The history of the creation of Bear Room, or how we build startups from scratch

Bear Room is a flagship product from DŌBRA Impact Venture Studio, a venture studio dedicated to nurturing impactful startups from the idea stage to Seed/A rounds. Since its soft launch, Bear Room quickly surpassed 17,000 installs and received more than 100 positive reviews. The positive dynamics have continued: the application shows a constant growth of 31% per month, with a third of the traffic being organic.

Notably, we’ve observed a six-fold increase in users reporting their psycho-emotional state as ‘horrible’ during onboarding. However, around 80% of users who complete the exercises provided in the app for the first time report feeling better, with 20% of them experiencing a shift in their state from ‘horrible’ to ‘good’. This fact highlights the pressing demand for effective stress relief solutions and verifies the correctness of our product approach.

Identifying the Most Impactful Issues

Before starting, we set the goal to choose the most challenging and impactful topic that would influence hundreds of millions of people. During our research, we analyzed 4.6M scientific papers, 10M+ patents, companies, funding, social media, news, and over 100 scientific papers using tools like Google Cloud NLP, Yake/Rake algorithms, Google Sheets scripts, Phantombuster, and InsightHack.

We dived into large industries with multiple market sectors and identified around 370 different global issues that impact human life. As a result, we highlighted three major areas with significant potential:

• Ecological & Habitat Sustainability [Ecological living]
• Health, Safety & Active Longevity [Healthiness of living]
• Social Goods & Future Tech-Lifestyle [Quality of living]

From these, we chose the topic with the greatest impact today: mental wellbeing. Just consider this: 1 in 4 people experience a mental disorder during their lifetime, and approximately 81% of the world’s population has encountered mental health issues in the past two years.

After identifying mental wellbeing as our focus, we launched another research phase to select the most impactful, business-attractive, and non-clinical topics within the industry. We ended up with seven key issue territories, including Mood Hacking and Mental Productivity, Stress Resilience and Stress Reduction, Anxiety and Phobias, among others.

Through Mindshare and Co-Creation to Product Sketch

With our focus areas determined, we asked ourselves how we, newcomers in the digital mental health industry, could create a community, develop a network, and find experts and enthusiasts ready to co-found a startup. This led to the creation of the DŌBRA Grand Prix — a series of world-collaborative events, including a modified hackathon, an event with invited speakers, and a product session featuring mental health experts, engineers, product and project managers, marketers, and investors.

During Mindshare & Co-Creation Days, we invited people to share their insights on each of the seven issue territories. This activity yielded about 1,000 insights from people worldwide, from which we formulated 98 solution ideas, eventually narrowing them down to 14.

Some issue territories that were chosen and participant’s activities

During the Fine-Tuning phase, we gathered a pool of brilliant minds to sketch a tech product from core features to the target audience. This project also helped us find our first product owner/co-founder, several valuable experts, and early adopters.

Today, out of the 14 tech product concepts, we have launched 4 (already available in stores), and another one is at the prototyping stage.

Science base behind the app

From the raw idea of Mental Health First Aid, Bear Room was born — an app for instant stress relief based on the positive distraction concept. The app offers a variety of unconventional, but scientifically-backed exercises, including breathwork, EMDR, vocal practices, and tapping, lasting 1–8 minutes on average. These exercises allow users to press pause during stressful moments.

Researchers said that even a short distraction can effectively interrupt the body’s stress response (PubMed). In the Bear Room, we enhance this effect by filling the time with evidence-based techniques to further reduce stress.

Christina Spragg, Ph.D. , Clinical Psychologist and Global Workplace Mental Wellness Consultant, summarizes the scientific basis for our approach:

“Redirecting our attention away from stressful thoughts and scenarios can have a profound impact on our brain’s sensory input and overall function. Positive distraction, a type of ‘adaptive disengagement coping strategy,’ involves focusing on pleasant, non-threatening stimuli in the present moment to shift our brain’s activity from the default mode network (DMN) — associated with self-referential thinking and mind-wandering — to the sensory cortices.

Team behind the Bear Room

Key Milestones & Challenges

The preliminary work allowed us to launch the MVP quickly and achieve nice metrics in the challenging domain of mental wellbeing. The product owner already had detailed market analytics, feedback from real people, and expert insights. While initial research and market validation were ready, the key milestone before the public launch and user acquisition include:

• Prototype Development and Initial Testing
• MVP Development and Beta Testing
• Launch Strategy and Pre-Marketing Campaign

Bear Room currently focuses on coping, to help those with daily/chronic stress avoid further damage. “More than half of respondents of our surveys aren’t aware or use any self-help tools, — says Eugenia Makarevich, Product Owner and Co-Founder of Bear Room — And when people feel under pressure, stress piles up, leading to bigger crises and major life challenges. That’s why we decided to work with this topic of instant stress relief: to help people right here, right now”.

One of the key elements that contribute to Bear Room’s ability to provide instant relief is its design. The app eliminates the learning curve and complex onboarding that can be confusing for newcomers to digital mental health tools. Users are placed in a virtual room that serves as a safe space, offering calming objects as visual metaphors directly linked to the user’s experience. For example, there’s a cup of tea for those needing a break, a teddy bear for a cuddle, or a Newton’s cradle to help process a stressful moment. No preparation, no research — users simply select the object that resonates with their current need and begin the process of relief.

Conclusion

Currently, Bear Room has more than 17,000 installs and continues to grow. In the coming months, our focus will be on enhancing the app’s preventive aspects, fostering proactive stress management, and implementing room customization features to fully reflect users’ unique preferences and needs.