Creator Tayla Cannon has secured a $1.1 million investment from Slow Ventures’ Creator Fund to develop personal training (PT) software.

In 2023, Tayla Cannon moved from Australia to the United States for a job in a city she’d never seen before, initially working in physiotherapy before moving to interventional cardiology but becoming increasingly disillusioned with the physical rehab model’s localized, reactive, and volume-based nature. Suffering from chronic back pain herself, she began sharing her perspective online about proactive and holistic ways people can address pain, admitting there was no strategy, no roadmap, and certainly no business model behind her initial content. Her authentic approach gained significant traction, growing to more than 130,000 followers on Instagram and leading her to establish Athletic Rebuild, a company providing rehab and performance coaching for athletes. However, Cannon quickly recognized she was becoming the bottleneck to scaling her impact, realizing she needed technology that could operate independently of her direct involvement.

Organic Investment from Slow Ventures’ Creator Fund

Cannon secured $1.1 million from Slow Ventures’ $60 million Creator Fund after being introduced to the firm through a friend who invited her to an event in Austin, stating she had zero intention of raising capital and wasn’t even pitching or preparing a deck. She connected with investor Megan Lightcap at this community event, and her thesis resonated strongly—that the traditional rehab model is local, reactive, and bound by insurance and 30-minute appointments, while software has the potential to scale clinician capacity and deliver higher-quality care anywhere. She is one of the first creators to receive a check from the Creator Fund, which seeks to back content creators and influencers making an impact online. The organic nature of this funding opportunity reflects a broader shift in venture capital, where creators with subject-matter expertise and built-in audiences are increasingly recognized as viable founders capable of shipping software that reimagines how care happens.

Building Rebuildr: A HIPAA-Compliant Rehab Platform

Rebuildr is a HIPAA-compliant mentorship app designed to help rehab professionals run their online practices, with Cannon stating she wants to make high-quality rehab accessible anywhere in the world, not limited by geography, insurance, or 30-minute appointments. The platform is anticipated to offer functionality for program design, exercise prescription with video, progress tracking, asynchronous check-ins, payments, and a mentorship layer that aids new clinicians in developing clinical and business skills. Because health care data is so sensitive, Cannon is focusing on security from day one with HIPAA alignment, role-based access controls, audit logs, and encryption. The platform positions itself as an operating system for independent rehab professionals and small practices, entering a competitive space with established players like TrainHeroic, Trainerize, and Everfit, but with a distinctive focus on empowering clinicians as entrepreneurs rather than just service providers.

Leveraging Creator Advantage in Healthcare Distribution

Slow Ventures created the Creator Fund to support founders who already have a following online and can convert that reach into product usage, recognizing that in software, distribution is often the hardest problem while creators start with a built-in channel. This is particularly relevant in health, where customer acquisition costs have been climbing as paid performance channels become increasingly saturated, according to digital health funding analyses from Rock Health and others who monitor the business. Cannon’s audience gives Rebuildr early velocity with athletes and active consumers as well as clinicians who seek to develop hybrid or entirely online practices. The startup aims to shift the paradigm from reactive to proactive care, with plans to use the funding to accelerate product development and expand its reach, aiming to become a leading platform in physical therapy software by 2027. This investment signals a broader trend where creator-led healthcare startups are disrupting traditional models by combining authentic audience relationships with technical solutions to systemic industry problems.