An ‘eye-opening’ meditation app from Singapore hopes to make the world more productive

Bjorn Lee, founder of MindFi. Image credit: Joshua Koo.

Halfway through his one-year sabbatical, Bjorn Lee panicked.

After working in Zopim – a Singapore company which made its founders millionaires after getting acquired by US customer service software Zendesk – Lee sensed it was time to leave and find a new adventure.

Except that he was stuck.

“I had an existential crisis,” he tells me. “I tried a lot of stupid ideas. When you start a new company, you always think about what’s trendy.”

Prior to joining Zopim, Lee did his own startup in Silicon Valley and secured funding from the likes of Google Ventures and 500 Startups.

In his second go-round, he wasn’t keen to chase just another hot idea. So he sifted through his passions one by one to find something that could make money.

“I can’t make money from Lego. I can’t make money from robots or farming,” he says.

Eventually, he settled on mindfulness, a scientifically-proven process of bringing one’s attention to experiences happening in the present moment, which can be nurtured through meditation.

Lee has been a mindfulness buff since 2011. After sitting in a 10-day silent retreat in India, he tried meditating for an hour a day after that.

It was too difficult. Yet, inspired by the book Search Inside Yourself, written by mindfulness guru and ex-Googler Tan Chade-Meng, he came across the concept of taking one mindful breath a night, and building a habit from there.

That became the genesis of his new startup.

“Eye-opening” meditation

Today, Lee meditates 12 minutes each morning, monitoring his brain waves with a Muse headband.

He’s also on a mission to make everyone more mindful, and improve our ability to focus and be more productive.

Mindful of the competition

Chest pains