Marli is raising $2.5m AUD seed to scale an allied-health practice management platform with 140 paying clinics and a doubling MRR curve.
Marli is a practice management platform built specifically for Australian allied-health clinics, combining scheduling, billing, and Medicare and private-health claims processing in a single system. The company was founded by two co-founders with direct domain depth — a CEO who practised as a physiotherapist for six years before building Marli and a CTO who was a senior engineer at Halaxy — and supported by a Medicare billing specialist advisor who keeps the compliance architecture current. The business has eight people and is generating $55,000 in monthly recurring revenue, up from $28,000 nine months ago, across approximately 141 active clinics paying an average of $390 per month. Half of new clinics arrive through partner referrals via allied-health associations, the cheapest and stickiest acquisition channel, with the remainder split between founder-led outbound and inbound. Net burn is $115,000 per month against $1.4 million in the bank, giving approximately 12 months of runway and establishing the urgency of the current raise. Marli is raising $2.5 million at seed, deploying 45% into sales and marketing to convert founder-led selling into a repeatable engine, 35% into product and engineering to deepen the claims-and-compliance module and begin the New Zealand expansion, and 20% into claims infrastructure and billing integrations. The core thesis is that the claims and compliance workflow is the highest-friction point in an allied-health practice and the one incumbents have consistently underbuilt; Marli owns that wedge, and the raise is the mechanism to scale it.
Executive summary
MRR
$55k AUD
140 clinics — Q2 2026
CAC payback
~4 months
$1,200 CAC — founder-led basis
Raising
$2.5m AUD
Seed round — close target Q4 2026
Marli is a SaaS practice management platform purpose-built for independent allied-health clinics in Australia and New Zealand. It consolidates online booking, patient records, and — critically — Medicare and private-health fund claiming and compliance into a single system. The founder spent six years as a practising physiotherapist before building Marli; the CTO is a former senior engineer at Halaxy, one of the two dominant platforms in the category. The product exists because every competitor in the market is effectively a booking system with billing bolted on afterwards. Marli's claims-and-compliance layer is built from the ground up for the specific Medicare and fund rules that govern allied health in ANZ — and the April 2024 launch of that module is the clearest inflection point in the company's growth trajectory.
The market opportunity is approximately 9,000 independent allied-health clinics across Australia and New Zealand, representing a serviceable addressable market of around $45 million at current pricing. Marli has 140 paying clinics, approximately $55,000 in monthly recurring revenue — up from $28,000 four quarters ago — and a CAC payback of roughly four months against a $1,200 acquisition cost. The LTV is projected at $9,000, though churn is not yet fully seasoned at two years of trading and this figure should be treated as a forward estimate rather than a reconciled calculation. The competitive set is led by Cliniko, which dominates the booking-and-records layer but handles claims poorly; Halaxy, Nookal, and Coreplus round out the field. None has built the claims depth Marli has.
Marli is raising $2.5 million AUD at seed. The capital converts founder-led selling — currently the binding constraint on growth — into a repeatable, channel-supported sales engine, while deepening the product advantage that drives retention and beginning the New Zealand market build. At current net burn of approximately $115,000 per month, the business has roughly 12 months of runway on cash alone. The raise extends that runway, funds the Head of Sales hire as the immediate priority, and finances the product investment required to stay ahead of any competitive response from the incumbents. The investor thesis is straightforward: Marli owns the most painful part of the allied-health clinic workflow, has the data to prove clinics switch for it and stay because of it, and is raising to scale what is already working.
The business model
Key Partners
Allied-health associations in Australia and New Zealand — primary referral channel, responsible for ~50% of new clinic acquisition.
Medicare and private-health fund billing infrastructure — the API and rule-set relationships that underpin the claims module.
Medicare billing advisor — keeps Marli current on compliance rule changes that would otherwise require reactive product rework.
Key Activities
Building and maintaining the claims-and-compliance module — the core product differentiator and primary retention driver.
Founder-led sales and clinic onboarding — currently the binding constraint on growth, transitioning to a dedicated sales function post-raise.
Partner channel development — formalising association relationships and clinic-to-clinic referral programmes.
Key Resources
CTO domain expertise in Medicare and private-health fund billing rails — built at Halaxy, applied here.
CEO clinical background — six years as a practising physiotherapist, giving the product team direct customer insight.
$1.4m AUD cash on hand — approximately 12 months of runway at current net burn.
Value Propositions
A single system that handles the full allied-health clinic operations stack — booking, records, and claims — replacing a fragmented mix of tools and manual processes.
Automated Medicare and private-health fund claiming with rejection management and resubmission — the part of the workflow that costs clinics the most time and revenue.
Purpose-built for ANZ allied health: physiotherapists, podiatrists, and exercise physiologists, not a generalised healthcare platform.
