Hey! 👋🏼
In my last issue, I profiled Tim van Vliet, CEO and co-founder of INSEACT, where we discussed his mission of converting palm oil waste into insect-based protein. If you’re interested in learning more about his journey into agritech, check it out here!
It has also been a month since I last posted. This week’s issue couldn’t have been timelier. With the recent extensions of COVID-19 restrictions, I found it hard to maintain a healthy personal and professional lifestyle and thus find a sustainable writing routine. I’m all ears for building healthy habits, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned after WFH and being confined to social gathering restrictions, it’s to create boundaries for yourself and take care of your body.
This week, we dive into a highly relevant topic that has proven to be a cultural stigma in many parts of the world, especially in Asia: mental health.
A recent study was conducted by the Institute of Mental Health, analyzing the repercussions of COVID-19 on Singapore residents. With the recurring lockdown restrictions this past year, the findings are troubling. Out of over 1,000 respondents, 13% reported a clinical case of depression during the pandemic; 82% said they would seek professional aid to deal with mental health issues exacerbated by COVID-19.
Taking a step back, the discussion over mental health has taken the global stage by storm. In August, Headspace and Ginger announced a merger that would allow them to meet surging global demand for mental health support. In June, virtual therapy company Talkspace got SPAC’d and we can expect more to follow suit. Even famous athletes from Michael Phelps to Naomi Osaka to Simone Biles have weighed in on their personal fights with depression.
The topic of mental health has become a prevalent, often unspoken issue. This week, I speak with Beverly Chew, CMO of frankie, who discusses how banding a community together can help conquer the mental health stigma and why retention can be triggered from something as simple as being rewarded for a good job done.
Getting to Know Beverly
Mental health & wellness were not always Beverly’s main interests.
Prior to founding frankie, she co-founded Not.A.Dating.App, a dating app that was born out of the dissatisfaction of modern dating platforms. Jaded with present-day dating culture which prioritized physical appearances over quality, soulful time spent together, she wanted to create something that could give people a genuine chance to get to know each other beyond just that. Her hypothesis was that people connected over activities, and what better way to do that than to match people based on their date activity selection?
Beverly noticed a common theme amongst users of her platform - people crave connections. And she is not wrong. The pandemic, with its restrictions, has increased the need to connect, if not for social support, then simply for our sanity. Taking a leaf out of building her previous dating platform, Beverly believes that connections are what fortifies mental health and encourages retention.
Convinced about the inclusive cause of frankie and the necessity for mental health and wellness-related services, she joined forces with Tyr Ding and Desmond Leong - whom she met from her Antler Spark Cohort and the rest, as she says, is history.
Building frankie
Support for mental health should be for all.
During a mental health sharing session, Beverly realized that most people viewed mental healthcare as a privilege, rather than a necessity. It did not help that people who required assistance often faced limitations such as high costs, lack of information and stigma.
From a cultural standpoint, fighting stigma is a long-term, ongoing process that goes hand-in-hand with awareness. However, the frankie team also believes that there is a greater problem that has not been tackled, not even with the proliferation of mainstream wellness apps: retention.
Headspace is the golden child of mental health wellness with more than 70 million users across 190 countries and the recent USD93m close puts its valuation at around USD3b. Despite their success and close-knitted community of wellness fans, 95% of users drop off from the app within the first 30 days. Most wellness apps average around 3.6%-7% in retention and have yet to come to terms with the importance of prioritizing retention rates over user sign ups.
Recognizing that the core aspect of improving mental health and wellness is about retention, Beverly tells us that a big part of her role is focusing on the company’s 3 Ps - proactivity, persuasion and prevention - to convince users to follow through with their wellness journeys to build and retain their mental health and wellness, thereby preventing the onset of mental health problems.
How frankie Works
With more than 20,000 mental wellness apps available today, frankie differentiates itself from the competition by gamifying their wellness journeys with a rewards-based system and characters that grow with the progress of the user. Users complete tasks to earn points that can be used to redeem character perks and limited edition items that unlock further wellness journeys, or real-world rewards such as a free session or a yoga class.
Embarking on a Wellness Journey
The wellness journeys span from 3 - 30 days and are currently divided into everyday, expert-led and frustrations-focused.
Everyday Journey: The everyday wellness journey creates a wellness routine that is based on the user availability. These journeys have a maximum of 10 minutes per session and include tasks such as mindful breathing, meditation and simple stretching exercises to boost concentration and relax the mind.
