On EQT Ventures’ investment in Unmind, normalising mental health at the enterprise level

For a long time, mental health has suffered from a branding problem. Today, this is changing, and we’re only at the beginning of a movement in understanding and focussing on how we look after our minds, as much as we look after the rest of our bodies. What you’re doing to improve your mental health will be just as, if not more, sexy than your latest pair of running shoes.

As a result and accelerated by being locked in our homes over Covid, we have witnessed the explosive growth of consumer apps like Calm and Headspace, now used by tens of millions of us every day for sleep or meditation. But that’s only a tiny fragment of our lives. Much of our day is spent at work, and Mental Health is as important there as it is anywhere else. Now business leaders are waking up to the mental health megatrend and recognise its impact on performance. In fact, the term is now regularly coined in earnings calls, and is now the most requested area by employees in Peakon (the EQT-backed employee engagement software recently acquired by Workday).

Enter Unmind — the leading mental health app for the workplace.

Today, we’re excited to announce that EQT Ventures is leading a funding round of $47m in Unmind, with support from Sapphire Ventures as well as existing investors Project A, Felix Capital, True and Christian Angermayer. With 3x growth in the last year, now touching 2m employees across Europe, the US and Asia — in fact across some 110 countries — Unmind is used by some of the world’s top employers including Uber, British Airways, Marks & Spencer, and Samsung. With such growth, our data suggests that Unmind is the fastest growing mental health app globally, and certainly now the best funded coming out of Europe.

Unmind has rapidly become a core pillar of the corporate benefits stack. Employees love its range of support that spans mindfulness meditations to CBT metaphors, sleep melodies to storytelling, yoga to healthy recipes, tools to help you to relax, focus, unwind and even deal with workplace stress and conflict. Employers love Unmind because of its holistic approach to mental health, its reinforcing positive language, its clinical ties and because it has been built for the B2B customer from day one, giving access to aggregated and anonymous data so managers can get a pulse on the mental health of their workforce and guidance about what to do about it.

As ex founders and operators ourselves, we were immediately drawn to a mission-driven team determined to ride exceptional macro trends, with an unrivalled sense of purpose and true grit. Founder and CEO, Dr Nick Taylor is the commander in chief of the ship. In Nick, we saw a visionary and charismatic first-time founder with deep domain expertise (he is a trained clinical psychologist), a salesperson and trust builder; a sponge capable of going from 0 to 100 quickly whilst acting decisively; a genuine chess player who likes to think several moves ahead. Nick has carefully crafted a senior leadership team as thoughtful people leaders as him who’s speed of execution and maturity puts the execs of several much bigger companies to shame. Plus with EQT’s global footprint and our long history of backing B2B SaaS products selling to modern HR team (such as Peakon, Beamery, and Handshake), and as we spent more and more time with the team (from morning dog walks in Hampstead Heath with Danny the CCO to tramping the fields of Hampshire with Nick in his wellies), it became evident, this was an opportunity we could simply not miss.

Our conviction is such that, just as with Peakon, EQT Group will be rolling out Unmind to all 1,000 employees globally and encouraging all our companies to do the same.

The entire partnership and I couldn’t be more thrilled to join Nick, and the Unmind team on their journey — and of course for EQT itself to become power users of the product…

Shoutout to my colleagues Carolina Brochado, Ali Mitchell, and Anne Raimondi, who were fundamental for winning the heart and minds of the Unmind team given their operational chops, US network, and experience of building and scaling companies themselves.