YouSaid · the spoken record

Sean Brecker

lines on the record
27
first
2016-08-26
most recent
2016-08-26
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “Yeah, well, I think people view us fairly as a meditation app, but we think that to really focus on health and happiness, it's about more than meditation. Meditation is a great start. It is at the core of everything that we do. But we are really evolving into the world's most comprehensive guide to health and happiness. And I think that that's really a lifetime's work. That's not something that we tie the bow on in five years and say, ta-da, we're done. I think we will continue working on that as long as we're here. And I hope that I'm still here in five years. It's definitely been the most fun job I've ever had.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Is a given. I mean, it's always every company has a recruiting issue because when you're moving at a speed that we're moving at and sort of other people in our space, you just can't keep up from a recruiting perspective. So I think that's a given. But time management is very difficult and is perhaps more specific to sort of people in my role.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yeah, I mean, I think the most gratifying thing is just the impacts that we're having on people's lives. I mean, we literally get five to ten unsolicited emails a day from our users telling us what a remarkable impact the app has had on their lives all the way from very serious topics like suicide to sort of lighter topics around people feeling like it makes them a better father or partner. And that is incredibly gratifying. And I also get to work with incredible people. And it's just been a great, great, great experience.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Oh, so many. But I'd say the ones I read every day are the information and recode. And then whenever I know you've had Satya and Hunter on your podcast, I love reading whenever they put stuff out. Bill Gurley obviously just puts something out. I read whatever he puts out whenever he puts it out. So those are my favorites.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Meets at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. every day and it's optional, but a number of folks show up and do a meditation during one of those two sessions. So yeah, I think get into a routine and just sort of recognize that this doesn't have to be a huge burden on your time. You can literally do this 10 minutes a day.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Well, I think it's really around trying to attach it to a routine. So, you know, Andy talks about trying to attach doing your 10 or 15 or 20 minutes to something that you also do every day. So he says, for instance, brushing your teeth is a good thing where you get yourself into a routine where you brush your teeth and then you meditate, for instance. For me, I try and do it in the mornings. I use headspace, obviously. I try and do it in the mornings before my kids are awake every day. I'm pretty good about it. There are maybe days where they wake me up early and then I don't get to it, but then I'll try and do it during the day.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “So, business Ben Harowitz is the hard thing about hard things. I think it's just so much practical advice in that book. It's a pretty quick read. Every entrepreneur, CEO, VC, board member, et cetera, should read it. I took pages and pages of notes on it and actually just go to those notes pretty frequently. Non-business, I would say a man in full by Tom Wolfe, primarily because I think it's the ultimate lesson in humility, which is, I think, very important when you're in this game.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “But the churning guys, we ultimately selected them. They've been incredible partners. We're very close with them, talk to them weekly. And yeah, they've been fantastic partners. And the other strategic investors have just been, frankly, the icing on the cake. I think the interesting thing is almost universally across our cap table, our investors are big fans of the product and have had there's been a sort of profound impact on their lives that has occurred because of their use of the product. So whether it's Jim Breyer, whether it's Jeff Weener or LinkedIn or Michael Linton, who's the CEO of Sony or some of the other people that you mentioned, more often than not, they have approached us first and foremost as fans of the product looking just to help out and to see how they can add value and be involved.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And strategy, and they happen to be in our backyard. So when we looked at it, really, the key criteria for us were who's going to provide the most amount of value besides just the capital, given that we had sort of multiple options for the capital. And perhaps even more importantly, who is really excited and aligned with us around the mission and the vision? And in my opinions, we're beautiful, rare opportunity to marry what is ultimately a very social mission with a huge commercial opportunity. And there were a number of funds that were very excited about that, genuinely, that is rare, that you can have a company that is really doing good from a social perspective that can also be a commercial success story.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yeah, well, it was a pretty fascinating process. It was pretty exhausting, I won't lie, but it was remarkable because we met incredible people throughout the whole process. I think through the whole process, we met something like 63 different investors. And we were very fortunate that we had multiple options when it came to actually doing the round. And we ultimately selected the turn-in group, Peter Turnin, Jesse Jacobs, and their team to lead the round for us. The reason that we did that was, you know, we felt like they were incredibly savvy around how to build media products. And we do, you know, view ourselves as a media company. But they also really understand the blocking and tackling sort of nuts and bolts hygiene of growing businesses and organizational design.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Creating a new vertical here around health and happiness that we believe has not been created before. But what I can tell you just in terms of mental costs around mental disorders and issues, the world economic forum recently did a study in which they were projecting global costs of non-communicable diseases. And their estimate was that by 2030, the projected cost of mental health issues would be $6 trillion, which is greater than the cost of diabetes, respiratory disorders, and cancer combined. So, you know, we believe that to be a very, very big market. We believe it ripe for a product and a service to come and start to affect change.