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Mental Health in a COVID World · StartUp Health NOW Podcast

• 0:00
  [instrumental music] Welcome back to Startup Health Now. This is the podcast where we share stories from the front lines of health innovation. I'm Nicole Clark, Startup Health senior writer.
• 0:16
  The other night, I dreamt that I was running an errand. I was heading to a department store to buy a new doormat. Not sure why a doormat, but that's dreams for you, I suppose.
• 0:27
  As I walked into the store, I saw people milling about with different color masks covering half of their faces, being good citizens that they were. And I realize I've forgotten my mask in the car.
• 0:40
  In my dream, I'm horrified. I turn on my heels, bolt out the door, and my dream leaves me with this deep sense of shame. In mid-April, Wired ran a story about how COVID-19 quarantine dreams are taking over the Internet.
• 0:56
  The coronavirus pandemic is causing some truly bizarre night visions, and apparently sharing them helps. Matter of fact, I do feel better now that you know I dream about doormats.
• 1:09
  Whether it's sharing our peculiar dreams on the interwebs or finding some solace, say, in an HBO ad that features Lena Dunham and other TV stars reassuring us that it's okay to not feel okay,
• 1:22
  these digital condolences act as lifelines. This month, in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, we're talking about mental wellness during the pandemic. It's an unprecedented time for mental health.
• 1:37
  Not only has the virus caused immense physical suffering and loss for millions of people, it's also resulted in emotional hardship and, tragically, even suicide.
• 1:48
  To start things off, on today's episode, we're gonna hear from Michael Acton Smith, the co-founder and CEO of Calm. Calm is one of the most used apps for sleep and meditation.
• 2:01
  When he and Alex Tew started the company in late twenty twelve, meditation and wellness was seen as a little, quote unquote, "woo woo," as Acton says.
• 2:11
  But by twenty fifteen, Calm had reached two million downloads worldwide, and in twenty nineteen, they became the first mental health unicorn company with a valuation of over one billion dollars.
• 2:23
  In this fireside chat from the twenty twenty Startup Health Festival with Peter Leyden, an author on Wired, Acton Smith shares his own mental health story and what led him to meditation,
• 2:36
  and ultimately to the launch of Calm. Take a listen.
• 2:41
  I'm back here on the stage again, just to kind of-- for folks who might weren't here in the morning, um, one of the things I think Unity is bringing me into this conversation is I've been in the Bay Area from the early Wired magazine, seen the whole tech disruption, uh, kind of digital transformation.
• 2:55
  And I also run a media company that has a series of events called What's Now San Francisco, where we watch the innovation happening in many different fields simultaneously and see the cross connections and the parallels.
• 3:07
  And so now we're looking with the lens here in the healthcare space, which is a little late to the digital transformation project, but it's basically now in full gear.
• 3:16
  And also a lot of the innovation happening, there's a lot of parallels in other kind of fields, and I think there's something really interesting about that.
• 3:22
  One of them is the whole app phenom that's kind of taken over all kinds of different fields and played out in many different, uh, industries.
• 3:31
  You were one of the pioneers in kind of this, this health and certainly the mental health space around apps. So take us back to, it was seven years ago, I guess, right? Yeah.
• 3:40
  And tell us kind of what was the situation with you trying to launch your ambitions in an environment seven years ago here? Yeah. It was very different to the environment now, um, and great to be here, by the way.
• 3:52
  Hey, everybody. So Alex Tew, my co-founder, and myself used to live in London and in Soho, and, uh, we'd always be cooking up harebrained business ideas, and, and it didn't actually start with an app.
• 4:03
  It started with a domain name. And Alex mentioned this really cool domain name he'd come across that was potentially for sale called calm.com. And I was like, "Wow, that's a cool domain. [laughs] How much is it?"
• 4:14
  And he said, "Oh, about a million, a million dollars." [laughs] So that was a little out of our, our budget.
• 4:20
  Um, but it just got the cogs turning in our heads, and we just thought there was something tremendous that could be built there.
