What will the ‘Peloton for mental health’ look like five years from now? And, who will develop it?

Mind­Labs rais­es £1.4M for its new plat­form, a ‘Pelo­ton for men­tal health’ (TechCrunch):

Ide­al­ly, men­tal well­ness should be con­sid­ered part of a healthy dai­ly rou­tine, like exer­cise. But even exer­cise is dif­fi­cult to turn into a reg­u­lar habit. Pelo­ton addressed phys­i­cal fit­ness by com­bin­ing smart sta­tion­ary bikes with live class­es and com­mu­ni­ty fea­tures to cre­ate an engag­ing expe­ri­ence. Now a new start­up, Mind­Labs, is tak­ing a sim­i­lar approach to men­tal well­ness…

Its plat­form will launch next year, first with a mobile app that com­bines live videos from men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als who lead med­i­ta­tion and mind­ful­ness ses­sions, and fea­tures to help users track their stress lev­els. The full plat­form will also include an EEG head­band, called “Halo,” that mea­sures sig­nals, like heart and res­pi­ra­tion rates, that can help show users how effec­tive their ses­sions are … Two of the main ways Mind­Labs’ plat­form dif­fer­en­ti­ates from oth­er men­tal well­ness apps is the com­bi­na­tion of its video class­es and EEG head­band. The videos will ini­tial­ly range in length from 10 to 40 min­utes and, like Peloton’s class­es, will be avail­able on live stream or in pre-record­ed, on-demand sessions.

The News:

Mind­Labs Rais­es £1.4 Mil­lion Pre-Seed Fund­ing To Launch Its Live Men­tal Health Plat­form (press release):

Mind­Labs, the Lon­don-based dig­i­tal men­tal health com­pa­ny, has raised a £1.4 mil­lion pre-seed invest­ment round led by Pas­sion Cap­i­tal, with par­tic­i­pa­tion from Seed­camp, as well as the founders behind lead­ing British con­sumer tech com­pa­nies Cazoo, Zoopla, Urban and Carwow.

This is the company’s first round of fund­ing as it aims to tack­le the grow­ing prob­lem with men­tal health, under increased pres­sure as a result of the Coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, which has seen depres­sion dou­ble in British adults over the last 12 months.

The plat­form, ini­tial­ly avail­able as a mobile app launch­ing next year, will com­bine live video from pro­fes­sion­als in ther­a­py, psy­chol­o­gy and mind­ful­ness with an online com­mu­ni­ty and ana­lyt­ics allow­ing users to track their cur­rent lev­els of stress or relax­ation. By allow­ing peo­ple to track progress using a range of sen­sors, includ­ing EEG, the app aims to help them rewire their minds through neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, enabling strength­en­ing of the neur­al path­ways asso­ci­at­ed with being in a calm men­tal state…

Adnan Ebrahim, co-founder and CEO of Mind­Labs, said: “Hav­ing run a media com­pa­ny in a tough mar­ket with a young, mil­len­ni­al work­force, we wit­nessed first-hand how there was a com­plete lack of invest­ment in help­ing this gen­er­a­tion with their men­tal health in a way that they’re used to: a com­mu­ni­ty prod­uct that is mobile-first and video-led. We want to make the world a hap­pi­er place by mak­ing work­ing on your men­tal health as nor­mal as going to the gym.”

News in Context:

• Med­i­ta­tion app Calm said to be rais­ing $25M to become the “Nike of the mind”
• Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright
• Dig­i­tal brain health firm Head­space rais­es $34 mil­lion to scale up med­i­ta­tion ser­vice and trans­form mind health
• The Neu­ro­Gen­er­a­tion and Humankind’s Quest to Enhance the Brain
• Three ways to pro­tect your men­tal health dur­ing –and after– COVID-19