired in February 2013, a licensed psychotherapist named Bea Arthur asked five investors on ABC’s Shark Tank for $100,000 in exchange for 30 percent of an online therapy site called Pretty Padded Room. Its tagline was a nice place to go crazy. It had nine women therapists and, as of the taping, $21,000 in sales for the year to date, against $7,500 the year before.
All five investors passed. One told her she would serve as an example to every entrepreneur who came after her: know your numbers.
A month later, in March 2013, the company did something no television segment records. It registered with the federal provider directory. NPPES issued NPI 1164764460 to PRETTY PADDED ROOM of New York, an organizational number under the taxonomy Counselor, Mental Health, with Beatrice Arthur listed as CEO. That record is still marked active in 2026, a decade after the business stopped operating.
What it actually sold
The product was plain. A client picked a therapist from a roster and met her over video chat, or wrote to her in a secure online journal that the therapist answered in writing. Later the company added texting. An introductory session cost $20 and single sessions after that cost $40, with subscriptions running $100 to $200 a month, according to Entrepreneur in 2012.
The pricing was the pitch. “Instead of the typical rates of $200 an hour, it was only $200 a month,” Arthur told the Famous Failures podcast. The clinicians were licensed and worked for themselves. “Then my team of women that work for me, they’re all freelance therapists,” she told Entrepreneurs on Fire, describing a roster she recruited from her own professional circle.
Practicing across state lines was the open question from the beginning. Entrepreneur reported in 2012 that a lengthy terms of service statement required users to acknowledge that sessions might not comply with their own state’s regulations. Clinicians noticed. On the Student Doctor Network forum in February 2013, practitioners debated interstate teletherapy licensure and emergency protocols for the model. This was years before most states joined counseling licensure compacts, and the company published no independent audit of how it matched licensure to client location.
A counselor who could not afford counseling
Arthur graduated from Columbia in 2008 with a masters in psychological counseling. Her first company, a social club for stay at home moms, folded inside a year. “I decided to take it [therapy] where you take all other dark secrets and make something on the Internet,” she told Fast Company in 2013.
The economics were personal. She has said, to Elle in 2015 and to Bustle in 2019, that she was earning $38,000 as a counselor while carrying Columbia loans that cost twice that. The company was, in her telling, a way to make the profession pay. The technical side was not hers: she was a solo non technical founder working with a development shop, and the Y Combinator directory lists a second founder, Anthony Garcia, as CTO, with a team size of two.
Y Combinator, and the rebrand that followed
The company was accepted into Y Combinator’s Summer 2014 batch. Backstage Capital, Triple F.A.T. Goose and the Stigma Podcast writeup all describe Arthur as the first African American woman founder to go through the program; the claim originates with her, and the accelerator has published no confirmation.
“After Y Combinator, we rebranded to In Your Corner, which is what it’s known by now,” Arthur said in a 2017 interview. The new brand dropped the women only framing, added personal and professional coaches plus meditation and breath work instructors, and promised a mobile app for one tap support. The Y Combinator listing still carries that description.
