So buddhify won its first award this week. After being shortlisted for the Europe-wide Lovie awards earlier this month, we won app of the year at the Scottish Digital Business Awards. It was a lovely night and actually the first time the Glasgow-based team had the chance to celebrate what has been a pretty good year – sales have been above target, media coverage has been great and most importantly the feedback from our users show that we have made something that actually makes a lot of people’s lives better.
The story so far
Back in 2011 I had three things – a concept, a name and a few spare weekends. I then reached into my savings and spent £8000 on the first prototype which we launched early 2012 with the help of a small crowd-funded budget for marketing.
That first product took off and we took all the profits from that into making buddhify 2 for iOS. We’ve now taken the profits from buddhify 2 and have re-invested them into doubling the content and a new Android version so that even more people around the world can get benefit from what we’ve made.
So effectively we’ve made what many people consider the best mindfulness and meditation app on the market today with a tiny budget and a tiny team. While other leading meditation products have taken on millions of dollars of investment, to date we’ve deliberately looked to grow organically in what is an early stage market.
Taking it to the next level
And now that the market for pop mindfulness products is starting to take off, we’re ready for the next level. Alongside growing buddhify, we are currently working on a range of scalable mindfulness products to take to market in 2015/16. They take everything we’ve learnt from buddhify, together with our unique combination of mindfulness, technology & design expertise.
I’m super excited about them and I think you should be too.
And for the first time ever we are looking to take some investment to help take them to production faster than we otherwise would be able to by ourselves.
We are therefore opening a small angel investment round which will particularly suit:
- People who want to get in on the ground floor of a growing market
- People who are interested in the double bottom line of commercial results and human impact
- People who’ve been moved by buddhify and would like to give us more than $3/£1.99 (!)
- UK-based investors given that the company is eligible for the hugely tax-efficient SEIS programme
I am of course hugely biased but the combination here is pretty great – massive commercial potential, great people and a world-class product already in market. And on top of all that the ability to make a real different to hundreds of thousands of people’s lives. We receive messages every week that tell us that we are genuinely improving people’s lives. Some are so touching, they move me to tears. I’d like other people to know what that is like. Not many investment opportunities can offer that.
And if you’d like a one-line pitch it’s simply this:
We made buddhify with hardly anything at all, imagine what we could do with some real resources.
To know more please email me at rohan@21awake.com and I’ll send you the investor invitation.