How I built & Validated my App Beta
This is part 2 of my journey into building a mental health startup
This is part 2 of my how I built my startup series. You can read part one here.
The fact that there are not one but TWO billion-dollar meditation companies in the mental health space might make you question why I would bet everything on creating another mindfulness startup?
Calm and Headspace have both been around for over a decade. When they first launched, most people were still using Facebook on their computers, and companies such as Uber, Snapchat, and Tinder had yet to make their mark. The world looked like a completely different place. Gen Z is finally transitioning into the adult world, and it doesn't look pretty. Calm and Headspace have done very little innovation since their initial release, and seeing just how hard starting and sticking with meditation was firsthand, I knew there was so much room for improvement.
What Makes MindGarden Different?
The main selling point of MindGarden is the ability to grow a flower while you meditate. At the end of each month, you can visualize your progress in your garden view, which doubles as a calendar. The color of the tile represented your mood that day. You can click on any tile to get a detailed picture of that entire day. Visual progress is super motivating and can go a long way when sticking with a habit. All the big meditation apps have hundreds of meditations on their platforms which was cool a decade ago, but nowadays, when we live in an abundance of content, the problem is now attention.
What does the best at keeping our attention these days? Video Games. It might not look like it, but Instagram, Tik Tok, and Twitter are all video games. Swiping to load new posts is the digital equivalent of pulling the lever of a slot machine.
MindGarden is framing the act of mindfulness through the lens of a video game.
During the summer of 2021, I also began my first IOS developer internship at SmallPlanet, so I only had the evenings to work on this project. In total, it took me over 12 weeks to complete the beta. Some of the first meditations on the app were scripts written by me. I would then pay voice artists on Fiverr to voice them over. The first version had about 14 meditations.
After I finished, I put up a landing page to collect emails. Got a little over 200 sign-ups with no marketing spend which was all the validation I needed. I launched the first version in September 2021.
The reception was relatively good. I implemented the first wave of feedback, fixed some bugs, and put up a paywall. To my surprise, many people began paying for the app's first version, which was extremely crude. I knew I had something. Compare this to Focusbyte, my previous app which had a super low conversion rate from free to paid users. This proved to me I was solving a real pain point and that people were willing to pay for it. This is one of the most important factors when validating an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
After I completed the beta, I began my last year at university. Growth at this time was very slow, I played around with paid advertisements on Instagram and Apple Search Ads, but the return on investment was unfavorable. This is because behemoths like Calm and Headspace have driven the cost of keywords such as meditation through the roof. On Apple Search Ads, I once reached a point where it cost over $15 to get someone to install the app. Paid advertising was definitely not a scalable channel at this point. I was getting around 15-20 downloads every day organically through App Store search. I tried launching on Product Hunt and posting on Reddit, but nothing seemed to stick.
I kept updating the app but started to get discouraged. Almost three months had passed, but there was no real progress. I was devouring everything from podcasts, books, and Youtube videos on how I could potentially scale and also improve the product.
Retention
After I started implementing analytics, I began to notice a huge problem with the app. There was a massive drop-off within the first seven days of use (almost 85%). As a result, my 30-day retention was a little over 5% which is pretty bad. I did some research, and both Calm/Headspace had retention rates of 8%. Considering that they were 100+ people companies, this number gave me both hope and despair. I felt hope because this meant these two companies were struggling, so there was room for a fledgling startup like me to disrupt the space. I felt despair because I finally realized just how hard it was to get people to stick with the habit of essentially not thinking. Even with gamification on my side, a ton of work was left to be done.
Imposter Syndrome
This is where the going actually begins to get tough. I was at a crossroads. I could take the risk of trying to build this startup or take the much safer route of looking for a job at a different startup. I’ve consumed so many different interviews on how people built their companies and they usually fall into 1 of 2 different camps.
They worked at a FAANG or a startup that exited or grew quickly.
Never worked at another company and simply learned as they went.
Camp #1 is a lot bigger than camp #2. People in number 2 usually were either geniuses or their startup had perfect timing and the market was throwing money at them.
I am no genius by any means and my hypothesis that gamified meditation was what Gen Z needed was at the end of the day just a hypothesis. Here’s what I knew I lacked as a founder:
Knowing how to be data-driven
The ability to tell stories / raise money
The first principles of Gamification (Human-Centered Design, Psychology)
Professional design skills (I was mediocre at best)
Marketing (Paid/Organic) / Personal Branding
Here’s the thing, I knew I could learn all of these things. Little by little. Being an entrepreneur is simply sucking at a lot of different things, wearing a ton of different hats. Even if MindGarden failed miserably I knew the growth I would go through as an individual would be insane if I chose to build this thing. I also used Jeff Bezo’s regret minimization framework and knew that not taking this risk would cause me more regret down the line. I’m in a blessed enough position where even if I ate dirt for the next four years, I would still be able to live with my mom and have a roof over my head. Sure it’s going to be a little awkward during family gatherings when relatives ask how my “little startup” is doing but it’s a small price to pay to go after my dream.
The Vision for MindGarden
If you tell people about your dream and more than half aren’t raising an eyebrow, it probably means your not thinking big enough. I want to make meditation as common as brushing your teeth. I’m going to start with the United States, one of the unhappiest countries in the world. This is a 10-20 year plan, and it’s very improbable that I will achieve it before I die, considering 99% of the world brushes their teeth, but it’s something that excites me. Climate change, poverty, and wars would be so much more manageable if people first mastered their minds. In my opinion, there is no task that’s more important than giving people the gift of mindfulness.
Thank you for listening to me ramble this far, hopefully, I will see you in part 3 where I share how I met my co-founder and where the company is currently at.
Until then, logging off.