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, I guess there's a couple questions in that. The first is we don't really view other meditation apps as competition. At the end of the day, what we are doing is we're trying to compete for people's time. The time is, you know, the most precious resource that we all have, especially in today's busy world. And what we're trying to do is get people to spend 10 minutes less on social media or reading sort of viral articles or consuming television and have them instead commit those 10 minutes towards an investment in their health and happiness. And so that's really about behavioral change. And we view time as sort of the biggest challenge to conquer. With regard to the competitive space, winner take-all, and I think sort of implicit target addressable market in there, we were obviously asked this when we did our round in terms of how we think about the market and market sizing. It's quite difficult because we are”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “It's interesting, we sort of talk about our user groups in two buckets, we talk about vitamin users and aspirin users. The vitamin users are the ones that are in the routine that are doing this as a sort of preventative measure to keep themselves healthy and happy. And the aspirin users are those that use a product more when they are feeling really stressed out or they can't sleep, et cetera. And we have seen migration of people from aspirin into vitamin, which is great news for us. I mean, ultimately, like I said, we really want people to be thinking proactively around health and happiness. We all wake up in the morning, we brush our teeth, we may go to the gym, we think about what we're going to eat, but only a small amount of people wake up in the morning and think proactively around what am I going to do today to improve my health and happiness and sort of take care of my mental well-being. And that is something we're deeply passionate about changing.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I don't think people are tired of it, but we always ask ourselves the question is that the best experience for everyone as they come into the product? The vast majority of our users are new to meditation. They have never meditated before. And so there's a lot of experimentation that we can do to figure out what is the sort of best way to get them to start. And yeah, there's a number of exciting”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, I mean, we're always sort of experimenting with this, right? I think we will always, whatever is free will always be a solid foundation. I think that's sort of the guiding principle. In terms of how do we get people to convert paid, it's really about getting them more and more engaged in the free content, them having a good understanding of what the value proposition is on the other side of the paywall. And that's something we continue to work on.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yeah, so it's a good question. I mean, people are not going to convert paying users if we have not given them a good product experience in the free part of the app. So part of what we have done is to provide more and more and more free content so that people can have a broader foundational experience. So for instance, when Apple released the Apple Watch, they came to us and asked us if we would consider putting our SOS meditations, you know, these short form two-minute meditations for when you're having some kind of crisis and just really need to sort of very quickly cool down, they ask us if we would put that on the Apple Watch. We talked about it with them, we said, sure, that had traditionally been on the paid side of the paywall, but we felt again it was aligned with the social aspects of the mission to make that available to everyone. So that's something that we've done. All the supporting content, you know, all the editorial content you'll see in the blog, radio headspace.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “For instance, doing 60 minutes once every 10 days or every two weeks. So it was really by design as a sort of combination to ensure that we were always giving people access to a solid foundation that was free, that works, that was effective, but that also was not, didn't seem like a sort of burden on the way in, right? Part of the challenge here is we want people to go through that foundation and complete it so they can start seeing the benefits and they can start to become a believer in the importance of taking care of the mind.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Well, we chose 10 because it's a long enough period where people can start to see benefits, which was very important to us. You know, one of the most important aspects of the company, just from a social perspective, is that there is always availability to a free product and a free product that provides a solid foundation in meditation. So 100 minutes, 10 days times 10 minutes, 100 minutes of free content really is a very solid meditation foundation. So part of it was to address the social aspect of the mission. And part of it was really around efficacy. Science and studies have shown that the sort of key to success in affecting change in terms of mental health, and you can actually look at this physiologically through FMRI machines. And the key is more around how frequently you meditate as opposed to longevity. So 10 minutes multiple times per week is better than.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Content with everything else we have a very strong content team that includes creative designers, that includes editors, that includes writers, but everything again comes through the filter, health and happiness.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, I mean, you know, like any good processes, it's a combination of art and science. So there is no formula for success, right? I think you have to differentiate between the meditation, the guided meditation content and everything else. With regards to the guided meditation content, there is only one former monk who really is a genuine expert. He did it for 10 years. He has a pretty remarkable process where when he's recording a pack, he'll spend a couple days sort of planning the progression of the pack and thinking through sort of the tips and so on that he wants to communicate. But when he's actually recording the pack, it's all unscripted. And I think that's also been one of the keys to success, which is the product feels very organic because it is. It feels like you're sitting in a room with Andy being taught one-to-one because, you know, that is effectively. That process is sort of very specific to the guided medicine.