Making sure mental wellness is part of your routine can be difficult, especially if you’re already busy and stressed. MindLabs wants to make it easier with a combination of live or on-demand video classes and community functions. The company announced today that it has raised a $ 3.5 million seed round, nearly eleven months after its pre-seed funding.
The seed round was led by PROFounders Capital, with the participation of the Slack Fund; Sky CEO and former CEO 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 increase access to care.
The new funds will be used to contract for MindLabs products 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 and community site that was acquired by Dennis Publishing in 2019. When TechCrunch first spoke with the founders last year, they said they decided focus on mental health for your next startup due to the rapid rise in depression, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the past year, MindLabs hired leaders for its engineering, production, and marketing teams, and built its beta application, which now has 16 instructors. The startup’s platform is scheduled for a public launch in the first quarter of 2022. Ebrahim told TechCrunch that MindLabs currently has thousands of users on its waiting list, thanks in part to the growth of its Instagram account, which has nearly 60,000. followers.
MindLabs will be available first in the UK, before launching in the US. Ebrahim says he plans to expand to non-English speaking countries, as the team believes the platform is easily translatable.
His app now has over 100 on-demand videos created by mental wellness, psychology and neuroscience professionals, and will also host daily live video classes from his studio in West London. One of his instructors is Richie Bostock, also known as The Breath Guy, who is an expert in meditation and breath work. Community features were incorporated, in part in response to the isolation that people have experienced during the pandemic.
MindLabs also plans to release hardware, such as an EEG headband, to track health indicators. Ebrahim said MindLabs is rolling out with an app-first strategy before moving to wearables, with affordable subscription plans for the classes so they can reach as many people as possible.
“We are still extremely excited about tracking biomarkers of the mind, such as EEG, heart rate and breathing patterns, through existing and proprietary wearable devices,” he said. “We believe this will help us build a more accurate and real-time picture of how our users are feeling and therefore be able to serve them with the most relevant video classes to help improve their mood.”
