Headspace, a guided meditation and mindfulness startup, has raised $30 million in a recent funding round. The Chernin Group, Advancit Capital, Allen & Company, Breyer Capital, The Honest Company Co-Founder Jessica Alba, actor Jared Leto, TV personality Ryan Seacrest, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and few others are the investors in this healthy startup. The plan is to hire more engineers and content marketers and expand Headspace’s content.
The company confirmed to Tech Crunch that the size of funding was $30 million. Headspace usually doesn’t disclose the numbers around engagements. In terms of user base, Headspace has 3 million users in over 150 countries who use the app in two ways: “There are those that use the product when they’re stressed out or if they’re having trouble with relationships. We have users who use the product the week prior to playing golf. That’s one user group,”
Headspace CEO Sean Brecker said. “The other uses the product on the regular routine basis. They may use it four to five times a week. It’s a routine, as people do with going to the gym.”
They makes money through selling subscriptions to its guided meditations. But anyone can try out the service for free through “Take 10” program, which offers 10 minute free guided mediated session. You can access that as many times as you want, but if you are serious mediator, then you will get bored of that 10 minutes session. f you want access to hundreds of hours worth of content on everything from stress and creativity to relationships and happiness, you can select one of four plans: monthly ($12.95), yearly ($7.99/month), two years ($6.24/month) or forever ($419.95).
There is another popular meditation app is Calm, which has raised a little over $1 million. With the push notifications you will receive mindful throughout the day. Here’s a sample:
“Life is short. We can live it lost in our own thoughts, or we can choose to be present, moment to moment, watching as life unfolds around us.”
“Is a problem still a problem if you don’t think it’s a problem?”
“We can’t control everything that happens to us in life, but we can fundamentally transform our experience of those things.”
“Notifications are intended as reminders to have mindful moments throughout the day.The idea is to train yourself to be more mindful in general,” Brecker said.
Andy Puddicombe, a Headspace co-founder and the one who leads Headspace’s guided meditations, spent about 10 years as a monk practicing meditation and mindfulness. Having him on the team is what Brecker says really makes Headspace an authentic experience for its users. Headspace is based in London and Venice, California. It’s available on iOS, Android and the web.