• 4:28
  You know, we'd seen the early signals of how the world was just speeding up, and everyone was always on, and, uh, stress was growing and anxiety was starting to grow, and we thought, what an incredible opportunity to, to build a brand around helping the world slow down a little bit and become more calm.
• 4:45
  So that was the, the initial seed of the idea, and then it started, um, uh, the first thing we, we did, we did actually manage to buy the domain for a lot less than a million dollars. [laughs] Fair enough.
• 4:55
  Uh, we actually offered the, um, the guy that owned it, um, five percent of the future, uh, business, uh, but he laughed at us and said, "No thank you." But that'd be worth about fifty million dollars now.
• 5:07
  [laughs] So I think he's a little, a little, um, upset about that one. But, uh, yeah, we launched an app, and it, it all started with, uh, meditation and, and grew from there.
• 5:17
  So talk us a little bit about how the world has maybe changed.
• 5:21
  I mean, how it started, but now, you know, over the last seven years, we've watched, uh, a lot of things, uh, tech lash, a kind of a social media kind of craziness, uh, a lot more attention to m-mental health, would you say?
• 5:34
  How, how... Describe what you see happening in the world that's affected your business. Yeah. So we've seen-- We've had a sort of front row seat to this and seen an incredible shift over the last few years.
• 5:44
  When we were starting out, um, meditation and mindfulness was seen as a little bit weird and, and woo woo. People would roll their eyes at us. Uh, we found it very difficult to get anyone to, to invest in the business.
• 5:56
  We found it very hard to hire people to the, to the company. And Alex and I both decided that California would be the best place to build- [laughs]...a business like this.
• 6:03
  I think- Of course...folks out here are a little more embracing of the, the unusual, um, which, uh, we love, and also Silicon Valley, the, the center of capital and, and entrepreneurship.
• 6:14
  So this felt like the, the best place, but it was still very, very tough, tough going.
• 6:18
  It took many, many years-But as entrepreneurs, you look for these opportunities, these inflection points where society changes its perception on something.
• 6:27
  And if you're built running a business, if you're surfing a wave when that shift happens, it's, it's extraordinary. You have the, the wind in your sails blowing you along.
• 6:36
  And we're seeing this in a, you know, a few different industries. Everything from, um, the shift to, to plant-based foods- Yeah...
• 6:41
  which again, was weird a few years ago, um, to psychedelics as, you know, a positive, uh, intervention for, for mental health.
• 6:50
  Um, and so we were there in the early days of this shift around mindfulness and, and now when we tell people, you know, we, we teach and, and create a product helping people live more mindful lives, people love it.
• 7:03
  And, you know, it's something people show off and talk about on social media, but, uh, it- it's very recent that, uh, turning point has happened.
• 7:10
  Did you ch- As it was evolving in those last seven years, did you ever have any kind of big strategy shifts?
• 7:16
  I mean, that you kind of see as not just the context was changing and you were surfing a wave that, you know, you were early to, but was there something that you realized that's kind of able to get you to scale to what...
• 7:27
  By the way, I think that you're the first unicorn in the mental health space, uh, for an app and, uh, valued at a billion dollar or over a billion dollars, you know. So, um, but anyhow, what, what...
• 7:38
  Anything big shift there? Was it- Yeah, there were a few, a few kind of tipping points, uh, along the way. Probably the first was when we launched something called the Daily Calm.
• 7:48
  So we have this incredible teacher called Tamara Levitt, who writes and narrates all our meditation content.
• 7:55
  And a lot of pushback we got from investors and other folks was that, "Well, meditation is available ev- anywhere. You can go on YouTube and get thousands of hours of free content."
• 8:04
  But Tamara had a very unique way of teaching, and, uh, it really resonated with people. And meditation isn't easy to do, to sit down and, and still your mind and, and, and focus.
• 8:15
  And so what we did was create a unique meditation every single day and called it the Daily Calm, and that helped people come back and build it into a habit. So that was the first big turning point.
• 8:26
  And then the second shift on our journey was when we realized that there was a bigger opportunity than just mindfulness and meditation. That's incredibly valuable and, and life-changing, a, a foundational skill.
