#21 Mindset Health: Harnessing the mind-body connection to help a billion people

Hi friends,

I’ve got a fascinating deep-dive for you today.

There’s an Australian startup using digital hypnotherapy to help patients manage chronic conditions. They’ve got an inspiring story, a big vision and there’s a lot of lessons to be learned from them.

Alex and Chris Naoumidis are the founders of Mindset Health and over the last few months I’ve got to know them.

They’re two very intelligent guys and they’ve taken a first-principles approach to building an interesting business based entirely around the mind-body connection.

They went to YC in 2019, raised an $18m series A and built a suite of digital hypnotherapy products used by hundreds of thousands of users.

They have twenty thousand five star app reviews and have released a stack of research showing impressive outcomes.

What’s more, they’ve done all this through a D2C, user-pays model.

The long term vision? To become a digitally native pharma company, leveraging the mind-body connection to help a billion people. A lofty vision indeed. 

I spent some time with Chris and Alex to learn about what they’re up to and where they want to take Mindset. We discuss the challenges they’ve faced and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.

That’s what we get into in today’s post.

We’ll learn about;

1. The mind-body connection: Understanding how Mindset use digital hypnotherapy to help people self manage chronic conditions.

2. Building a digitally native pharma company: The vision for Mindset, taking what works about pharma, getting rid of what doesn’t and sprinkling some extra goodness on top.

3. D2C, more than just an acquisition strategy: Chris and Alex grew Mindset to hundreds of thousands of users through a purely D2C model. But D2C was much more than just an acquisition strategy, it was at the core of their business and product success.

4. Building HCP moats; The why and how behind Mindset’s shift to HCP led growth.

5. A new era for Digital Therapeutics: Why Mindset can succeed where Pear and Akili have failed.

Let’s get into it.

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