Health Tech: Yunha Kim Of Sleep Reset On How Their Technology Can Make An Important Impact On Our Overall Wellness
An Interview With David Leichner
I’ll share what I believe to be the one most important question to ask yourself as a founder. What is your purpose? If your purpose is to help improve peoples’ lives, and you are truly focused on that, then everything you do will follow suit. The most important thing to know and keep top of mind is your intention — your “WHY” for starting your company. I remember when I was building Simple Habit how I wanted to bring the benefits of meditation to people because it helped me so much. When we launched, so many people reached out to me to tell me how it had changed their life, which was deeply moving. Helping people continues to be my intention.
In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Yunha Kim.
Yunha Kim is a serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Simple Habit, an award-winning meditation app for daily stress relief with over 100,000 five-star reviews, and Sleep Reset, a personalized, science-backed sleep improvement program developed with top experts from leading sleep clinics and universities. Simple Habit is backed by Foundation Capital, Y Combinator, New Enterprise Associates and many other prominent CEOs in Silicon Valley including Dropbox’s CEO Drew Houston and Gusto’s CEO Joshua Reeves.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?
I grew up in Korea and came to America when I was fourteen to attend boarding school. My parents were so brave to send me abroad for school. I didn’t speak much English at that time, which was a struggle for me even until I went to college at Duke University. When you leave the culture and environment you’re familiar with and go somewhere new, especially where you don’t speak the language, it impacts you as a person. I struggled in school with reading and understanding English, and as a result, I noticed my personality changed. I became more introverted and shy.
Looking back, I think that those challenging times pushed me to lean into some of the values that are most important to me today. I had to have a growth mindset, and believe that I could grow and learn. I had to have grit and persistence to continue trying. The values that I developed during this time have contributed to my success as an entrepreneur, and have become core values for Sleep Reset.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Something that has been interesting is how my career has transitioned. I started my career in investment banking, and if you ask me about the #1 industry that’s known for glorifying the lack of sleep, that has to be it! When I was in banking, I partook in bragging about how little I slept. However, just a few years later, I’m now in the business of helping people get more sleep!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
George Northup. He’s been the CEO of multiple companies, and is essentially a “turnaround CEO.” He also went to Duke, and I met him at a speaking panel. He became my mentor.
There was a time during the COVID pandemic where I was really feeling the pressure. I was working on Simple Habit and we were expanding our product offering with Sleep Reset, and I was incredibly stressed out. I gave George a call and he reminded me that being Founder & CEO is a choice I continue to make. I think this happens a lot to entrepreneurs, where you start a company and you’re working on it for four or five years, and unlike employees who make the choice to change their jobs every now and then, as a founder you don’t really think about that. My conversation really reframed my mindset, and reminded me that it’s my choice to expand into new products like Sleep Reset.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
The Serenity Prayer. “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” I’m an overachiever and I tend to want to fix everything. This sometimes comes at the cost of my own wellbeing. The Serenity Prayer helps me prioritize things and put things into perspective.
This idea of acceptance is also relevant to Sleep Reset and our methods based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. It’s important to accept the fact that sometimes you will have a bad night of sleep and sometimes you will wake up unrefreshed, but you can still take control of the things you can by making lifestyle changes to improve your sleep.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
- Growth Mindset. I think about this in terms of your attitude towards growth. This manifests in your day-to-day work. There are people who elicit feedback so they can grow, learn, and continue to improve. I am the type of person who wants to constantly be in a state of improvement. This is helpful for an entrepreneur, because you have to be very flexible and mold into all the different roles that you have to play.
- Grit and Persistence. In the startup world there is a lot of luck involved in your success, but in order to be lucky you have to keep going. People who are successful are those who keep trying and don’t let failure discourage them.
- Resourcefulness. When I need help I reach out to people to get their thoughts and insight. People are so willing to help one another out. This is also a great way to make connections and network.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on our wellness. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?
Insomnia. 60% of adults have chronic sleep issues, with serious consequences for their health and emotional wellbeing. I’ve experienced insomnia myself and I know the impact it can have on your mental health and productivity. When you are not sleeping well, it negatively impacts your quality of life. When I was seeking care for my own insomnia, I tried to get into a top-tier sleep clinic — but found myself on a 6-month waitlist. I realized that for many people, getting the best care for their sleep issues is inaccessible. They don’t have the resources to make key lifestyle adjustments. So instead, they turn to over-the-counter or prescription sleep medications, which come with grogginess and long-term health side effects. We worked with leading sleep experts to create a better solution: Sleep Reset.
How do you think your technology can address this?
Sleep Reset is a digital, personalized sleep clinic, complete with one-on-one coaching, available in a convenient mobile app for iOS and Android. Sleep Reset provides the techniques that a patient would typically receive from a sleep doctor or sleep clinic, from the comfort of home, and in a more accessible, user-friendly mobile format. We provide text-based access to our sleep coaches, so if questions or challenges arise, you can reach out to your sleep coach immediately, rather than waiting to see your doctor at your next appointment. Our technology can also help identify the root causes of your sleep issues through our expert-designed Sleep Evaluation.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
Back in 2020, through constant communication with users and data, we realized that many of the users of the Simple Habit meditation app were struggling with sleep. In fact, sleep was the #1 problem that Simple Habit users suffered from. Many of them were using Simple Habit because poor sleep was causing stress and anxiety in their life.This problem was personal for me as well, as I have dealt with my own sleep problems for years, which intensified during the pandemic.
How do you think this might change the world?
I believe that helping people improve their sleep and combat insomnia will ultimately improve their mental and emotional health, and increase their quality of life.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
I don’t see any drawbacks for our technology. Sleep Reset helps people get access to quality sleep care to combat insomnia.
Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”?
I’ll share what I believe to be the one most important question to ask yourself as a founder. What is your purpose? If your purpose is to help improve peoples’ lives, and you are truly focused on that, then everything you do will follow suit. The most important thing to know and keep top of mind is your intention — your “WHY” for starting your company. I remember when I was building Simple Habit how I wanted to bring the benefits of meditation to people because it helped me so much. When we launched, so many people reached out to me to tell me how it had changed their life, which was deeply moving. Helping people continues to be my intention.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
You only have one life to live. You want your time and energy on earth to be spent well. What do you want your impact on the world to be?
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
Barack Obama.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Download Sleep Reset on iOS or Android, or visit www.thesleepreset.com to learn more and take our expert-designed Sleep Assessment.
You can also follow me on LinkedIn or Medium, or social media.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is the Chairman of the Friends of Israel and Member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.
