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It can be difficult to make sure mental wellness is part of your routine, especially if you are already busy and stressed. MindLabs wants to make your job easier with a combination of on-demand or live video lessons and community features. The company announced today that it has raised a funding round of $ 3.5 million, nearly eleven months after its pre-seed funding.
The roundtable was led by PROFounders Capital, with the participation of Slack Fund; executive chairman of Sky and former chief executive Jeremy Darroch; and returning investors Passion Capital and Seedcamp. The timing of the announcement comes three days before World Mental Health Day, October 10, to raise awareness of mental health issues and improve access to care.
The new funding will be used to hire for MindLabs’ product and engineering, content and marketplace as it prepares for its public launch next year.
MindLabs was founded last year by Adnan Ebrahim and Gabor Szedlak, who previously launched and ran CarThrottle, an automotive site and community acquired by Dennis Publishing in 2019. When TechCrunch first spoke to the founders last year , they said they decided to focus on mental health for their next startup due to the rapid rise in depression, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the past year, MindLabs has hired leaders for its engineering, production and marketing teams, and has grown its beta app, which now has 16 instructors. The startup’s platform is expected to launch publicly in the first quarter of 2022. Ebrahim told TechCrunch that MindLabs currently has thousands of users on its waitlist, in part thanks to the growth of its Instagram account, which counts. nearly 60,000 subscribers.
MindLabs will first be available in the UK, before launching in the US. Ebrahim says he plans to expand into non-English speaking countries because the team believes the platform is easily translatable.
His app now boasts over 100 on-demand videos created by professionals in mental wellness, psychology and neuroscience, and will also host daily live video lessons from his West London studio. One of its instructors is Richie Bostock, aka The Breath Guy, who is an expert in meditation and breathing. Community features have been incorporated, in part in response to the isolation people experienced during the pandemic.
MindLabs also plans to release hardware, like an EEG band, to track health metrics. Ebrahim said MindLabs is launching with an app-driven strategy before moving to portable devices, with affordable subscription plans for classes so they can reach as many people as possible.
“We are still extremely excited to track biomarkers of the mind, such as EEG, heart rate and breathing patterns, through existing wearable devices and our own,” he said. . “We believe this will help us create a more accurate, real-time picture of how our users are feeling, and therefore provide them with the most relevant video lessons to help them improve their mood.”
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