Customer Relationships
Dedicated customer success lead managing onboarding and ongoing clinic relationships — critical given the switching cost dynamic and the importance of retention to unit economics.
Clinic-to-clinic referrals driven by satisfied customers — the most efficient acquisition channel and a signal of genuine product satisfaction.
Channels
Partner referrals through allied-health associations — 50% of new clinics, lowest CAC, highest retention cohort.
Founder-led outbound sales — 30% of new clinics, transitioning to a dedicated Head of Sales post-raise.
Inbound content and word of mouth — 20% of new clinics.
Customer Segments
Independent allied-health clinics in Australia and New Zealand — physiotherapists, podiatrists, and exercise physiologists. Approximately 9,000 clinics in the serviceable market.
Multi-practitioner clinics scaling up — higher pricing tiers as practitioners are added, making this segment both more valuable and more sticky.
Cost Structure
Engineering headcount — four engineers plus CTO, the largest fixed cost component and the foundation of the product advantage.
Founder time in sales — currently unpriced in the CAC calculation; a material hidden cost that the Head of Sales hire will make visible.
Claims infrastructure and billing integrations — ongoing cost of maintaining Medicare and fund API connections and compliance currency.
Revenue Streams
Flat monthly SaaS subscription per clinic, averaging $390 per month ($4,700 per year), stepping up as clinics add practitioners.
140 paying clinics generating approximately $55,000 MRR — up from $28,000 four quarters ago.
7/10The model is coherent at its core — a sticky compliance wedge driving SaaS subscription revenue — but the CAC figure is not yet fully-loaded, the partner channel's formality is unconfirmed, and the LTV is a projection rather than a seasoned cohort figure. These are the three places the model's internal logic has not yet closed.
Tension: Marli's growth depends on the partner channel staying cheap and sticky, but that channel's formality — contracted versus informal association relationships — has not been confirmed, and the CAC that makes the unit economics look strong is built on founder time that has no price attached to it yet.
The company
Marli incorporated by founders; development begins on the core platform.
First ten clinics signed
Jul 2023
Initial paying customers onboarded — physiotherapy and allied-health clinics in Australia.
Claims & compliance module launched
Apr 2024
Medicare and private-health fund claiming, plus compliance paperwork, added to the platform. The founder identifies this as the product moment that changed the business.
100 clinics milestone
Nov 2024
Platform crosses 100 paying clinics — roughly 16 months from first customer.
140 paying clinics
Jul 2026
Marli enters its seed round process with approximately 140 clinics on the platform.
Marli is a practice management platform built specifically for independent allied-health clinics in Australia and New Zealand — physiotherapists, podiatrists, and exercise physiologists. It brings together everything a small clinic runs on: online booking, patient records, Medicare and private-health fund claiming, and the compliance paperwork that comes with each. Rather than patching together separate tools, clinics get a single system that handles their full operational stack. The company was founded in February 2023. The first ten paying clinics signed in July 2023, and the platform crossed 100 clinics in November 2024 — roughly 16 months from first customer to that milestone.
The inflection point was the April 2024 launch of the claims-and-compliance module, which the founder identifies as the capability no existing tool handles properly for this segment. By July 2026, Marli has approximately 140 paying clinics on the platform. The company is now raising its seed round to accelerate growth.
Problem and solution
Independent allied-health clinics in Australia and New Zealand are caught in a fragmented operations stack. A typical physiotherapy clinic runs its booking on one tool, patient records on another, and handles Medicare and private-health fund claims half-manually — copying data between systems, manually checking billing codes, and chasing rejections and resubmissions. Claims processing is where the damage concentrates: rejected claims that take weeks to resolve, resubmission loops that consume clinical and admin time, and revenue that arrives late or not at all. Clinic owners are clinicians, not administrators — they either absorb the hours personally or lose revenue through errors and missed submissions. Marli solves this by consolidating the full operational stack into a single platform: online booking, patient records, and an automated claims-and-compliance layer that handles Medicare and private-health fund submission, rejection management, and compliance paperwork in one place. The founder's central claim — supported by the growth trajectory following the April 2024 claims module launch — is that every other tool in the market is effectively a booking system with billing bolted on. Marli's claims-and-compliance layer is built from the ground up for the specific billing rules and fund relationships that govern allied health in Australia and New Zealand, which the founder identifies as the capability that drives clinic switching and retention.
Market opportunity
Size
≈$45m serviceable (9,000 ANZ clinics × $5k/yr)
Trajectory
Growing — ageing population, allied health demand rising, software adoption increasing
Serviceable market
~9,000 independent allied-health clinics in AU/NZ
Assessment
SAM is bottom-up and credible; broader $1.2bn figure is full-healthcare-category TAM, not validated for this segment
The serviceable market for Marli is approximately 9,000 independent allied-health clinics across Australia and New Zealand — physiotherapists, podiatrists, and exercise physiologists operating independently. At roughly $5,000 per clinic per year, that is a serviceable addressable market of around $45 million. A broader figure of $1.2 billion for practice-management software across all of healthcare was cited in an industry report, but the founder acknowledges this is a top-down TAM for the full healthcare software category, not the specific allied-health segment. The $45 million SAM is the honest working number. The competitive landscape is led by Cliniko, which holds the largest share of independent allied-health clinics in Australia and is the default choice for booking and patient records.