Expert-led: Working with experts across various disciplines and fields, the expert/personality-led journeys bring users on a mental resilience journey that targets focus, time management and stress management techniques through respective practices such as Muay Thai, boxing, yoga, etc.
Frustrations-focused: This is a set of guided wellness journeys based on various frustrations, such as anxiety and burnout. Based on the condition selected, a plan is generated with a certain duration, steps and an increased focus on constant support and therapy to help users manage their mental state.
Thought Journey
Their thought journeys are used to track overall performance of a user's mental health and wellbeing across time. At the end of each task in a wellness journey, users will do a 2 min-thought journey that will track their current mood of the day, why they feel this particular way, what insights they have learnt from the task and what they would like to achieve the next day.
Talk Journey
For people who want to address specific issues like insomnia, stress and depression, frankie provides tailored solutions and consultation from therapists, charging 10% for each session (note: qualified professionals run their own practice and aren’t full-time staffs for frankie)
Understanding frankie
Current strategy
frankie targets the younger working demographic, aged 25-38 (millennial). The rationale? In Singapore, if you are below 25, there are free resources made readily available. Plus, this age group has a balanced mix of people who have recently finished their studies, people who are transitioning into their next job and people who are starting a family.
An advocate for zero dollar marketing, Beverly helps run creative marketing campaigns to acquire customers, using unconventional methods to reach the end user. For example, they created a Carousell account where they sold ‘listings’, including listening and support guides. Connecting via a consumer marketplace gave the team a direct channel to engage with potential customers about pain points in their mental health journey.
Their latest campaign, the frankie Wellness Retreat, includes a 7-day virtual wellness retreat where users get to embark on a series of activities led by meditation, mindfulness and fitness experts. One lucky participant of the retreat will stand a chance to win a staycation. (🔌: sign up!)
They also aim to be on the top of the search list when people look up ways to address stress and anxiety. 70% of their marketing efforts goes towards this SEO content-based strategy.
To help acquire their first wave of customers, frankie is working with Singapore Psychological Society and Singapore Psychiatric Association to form an official consultation partnership. They plan to onboard more therapists on to their platform through these strategic partnerships.
Market Size
While many wellness apps currently address those who already need and seek help (treatment and solution-focused), frankie takes a different approach. They want to focus more on preventive mental health.
Within the global wellness economy, the preventive care and wellness space is valued at $575 billion. As their serviceable obtainable market lies within preventive wellness and mental health, they aim to capture a piece of the $134 billion market.
Traction + Team
The team plans to launch their app in November. As of today, they onboarded more than 50 therapists on their app across different specialties and have around 1,500 users on their beta waitlist (🔌 sign up today to join their waitlist)!
In terms of recent accomplishments, they are working to close their pre-seed fund of USD350k. The team now works with 8 full-time employees, who are dedicated towards building out the product and content for their wellness journeys.
With the support of investors, strategic partners and a dedicated team, Beverly and her team strive to bring their vision of building a closely-knitted community of consumers and mental health professionals to life.
Beverly’s Takeaways
Blessed to have her own community of supporters to help her through this journey, Beverly believes that the key takeaways from her startup journey are:
Have a clear but flexible roadmap: There needs to be enough flexibility to adjust the product based on feedback. Users need to be excited about the product.
In terms of product, they had exciting features in their pipeline, one primarily being a VR function. In action, if you were to go on one of these wellness journeys, the frankie mascot would be present alongside you, performing the tasks as you do them. Beverly was initially passionate about rolling out these initiatives at the onset; however, she quickly learned the importance of building out product in phases and iterating accordingly. Being scrappy as a startup doesn’t excuse you from being erratic. Build the right processes and roadmaps.
Your work needs to support you (financially and emotionally). As a founder, you shouldn’t starve yourself. There’s a common misconception in venture to give more than 100% to your work at the cost of forgoing a sustainable lifestyle. Working within a mental health startup herself, Beverly realized that every founder should take good care of him or herself. Overworking for the sake of overworking isn’t a sustainable solution.
Work with people who believe in you. Choose your hires wisely. Beverly was a fan of Maplestory growing up (remember that game?), where you have to pick characters that are complementary to your skillsets. Find the right people who provide their own value add within the team as well as blend well within your company culture. It’s already an uphill battle to justify yourself to the world.
Have a game plan. There are always going to be 101 things to do and you just have 24 hours. Having a game plan helps to prioritize tasks into buckets.
Be OK with being mocked and failing.
job postings
For this week’s job postings (internships & full-time), please check out our Notion page here!
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