• 8:38
  It's, it's one of the most valuable things I've, I've ever learnt in my life. Um, but we recognized that sleep was, was a pretty big market as well. So just curious to know how many people in the audience meditate? Cool.
• 8:51
  Wow. I'm preaching to the converted here. Lot, uh, lot of people that get it. And if I asked how many people sleep, I think hopefully every hand would go up. [laughs] Uh, that's a great market to go after.
• 9:01
  Seven and a half- Or have trouble. [laughs] It's, it's, have trouble sleeping. That's really what you're going after, right?
• 9:04
  Many-- Well, many people do struggle with sleeping, but everyone has to sleep every night, pretty much, um, seven and a half billion people every single night of their life.
• 9:12
  And we noticed this really interesting thing in the data a few years ago, where at about 11:00 PM at night, all around the world, we saw this big, big spike of usage of the meditations.
• 9:22
  And people were listening to Tamara's voice to help still their racing mind and help them drift off to sleep. And we thought, "What if we could create mindful stories? What if we could reimagine the bedtime tale?"
• 9:35
  And we created this concept called the Sleep Story, which mixes music and sound effects, and we have incredible voices like Matthew McConaughey and Stephen Fry, and, uh, they help you drift off to sleep, and they've been a huge, huge hit.
• 9:50
  Well, you mentioned Matthew. Um, you know, another big thing we're seeing in all over different industries is the use of influencers and people who people really admire and kinda follow.
• 10:01
  How did you get involved with these kind of celebrity types? And was that a strategy, or you just found out, wow, they're using the app, and you leveraged it? T-talk a little bit about that use of influencers. Yes.
• 10:11
  Or what you call, I guess, ambassadors or something. Ambassadors and, and celebrities. Anyone with a big, uh, platform and, and a lot of kind of, um, sway. So we- we're very inspired by Nike.
• 10:21
  We think that's an incredible business. Love the book, Shoe Dog. And when Nike was getting going, you know, 50-odd years ago, running wasn't really a thing.
• 10:29
  Uh, people didn't really do physical exercise, and, and now Nike's $120 billion business. There's a gym on every corner. We, we get it.
• 10:36
  And we think we're right at the start of a wave around mental fitness and people treating their minds with the same care and respect they do their bodies.
• 10:44
  But one of the ways we're gonna normalize that and reach hundreds of millions of people is through celebrities and, and folks that have massive, um, uh, audience and fan bases and, and Nike did it back in the day.
• 10:58
  And so that's why we're now working with everyone from Matthew McConaughey to LeBron James, uh, we did a partnership with recently, and he uses Calm every day, uh, to help him sleep.
• 11:08
  And he talks about the importance of the inner game, the mental game, as well as the, the physical game, and how the mind is a muscle, and we need to train it.
• 11:16
  So, uh, it definitely has helped accelerate our growth, uh, dramatically. And so we're, we're chatting to a lot of other folks with big influence from the world of music and actors and sports and, and on and on.
• 11:28
  So it's been a strategy, but did, didn't-- Did, did you literally just come across that like, "Oh my God, we got LeBron James on it," or, "And we might as well go talk to him"?
• 11:36
  Or, or were you literally aggressively kinda looking for that as a growth fuel for, for what you're doing? We were very much looking for it. Okay.
• 11:42
  But I think the challenge, to my point earlier, was it was very hard to get anyone to pay attention.
• 11:46
  You know, when we were small, and again, I think a lot of celebrities a few years ago didn't really want to risk associating with something like this, again, 'cause there was so much baggage around it.
• 11:58
  It, it was seen as weird. Was it religious?
• 12:00
  But now because that has tipped, I think celebrities, not-- many of them meditate themselves, and many of them want to be associated with something positive like this that can be very helpful for, for their audiences as well.
• 12:12
  So, um, yeah, we knocked on a lot of doors, and then slowly but surely, uh, they, they've started to open.So we're here in a health conference, I mean, looking at healthcare, and you, I guess, see yourself through that prism, but you're also could be seen as kind of a lifestyle app.