Halaxy, Nookal, and Coreplus round out the main alternatives. The founder's candid assessment is that Marli does not compete on the booking and records layer — Cliniko is strong there — but wins decisively on claims and compliance, which existing tools handle poorly. Every competitor is effectively a booking system with billing added afterwards. Marli's claims-and-compliance module is purpose-built for the Medicare and private-health fund rules specific to allied health in ANZ, which the founder identifies as the primary reason clinics switch and the primary reason they stay.
Revenue model
CAC payback
~4 months
$1,200 CAC
LTV:CAC
7.5×
Stated LTV $9k — not yet reconciled with 1.5% churn
Marli charges a flat monthly SaaS subscription per clinic, averaging $390 per month, with pricing stepping up as clinics add practitioners. That translates to roughly $4,700 per clinic per year. Across 140 paying clinics, the business is generating approximately $55,000 in monthly recurring revenue — around $660,000 ARR. Unit economics are strong. Customer acquisition cost sits at $1,200 per clinic, and payback runs at approximately four months — well inside the 12-month threshold that signals efficient growth capital use.
The stated lifetime value is $9,000, implying an LTV:CAC ratio of 7.5x against the $1,200 CAC — meaningfully above the 3x benchmark for healthy SaaS businesses. At a stated monthly churn of 1.5%, the mechanically implied average customer lifetime is roughly 66 months, which does not reconcile with a $9,000 LTV at $390 ARPA unless gross margin or an effective churn figure is in play. The LTV figure should be treated as the founder's estimate rather than a reconciled calculation — either the LTV is conservative or effective churn including downgrades runs higher than the 1.5% logo-churn figure. This is worth clarifying before investor conversations.
Go-to-market
Partner referrals drive half of all new clinic acquisitions
Customer acquisition by channel · % share · founder-reported
Marli reaches new clinics through three channels. Partner referrals — primarily through allied-health associations and word-of-mouth from existing clinics — account for approximately 50% of new customer acquisition and are the highest-performing channel on both cost and retention. Outbound sales driven by the founder accounts for roughly 30%, and inbound through content and organic word-of-mouth delivers the remaining 20%. The partner channel is the strategic priority for scale. Clinics acquired through referrals from associations and peers arrive pre-warmed, convert more easily, and churn less — the founder identifies them as the most valuable cohort.
The current weakness is that the partner channel's formality is unclear: whether these association relationships are contracted or informal determines how defensible and scalable this channel actually is. That is worth clarifying before the seed round closes. All closing is currently founder-led. The CEO runs every demo and closes nearly every deal, with the CTO handling technical questions. There is no dedicated sales function. This means the stated $1,200 CAC does not yet reflect a fully-loaded, scalable cost — it is built on unpaid founder time and will rise once a sales hire is made. Hiring a Head of Sales is the first named use of seed capital, and the go-to-market plan is built around transitioning from founder-led to a repeatable, channel-supported sales motion.
The team
CEO (Founder)
Chief Executive Officer
Practising physiotherapist for six years before founding Marli — knows the customer from the inside. Runs product and currently closes every sales deal. Domain expertise in allied-health workflows and compliance requirements is the core product advantage.
Senior engineer at Halaxy prior to Marli — built exactly this category of system before and has deep knowledge of the Medicare and private-health billing rails that underpin the claims module. Handles technical questions in the sales process.
Engineering Team
Four Engineers
Product development and platform maintenance. Team size is appropriate for the current stage but will need to grow as the platform expands.
Customer Success Lead
Customer Success
Manages clinic onboarding and ongoing relationships. Critical function for a product where switching costs are high and retention is a key value driver.
Internal operations support.
Medicare Billing Advisor
Advisor — Medicare & Compliance
Medicare billing specialist who keeps Marli current on compliance requirements. Provides ongoing guidance on the billing rules that are central to the claims-and-compliance module's value.
Head of Sales
Head of Sales
Gap
No sales function exists beyond the CEO. First key hire planned from seed capital — essential to transition from founder-led to a scalable sales motion.
Funding ask
Raising
$2.5m AUD
Seed round
Primary use
Sales & marketing
45% — Head of Sales + partner channel
Close target
4–5 months
By Q4 2026
Nearly half the raise goes into building the sales function and partner channel
Use of funds · % share · $2.5m AUD seed round
Sales & marketing
45%
Product & engineering
35%
Claims infrastructure
20%
Marli is raising $2.5 million AUD at seed. The round is structured to convert founder-led growth into a repeatable, channel-supported sales engine and to deepen the product advantage that drives retention.