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “So, for us, it's all about trying to remove the barriers to practice and to consumption of content to get better and better and more comprehensive around content and to embed tools within the product that really drive engagement.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “It is, yeah. I mean, well, the thing, you know, one of the things that we are most obsessive about is engagement, which is obviously highly correlated to retention. Look, at the end of the day, if you take a step back and you think about the vision of the company, which is to improve the health and happiness of the world, it's hard to deliver on that vision if people are not using the product or if people are just using the product in a sort of aspirin fashion, you know, when they can sleep or if they are getting on an airplane and have fear of flying or in the run up to them playing golf. What we want to do is really effect a sort of cultural movement in which people think about proactive mind health in the same way that they think about proactive physical health. And so for us, it's really about, you know, how do we produce the best possible content, keep people coming back, be that guided meditation content or other content? And it's something that we really obsess over.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Really got me thinking about it and starting to become a believer. And then I read the science. And the great thing is, you know, the science is very robust on this. There have been today over 2,000 studies by researchers, and these are very serious studies peer reviewed on the benefits of meditation. I mean, the benefits are sort of too many to even name here. It's everything from better sleep and reduced stress and anxiety all the way to implications around chronic pain and focus and performance. To answer your question, I think the job is really done on one hand by communicating science, by telling the user stories and testimonials. Branding is also a really important aspect here. And if you look at our product, the branding has been one of the keys to our success. And I would argue that we position this practice in a very modern secular way. And we do that by design.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah, it's a great question. And I was one of those people that viewed it as a sort of hippie thing. And as Rich had that conversation with me, he said, look, it's just 10 minutes a day for 10 days. And I was happily unemployed. I had all the time in the world. I said, of course I can give that a try. You know, the fascinating thing was I did take 10 and then I did the rest of the foundation. And when I first started doing it, I remember my mother-in-law had given me a Fitbit as a Christmas present. And the Fitbit was telling me that I was on average sleeping three hours and 45 minutes per night. I mean, I'd never been a great sleeper, but I think I was probably stressed by the fact that I just quit a 15-year career in banking and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up. And over the course of about two weeks, that sleep changed from 345 to 6.45. And that was sort of the only thing I had changed was trying the meditation.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Unquote commercial guy. No one really had any titles, no one had business cards, etc. So I was the quote unquote commercial guy. Very quickly, I loved what I was doing and I suppose they felt like I could add some value. So they asked me to come on board full-time as a quote unquote commercial guy. And a few months after that, as we started to think about fundraising, they took me out for lunch and said, you know, we really need a CEO. How do you feel about being the CEO? And that's the honest story of how it all happened. It was very organic and serendipitous.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Just to catch up, we hadn't seen each other in a few years. And he started asking me some questions about his business. I'd heard that he had formed a meditation app company with a former monk, and I thought he was crazy because he had a very successful job in advertising. And, you know, I was not a meditator. I hadn't tried it. But he started asking me all these questions about it and pinging me questions around sort of commercial strategy and fundraising, the time the company was about 15 people and primarily designers and content creators. And I guess I had good questions for him and I suppose I had a curious mind and he felt that I had an analytical approach that may be of benefit to Headspace. And so he had me come in and meet Andy and then he had meet a few other people and to make a long story short the guys asked me to come on board initially as a consultant doing three days a week essentially being the quote.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Well, it's a question I get asked a lot by my former colleagues in banking. And I wish that I had a very sophisticated answer for you, but the truth is it was primarily dumb luck. So my situation is that I spent about 15 years working for major investment banks, primarily on the trading and origination side. Most recently, I had spent the last 11 years overseas, four years in London, and then seven years in Singapore. And along the way, you know, had gotten married and had three kids, and we just got pretty homesick for the States. And my wife and I decided we wanted to move back to the States, and we decided to move to Los Angeles and take some time off to sort of figure out what I wanted to do next. When I got to Los Angeles, about two weeks after I got her, I was contacted by an old friend of mine, a gentleman named Rich Pearson, who is today one of the co-founders of Headspace. And we got together socially for breakfast.”

    2016-08-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Maximising Engagement and Retention on Mobile & Why There Should Always Be Availability To A Free Product with Sean Brecker, CEO @ Headspace · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source