Building a Bridge to Mental Healthcare with Code: Thani Oluwaseun’s Story

Thani Oluwaseun knows what it feels like to be depressed and not know where to find help.

“I’ve been depressed myself in the past and knowing how difficult it can be,” Thani reflects. “I was able to pick myself up, but not everybody can. That’s why some people go into substance abuse.”

His experience with depression left him with a question that would eventually reshape his career: what about everyone else who couldn’t find a way out?

As he worked as a software engineer across healthcare companies, he saw how technology could solve mental health challenges. So he decided to build Tranqbay Health to make mental health more accessible for Africans at home and in the diaspora, as well as underserved communities globally. His solution has changed lives, with users testifying to improved mental health.

From playing video games to writing code

Thani‘s path into tech started with curiosity.

He played games obsessively, often getting into trouble for skipping school to visit an arcade. One day he thought: How do people create these games?

Around the same time, Thani was trying to learn how to build a website from a classmate who had created one. Unfortunately, the classmate gave him wrong information, deliberately misleading him. “I got home and then I realized that he just lied to me,” Thani recalls. “And I was very curious to know.”

That curiosity led him to research programming for the first time. “I found this website and then I was able to kind of do something very basic over the night. I think I didn’t even sleep that night.”

From there, Thani dove deeper into code itself. He discovered platforms like Mobi and Wapka that mixed no-code tools with actual coding, allowing users to write PHP and MySQL. He learned PHP and started building websites. When he struggled, he saved 500 naira from his lunch allowance, and paid someone to build what he couldn’t figure out. Then he studied what that person had built, understood it, and built on top of it.

Finding his tribe in an emerging tech ecosystem

Compared to today’s ecosystem, the tech  landscape in 2011 was barren.”The difficult part for me was trying to find people of like minds.” Thani explains.

He found them in the Webmaster forum on Nairaland. He also discovered another Webmaster forum where he connected with other young developers building with the same tools. “We’d just come online and then we share our scripts,” he recalls.

Aside from a lack of access to community, it took a while before he earned from tech. But money wasn’t the point. “I was not really bothered about money,” he says. “It was more like a hobby and a passion for me. I knew that this would eventually pay off.”

His formal tech career began with freelancing on Upwork starting in February 2015. His first full-time role came in 2019 when he worked as a Software Developer at a company in Lagos. That same year marked a turning point: he landed his first international role as Senior Software Developer at Plant-for-the-Planet Organisation, based remotely but working with a team in Berlin.

From there, the trajectory accelerated. He worked across healthcare companies in the UK, US, and Germany, gaining critical experience.

By early 2025, Thani was ready to channel everything he’d learned into his own venture. He went full-time on TranqBay Health, the startup he’d been building to solve the mental health access problem he’d witnessed firsthand.

Personalizing and localizing software for the user 

Thani didn’t want to build a replica of existing mental health software and import it to Africa. This led him to think deeply about personalization and localization. “We are really big on personalization. We try to speak with users, get feedback, speak with therapists, and just implement their recommendations.”

One of the core ways the platform personalizes care is through therapist matching. Users are connected to therapists who understand their cultural background. This is especially important in African contexts, where religion, family structures, and economic status influence how people talk about mental health and whether they seek help at all.

In terms of localization, the platform accounts for regional differences. “For example, the US has this policy that therapists are licensed by states. You cannot practise outside our states, so if you visit Tranqbay from the US, you would need to select the states that you have come from so that we can personalise your listing.” These decisions directly affect whether the users receive the help they need urgently without friction.

Using AI in a mental health startup, responsibly

Building in mental health has forced Thani to use AI to increase efficiency while also protecting patient privacy—a tricky situation to navigate.

In Tranqbay, Al is used to support therapists rather than replace licensed professionals. It helps match users with the right counsellor based on what they share during onboarding, and assists therapists with administrative tasks like generating session notes. Al does not diagnose or offer treatment recommendations independently.

Compliance is not treated as an afterthought. Tranqbay Health is part of the NVIDIA Inception Programme for startups, giving them access to GPUs. Instead of relying on consumer AI products that could expose sensitive health data, they use controlled environments where data handling can meet healthcare compliance standards. The models do not learn directly from identifiable therapy conversations, which reduces privacy risk and helps maintain trust with both users and therapists.

As long as developers evolve, they’ll always find roles 

When Thani started coding over a decade ago, AI taking jobs wasn’t a concern. But despite the news of layoffs and reduced job openings, he believes there’s no shortage of opportunities.

“A lot of people are saying that it’s the wrong time to be a developer because AI is coming for your job. I would say it’s false. Thani says “As long as we developers keep on evolving, we will always find the perfect roles.”

His advice for upcoming devs is to block out the noise and focus on one path. Learning from multiple sources and chasing after trends would distract young devs from acquiring the right skills.

He also wants more people getting into tech to think less about the money “A lot of people want to learn tech because of the money. But if the money is not coming after 2-3 months, you will be demotivated.” Instead focus on the work and the effort will pay off in the long run.

Creating an inclusive African tech economy 

Thani believes the African technology ecosystem is faring very well but there are still some hurdles to overcome. One of them is inclusion.

“When I was in Nigeria, people always had this feeling that some particular roles are reserved for men.” Thani explains. “People should stop setting roles according to gender.  The person who came up with computer programming was a female.

To improve the inclusion of women in technology, Thani suggests there needs to be more awareness of opportunities and more programs like She Codes Africa to support female developers.

A life driven by impact, not money

Thani’s long-term goal is to impact lives. “I want my story to be told that I was the person who brought people into tech and helped them grow.”

By recommending people for opportunities and mentoring them, he ensures that everyone around is positively impacted.

“I get messages from random people who say five years ago or three years ago, you helped.  me with this.” Thani says “I derive joy when people are doing well and when people are living their best life. This is what I want.”