Money followed the batch and then stopped. Arthur has said the company ran out of funding at the end of May 2015, that she took merchant loans repaid by daily debits on revenue, and that repayments reached about $9,000 a month. She laid off employees, kept contractors, and carried it eleven more months.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Provider registration | NPPES NPI 1164764460, issued March 25, 2013 to PRETTY PADDED ROOM, New York, NY, taxonomy Counselor, Mental Health, doing business as SAFESPACE, authorized official Beatrice Arthur, CEO. Active, last updated March 25, 2013. An active NPI does not mean a business is operating. | Public record |
| Accelerator record | Y Combinator directory: batch Summer 2014, former name Pretty Padded Room, team size 2, industry Healthcare Services, status Inactive, website inyourcorneronline.com. | YC data |
| Securities filings | No Form D under either name. EDGAR full text search for the exact phrase Pretty Padded Room returns zero hits; the In Your Corner hits belong to unrelated filers. Money raised under Section 4(a)(2) requires no Form D. | Not found |
| Revenue | “With no new features and no paid marketing, our total gross revenue for 2015 was $418,975,” Arthur wrote in Forbes in June 2016. At the 2013 Shark Tank taping the figures given were $21,000 year to date and $7,500 the prior year. | Founder-stated |
| Scale | Forbes, June 2016: thousands of clients in 39 states and 23 countries. Moguldom, 2019: five years in 30 countries, and 42 percent of users new to therapy. The two accounts do not match and no third party count exists. | Accounts differ |
| Closing date | April 2016 in one founder interview; about five weeks before a June 15, 2016 Forbes essay; 2016 in a 2022 CSQ essay; 2015 per a LinkedIn entry cited by Women.com. | Accounts differ |
| Clinical evidence | No registered trial, no FDA record, no NIH or NSF award and no PubMed indexed paper for the company or either brand name, checked September 24, 2026. | Not found |
| The domain today | Checked September 24, 2026: inyourcorneronline.com forwards to 7cups.com, an unrelated online support company. Arthur described selling the URL in Forbes on January 12, 2017. | Public record |
Read plainly: the company was real, it took money from paying clients for five years, and it left a federal provider number and a revenue figure behind. What it never produced was outcome data. Nobody published how its clients fared, or how many came back for a second session.
What to watch
- The stale provider record. NPI 1164764460 has not been updated since March 2013 and still reads active, one visible instance of a wider directory hygiene problem.
- Where the traffic went. The address now forwards to 7 Cups. Shark Tank Blog reported that Arthur holds no stake in that company.
- The cohort comparison. Companies founded in the same window built toward payer contracts. In Your Corner stayed cash pay to the end, which made it affordable and left it with one revenue line.
- The claim no outlet has independently verified: first African American woman founder in Y Combinator, sourced throughout to the founder.
In their words
“Instead of the typical rates of $200 an hour, it was only $200 a month.”
Bea Arthur, founder, Famous Failures podcast interview, 2017 · Interview
“Then my team of women that work for me, they’re all freelance therapists.”
Bea Arthur, Entrepreneurs on Fire · Interview
“I decided to take it [therapy] where you take all other dark secrets and make something on the Internet.”
Bea Arthur, Fast Company, 2013 · Independent
“We got outside funding after taping and before airing.”
Bea Arthur, Shark Tank Blog interview, February 2013 · Interview
“We served thousands of clients in 39 states and 23 countries.”
Bea Arthur, Forbes, June 15, 2016 · Founder-stated
“We operated that company for five years in 30 countries, and 42 percent of our users never tried therapy before.”
Bea Arthur, Moguldom, 2019 · Founder-stated
“Our app had a lot of technical debt, which turned into my personal debt, which is when I had to close in 2016.”
Bea Arthur, CSQ, February 2022 · Founder-stated
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordNPPES NPI Registry, NPI 1164764460, PRETTY PADDED ROOM
- Public recordSEC EDGAR full text and company searches, both brand names
- Public recordLive domain check of inyourcorneronline.com and related addresses
- YC dataY Combinator company directory record, In Your Corner, Summer 2014
- IndependentNeed to Vent? Forget the Couch, Startup Moves Therapy Online
- IndependentPretty Padded Room Shark Tank Update, Season 4
- InterviewBea Arthur Pretty Padded Room Update Interview
- IndependentThe Comeback Kid: How Bea Arthur Turned Her Mistakes Into Assets
- InterviewYes, You Can Be a CEO in a Crop Top
- InterviewBea Arthur, Famous Failures podcast interview
- InterviewBea Arthur of Pretty Padded Room, full transcript
- InterviewBea Arthur Has A Tech Solution For Mental Health Care
- IndependentBea Arthur Wants To Make Mental Health Care Accessible and Affordable For All
- IndependentHow This Founder Said Goodbye To Her Startup Goonies And Got On With Business
- IndependentHere’s What Went Down With Pretty Padded Room After Shark Tank
- IndependentPretty Padded Room, clinician discussion thread
- FounderFailing Forward: Lessons Learned From The End Of A Startup
- FounderHow I Finally Found Success as an Entrepreneur
- CompanyIn Your Corner company page and founder bios
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