Capital is allocated across three areas: 45% ($1.125 million) into sales and marketing — primarily hiring a Head of Sales and formalising the partner channel with allied-health associations; 35% ($875,000) into product and engineering — deepening the claims-and-compliance module and beginning the New Zealand market build; and 20% ($500,000) into claims infrastructure and billing integrations with Medicare and private health funds. The target close is within four to five months. The investor thesis is straightforward: Marli owns the most painful part of the allied-health clinic workflow, has 140 paying clinics and a doubling MRR curve to prove it, and is raising to scale what is already working.
Risks and mitigations
Sales is entirely founder-dependent. Every demo and close runs through the CEO. The business cannot scale its customer acquisition without adding sales capacity — and until the Head of Sales hire is made and proven, growth is capped by one person's calendar.
high
Mitigation: First use of seed capital is a dedicated Head of Sales hire. The partner channel partially de-risks this — referral-sourced clinics arrive pre-warmed and require lighter selling — but the hire is the critical path item.
Cliniko builds or acquires a proper claims-and-compliance layer. Cliniko holds the largest installed base of independent allied-health clinics in Australia. If they close the product gap — through internal development or acquisition — Marli's primary switching trigger is neutralised before the customer base is large enough to be defensible on switching costs alone.
high
Mitigation: Go deeper on compliance than a generalist tool will prioritise. Marli's CTO built Halaxy's billing rails and has specific domain expertise in Medicare and private-health fund rules. The strategy is to make the compliance layer so precise and complete — covering rejection management, resubmission, and fund-specific rule sets — that a generalised 'good enough' version from Cliniko doesn't displace it. Speed of deepening matters: the window is while Cliniko is still treating claims as a bolt-on.
Regulatory or API change to Medicare or private-health fund claiming rules. The claims module depends on Medicare and private-health fund APIs and the billing rules that govern them. A rule change, API deprecation, or compliance requirement shift forces rework — and in the worst case, temporarily breaks the core product value for paying clinics.
medium
Mitigation: The Medicare billing advisor on the team provides early warning of regulatory shifts. The CTO's background in billing infrastructure reduces the time required to adapt. The risk cannot be eliminated — it is structural to the market — but the team is better positioned than most to respond quickly.
Churn is unseasoned and the LTV picture could soften materially. The 1.5% monthly churn figure is an early read from a two-year-old customer base, not a settled cohort number. If effective churn — including downgrades and non-renewals — runs higher than the logo-churn figure, the LTV projection deflates and the unit economics story weakens in later funding conversations.
medium
Mitigation: The customer success function is already in place and focused on onboarding quality and ongoing engagement. The claims module creates genuine switching costs — clinics that have migrated their Medicare and fund billing to Marli face real pain to move back. Cohort data will season over the next 12–18 months and either validate or revise the LTV estimate.
Partner channel concentration. The single assumption the whole plan rests on is that the partner channel — allied-health associations and clinic-to-clinic referrals — continues to deliver low-cost, high-retention clinics at scale. If the channel proves harder to formalise or the referral rate plateaus, CAC rises and the growth model requires rethinking.
medium
Mitigation: 45% of the seed capital goes into formalising and scaling this channel — converting informal association relationships into structured referral agreements and investing in the outbound and content motion that supports the other 70% of acquisition. Diversification across all three channels reduces single-channel dependency.
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About
About this report
What this is. This Business Plan was built through a guided conversation between Demo and Ren.
How it was built. All analysis reflects your own thinking — structured using established frameworks, sharpened, and presented clearly.
This report was produced by Ren, an AI advisor built by Renatus. It is based on information you provided during the conversation and established frameworks. It is intended to support — not replace — your own judgement. All conclusions should be reviewed before acting on them.
Renatus applies the underlying principles of established methods and credits their origin where relevant. Named frameworks, methods, and instruments are the property of their respective owners. Reference to them does not imply endorsement or affiliation.
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Frameworks
Guided Strategy Used
3 frameworks were used to structure your thinking:
One-Page Business Model Summary The overall plan is anchored in a one-page summary of the business model — problem, solution, customer, channels, revenue streams, cost structure, and the source of competitive advantage. Grounded in established business-model research.
Customer Development The market opportunity and go-to-market sections follow Customer Development methodology — starting from the customer’s problem rather than the product, testing assumptions about who the customer is and how they buy before scaling. Developed by Steve Blank.
Bottom-Up Financial Modelling The financials section builds projections from unit economics — what it costs to acquire a customer, what a customer is worth over time, and what drives the cost structure — rather than top-down market-share assumptions that collapse under scrutiny.
