Tech Meets Recovery: Bentonville-Based Sober Sidekick Reshapes Sobriety Support

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Amid a slew of technology companies relocating to northwest Arkansas is Sober Sidekick, a sobriety app based in Bentonville that was recently named the fastest-growing digital product in North America by well-known analytics platform Amplitude.

Sober Sidekick is a free app that helps those struggling with substance abuse track and maintain their sobriety and connect with others for support.

The app offers a sobriety counter with which users can track their sober time and milestones, in-app messaging with other users, 24/7 virtual Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, daily motivational messages, professional help and the ability to give support to other users to create a “gratitude-based community.”

Founded in 2019 in Los Angeles, the company’s growth rate from March 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024, was 205%, according to Amplitude.

And founder and CEO Chris Thompson said that rate reflects a genuine need for the app.

“For everyone in the world, whenever they reach out in this platform, another one of their peers will respond to them in minutes, if not seconds,” Thompson said during an interview. “Today, on average, six people are going to reach out with written support in that critical moment, because, simply put, relapses, suicides, overdoses and crises don’t happen in clinics or therapy sessions. These are things that happen when people are alone, so giving people an outlet in their isolating moments — that’s the goal.”

Thompson began building the app while he was in a sober living house, eventually getting to 75,000 users “without a dollar in investment.”

But it wasn’t always smooth sailing. Thompson said before the company moved to Bentonville, it tried out a business model in which rehabs could run marketing campaigns within the platform. Though the company went from “zero to a million” in annual revenue within six months, Thompson said the model didn’t reflect users’ best interests.

Instead, it created an incentive for readmitting into rehab treatment, rather than sustained sobriety.

So Thompson decided to “find a new path” and abandon the lucrative strategy for something different, a decision that garnered national attention, a Harvard case study and was the turning point for the company.

He started looking for partners who would “win” when people stayed sober. Insurers, employers and Medicaid plans were where Thompson shifted his focus. Shortly after that, Thompson visited Arkansas for the first time, and then moved to Bentonville on his third visit.

Jordan Carlisle, the company’s COO, said the investment in health care transformation in northwest Arkansas played a significant role in the relocation of the company.

Carlisle said more than 40 million people a year are struggling with addiction, and that Sober Sidekick is an overlap of technology and health care that is critical for sobriety.

“What we have seen over decades of evidence and anecdotal proof points is that things like AA, where people develop relationships in a support group and then learn to support others in that process, are the most effective for people to sustain their sobriety,” Carlisle said. “That’s what we’re doing at scale and making more accessible than anything the world has ever seen.”

Sober Sidekick also has the largest data set in the world on sobriety relapse. Thompson said getting someone to “engage with their peers” once a month leads to a 50% drop in monthly reported relapse rate, and that the app can predict the likelihood of relapse with 96% accuracy two weeks in advance based on engagement inside the app.

The app is now up to half a million users and sees 500 to 1,000 new users per day. And though the company doesn’t have “a ton of revenue” since cutting off the stream from rehabs, Thompson said there’s a lot of potential.

“There’s $43 billion spent on the direct cost of treatment every year, and the majority of that is going into people who readmit into treatment,” Thompson said. “The more we can prove our reduction of relapse within the platform, the more monetary value it creates. But the most important thing is we only win when our members win. We want to see the most epic wave of real-life comeback stories result from helping people at scale.”