Mindset, an artist-driven mental wellness audio platform, raises a $8.7M from Scooter Braun and others
Mindset, a platform featuring personal story collections from recording artists, announced today that it raised $8.7 million in seed funding.
As co-founders of the K-pop focused podcast production company DIVE Studios, brothers Brian Nam, Eric Nam and Eddie Nam noticed that the studio’s best performing content came from podcast episodes where stars discussed how they handle struggles in their personal lives. So, the Nam brothers came up with the idea for Mindset, an off-shoot of DIVE Studios.
“We found that this was a unique selling point people really wanted more of — so we started to think about ways to really double-down on that aspect,” said CEO Brian Nam. “How do we provide more of this valuable content to Gen Z and young millennial audiences? We decided that there wasn’t really the right kind of platform out there for this type of storytelling, so we decided to develop our own mobile platform to uniquely share these stories in an audio format.”
In its current format, Mindset features four audio collections from artists like Jae, Tablo, BM, and Mindset co-founder Eric Nam, who happens to be a K-pop star himself. Each collection has ten episodes of around ten to twenty minutes long — the introductory episode is free, but to gain access to the rest of an individual artist’s collection, users need to pay $24.99. The app also has free Boosters, which are Calm-like, five-minute clips of bedtime stories and motivational mantras.
“Up until now, the primary source of income, especially for musicians, has been touring, music streams, and then maybe some endorsement deals, but we’re able to unlock this fourth one, which is monetizing your stories,” Nam said. “The pricing is similar to how they might price a ticket, or how they would sell merchandise.”
Mindset isn’t meant to be a therapy app. “We’re not licensed therapists, we don’t try to act like we are,” Nam said. Rather, it’s a way for artists to share more intimate experiences with their fans to show that behind they music, they’re people too.
Mindset launched in an MVP (minimum viable product) version in February. Nam declined to share active user or revenue numbers, but said that the app gained enough traction that by May, it raised venture funding. The $8.7 million round is led by Union Square Ventures with strategic participants like record executive Scooter Braun (of TQ Ventures), who has more recently made headlines over the Taylor Swift masters controversy. Other backers include Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Opendoor Co-Founder Eric Wu, and more.
“Scooter Braun was a strategic investor,” Nam told TechCrunch.
Braun has also worked with artists like Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, and Demi Lovato.
“He’s really opened a lot of doors for us to branch out into the Hollywood and Western space, where we traditionally came from the K-pop space,” Nam added.
Mindset is putting its seed funding toward content creation, hiring, and product development. The app is currently available on iOS and Android, but it will officially launch on September 14. After that, Mindset will release another audio collection from an artist or actor every two weeks. Nam declined to share who these artists will be.
Mindset, a platform featuring personal story collections from recording artists, announced today that it raised $8.7 million in seed funding. As co-founders of the K-pop focused podcast production company DIVE Studios, brothers Brian Nam, Eric Nam and Eddie Nam noticed that the studio’s best performing content came from podcast episodes…
Recent Posts
- Twitter alternative Post News is shutting down
- Tesla Cybertruck suffers new recall for a very scary problem
- ‘The party is over for developers looking for AI freebies’ — Google terminates Gemini API free access within months amidst rumors that it could charge for AI search queries
- Malicious Google Ads found promoting a fake IP scanner that just wants to steal your data
- AirPlay turns the Delta emulator into a full-on retro console
Archives
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- December 2011