Octave Raises $11M in Series A Funding

Octave, a national behavioral health practice, raised $11M in Series A funding.

The round was led by Greycroft, with participation from Obvious Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand nationally, with additional locations planned for California and New York next year.

Led by founder and CEO, Sandeep Acharya, Octave is a new evidence-based therapy practice and wellness community offering in-person and virtual coaching, group therapy and psychiatry, along with an array of content and assessment tools to support clients between sessions. Since opening its first office in New York in October 2018, the company has launched a number of new services, including group sessions for anxiety, LGBTQ patients, and expecting couples, and has also expanded virtual coaching nationwide, serving patients in multiple states and even internationally.

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Sponsor 

myCareBase™ is a platform for seniors and their families to find, evaluate, hire and manage home support services, to improve the seniors’ ability to remain living safely in their current home for as long as possible. The caregiver marketplace currently offers candidates in Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver.

To compliment this platform the company also offers an innovative care management app that centralizes communication and task management among family members and the caregiver, along with a Care Concierge service to help family members with administrative, navigational or organizational tasks.

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The company plans to increase staff therapists in the coming months and will also begin offering a variety of free classes for Octave members – from meditation to one-night workshops.

Octave opens its first San Francisco location at 625 Market Street on October 28, with its second New York office opening in the Flatiron Building in December. The company also announced a partnership with Anthem Blue Cross of California to serve patients as an in-network provider.

Acharya is joined by Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Sarah Adler and head of operations Sejal Shah.

Source. FinSMEs, October 22, 2019

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Calm raises $27M to McConaughey you to sleep

Meditation app unicorn Calm wants you to doze off to the dulcet tones of actor Matthew McConaughey’s southern drawl or writer Stephen Fry’s English accent. Calm’s Sleep Stories feature that launched last year is a hit, with more than 150 million listens from its 2 million paid subscribers and 50 million downloads. While lots of people want to meditate, they need to sleep. The seven-year-old app has finally found its must-have feature that makes it a habit rather than an aspiration.

Keen to capitalize on solving the insomnia problems plaguing people around the world, Lightspeed tells TechCrunch it has just invested $27 million into a Series B extension round in Calm alongside some celebrity angels at a $1 billion valuation. The cash will help the $70 per year subscription app further expand from guided meditations into more self-help masterclasses, stretching routines, relaxing music, breathing exercises, stories for children and celebrity readings that lull you to sleep.

The funding adds to Calm’s $88 million Series B led by TPG that was announced in February that was also at a $1 billion valuation, bringing the full B round to $115 million and Calm’s total funding to about $141 million. Lightspeed partner Nicole Quinn confirms the fund started talks with Calm around the same time as TPG, but took longer to finish due diligence, which is why the valuation didn’t grow despite Calm’s progress since February.

“Nicole and Lightspeed are valuable partners as we continue to double down on entertainment through our content,” Calm’s head of communications Alexia Marchetti tells me. The startup plans to announce more celebrity content tie-ins later this summer.

Broadening its appeal is critical for Calm amidst a crowded meditation app market that includes Headspace, Simple Habit and Insight Timer, plus newer entrants like Peloton’s mindfulness sessions and Journey’s live group classes. It’s become easy to find guided meditations online for free, so Calm needs to become a holistic mental wellness hub.

While it risks diluting its message by doing so much, Calm’s plethora of services could make it a gateway to more of your personal health spend, including therapy, meditation retreats and health merchandise from airy clothing to yoga mats. But subscription fees alone are powering a big business. Calm quadrupled revenue in 2018 to reach $150 million in ARR and hit profitability.

Calm is poised to keep up its rapid revenue growth. After the launch of Sleep Stories, “it was incredible to see the engagement spike up and also the retention,” says Quinn. Users can choose from having McConaughey describe the wonders of the cosmos, John McEnroe walk them through the rules of tennis, fairy tales like The Little Mermaid and more.

Quinn tells me “Sleep Stories is now a huge percentage of the business, and also the length of time people spend on the app has gone up dramatically.” She tells me that so many startups are “trying to invent a problem where there isn’t one.” But difficulty snoozing is so widespread and detrimental that users are eager to pay for an app instead of a sleeping pill. Having the Interstellar actor talk about the universe until I pass out sounds alright, alright, alright.

Source. TechCrunch, Josh Constine, July 1, 2019

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Calm, the 7 year old meditation app says it's now valued at $1 billion

By Meira Gebel

The practice of meditation has tripled in the US in recent years, according to the CDC, and with it comes the tech industry's newest phenomenon: meditation and relaxation apps.

On Wednesday, meditation app Calm announced it has raised $88 million in a Series B financing round — taking its current valuation to $1 billion and making it the first so-called unicorn startup focused on meditation.

The funding round was led by TPG Growth with Creative Artists Agency (CAA), and existing investors Insight Venture Partners and Aston Kutcher's Sound Ventures. The round brings Calm's total funding to date to $116 million.

Calm, which launched in 2012, aims to quell issues of the modern age including anxiety, stress, and insomnia. It's a crowded market with rival apps including Headspace, backed by LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and musician Jared Leto, and special gadgets like the Muse meditation headset.

More so than many other types of subscription services vying for consumer dollars, meditation and mental wellbeing appears to be an area that consumers are comfortable paying for. Calm says it has well over 1 million paying subscribers and over 40 million downloads worldwide.

Calm's 'Sleep Stories' feature offers subscribing listeners bedtime stories (for adults, per the company) read aloud by celebrities like Matthew McConaughey and painter Bob Ross. It also includes guided meditations and calming sounds, like pouring rain and white noise.

"This financing will accelerate our mission to make the world healthier and happier, with international growth and an increased investment in content being top priorities," said Alex Tew, Calm co-founder and co-CEO, in a press release.

In 2017, Calm was named Apple's iPhone App of the Year and has since become the top-grossing health and fitness app, according to App Annie. The company is also among the startups that VCs recently polled by Business Insider flagged as poised to boom in 2019.

The company said its revenue was quadrupled in 2018, and is on track to make $150 million this year.

Calm plans to bring its meditation tools to wider audiences and invested $3 million last year in XpresSpa


Source. Business Insider, Meira Gebel, February 6, 2019