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Christopher Star · · 15 min readTo the brink and back: A YC-backed mental health startup’s journey
Bjorn Lee was no stranger to starting up when he launched MindFi in 2017. Although he overcame the initial struggle of finding funding for the mental health app, Lee saw MindFi’s user growth plateau within just a couple of years and started doubting whether the startup would make it.
“We weren’t doing gangbusters and flying off the shelves, whereas Headspace and Calm were doing really great in the consumer world,” recalls Lee. “I was in the consumer world, but I couldn’t compete with those guys.”
On this episode of Startup Snapshot, Lee talks about the inspiration behind MindFi, the hurdles that almost brought the business to its knees, and how he envisions the company could revolutionize the way employers deal with mental health in the workplace.
Timecodes:
00:00 – “I am a failure”
01:51 – MindFi isn’t Bjorn’s first rodeo
02:36 – Bjorn’s first encounter with mental health issues
03:37 – Going on year-long sabbatical and traveling the world
04:12 – Looking for a job and finding a revelation instead
05:04 – The inspiration for MindFi
06:39 – Fundraising, the first hurdle in MindFi’s journey
08:48 – Making headlines but not much bank
09:33 – 2019: the roughest year
11:23 – The “Get Naked” exercise
12:13 – Reconnecting with his purpose
13:08 – A pandemic on the horizon
15:14 – The moment things turned around: joining Y Combinator
17:01 – The current state of things at MindFi
17:54 – On a mission to transform not only mental health but also how it’s dealt with in the workplace
Featured interviewee:
Essential reading:
- An ‘eye-opening’ meditation app from Singapore hopes to make the world more productive
- Research-backed meditation app raises seed funding
- Singapore mental health platform joins YC, secures $750k in funding
- YC-backed mental health startup raises $2m in seed funding
Episode Transcript:
Bjorn Lee:
By all counts, in the VC and investment world, I am a failure.
Christopher Star (VO):
Meet Bjorn Lee, the CEO and co-founder of Singapore-based mental health startup MindFi.
Just a month before I’d spoken to him, the company had just raised US$750,000 in pre-seed funding from prominent investors and joined Y Combinator – the startup accelerator that had launched the likes of Stripe, Airbnb, Dropbox, Twitch, Reddit, and so many more.
In February 2022, MindFi received an additional US$2 million seed funding to further expand across APAC markets.
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MindFi persevered in its mission to transform the workplace and integrate mental health into the way businesses manage teams despite setbacks and pivots.
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