• 12:25
  You also could be kind of a media play at some level. I mean, how do you think of yourself? Do you think of yourself as some blended hybrid kind of situation or- Yeah, it kind of depends who we're talking to.
• 12:35
  [laughs] So if we're talking to investors, we're a tech company and [laughs] Like those, like those multiples.
• 12:40
  Um, but I think one of the things that I think is very important when building something in a new field like this is brand. Yeah. And it's often overlooked, um, uh, in, in tech companies.
• 12:51
  And if you can mix, uh, the tech and brand and, and create something that people really wanna associate with and shout about and, and share, um, I think that could be powerful. So calm is a, is a great word.
• 13:03
  It's a great brand name. It's a very simple brand that we built, but it, it seems to really resonate with people, and we think that's important.
• 13:09
  There are a lot of other mindfulness and meditation products out there, hundreds and hundreds in the App Store, but I think some of the branding is not at a level that, uh, kind of, um, people maybe want to be proud to associate with.
• 13:23
  Well, particularly with these relationships with these celebrities, um, the theme or-- of the conference here is collaboration.
• 13:29
  And, um, when you think of collaboration, um, you know, how central is it to what you're trying to do? How much do you see your success in your relationships?
• 13:38
  I mean, talk a little bit about your, your attitude towards collaboration. Yeah. We're huge, um, fans of collaboration and, and partnership. It's been a big, big driver of the business.
• 13:47
  So we talked about from the celebrity side of things, but also working with other businesses. And, uh, we have some great partnerships with everyone from Express Spa. Don't know if you've seen those in, in the airports.
• 13:58
  A hundred million people walk past their outlets in the US every year. Um, we put Calm content on American Airlines. Uh, you're able to meditate in the, in the back of an Uber through a partnership we did there.
• 14:09
  So we're always looking for these connections with other brands and, and they're great for our partner, they're great for us, and hopefully great for the, for the, um, for the users as well.
• 14:19
  How about what, what-- do you have a-- something for if you're in a frenetic conference where there's like, I think, twenty-two hundred- [laughs] -meetings going on up here, if you've been up and through...
• 14:28
  I mean, is there a way to get space in that kind of environment, you think, to clear your head and be kinda calmed, as well? Well, we got ten minutes left.
• 14:34
  We could do a, a meditation- [laughs] -for the last ten minutes, and all sit in silence and... Maybe not the best use of, uh, everybody's time. Maybe we'll not do that.
• 14:41
  But, uh- But, but you do have that kind-- that's the kind of idea. You can be in the back of a taxi, you can be anyplace. Exactly.
• 14:46
  This is the whole idea of, of helping people wherever they are to find, um, uh, a little bit of, of peace and, and silence.
• 14:54
  And, and one of the misconceptions on meditation is that people think it's about clearing the mind, and everyone is like, "I can't do that. That's, that's too difficult."
• 15:02
  What it actually is, is about focusing on a constant. And when you close your eyes, we teach, um, a practice that involves focusing on the breath, something we all do hundreds of millions of times in our life.
• 15:14
  Um, and when you focus on your breath, breath and you close your eyes, your mind will wander, and then you bring it back, and it will wander again, and you bring it back.
• 15:22
  And it's that practice, that act of noticing that is, uh, effectively strength training for your mind. And having a stronger attention, um, in everyday life is, is incredibly valuable, so.
• 15:35
  Now, um, a lot of entrepreneurs in the audience here. Um, in my series that I do, again, we're talking to all kinds of people.
• 15:41
  But we had a great s-session at-- in the end of last year with Tristan Harris- Oh, yes...who's got the Center of Humane Technology.
• 15:48
  He's been talking about how so much of social media and a lot of our apps are essentially making us, uh, human downgrading. They're making us more frenetic and anxious and all kinds of things.
• 15:56
  And he's calling for kind of a, a human betterment at some level.
• 16:00
  Clearly, you, with your calm frame, you've-- you're des- he's, he's actually calling for a different design principles, a different way to kinda think about our products and how we interact with the person to kinda lower the anxiety [laughs] and, and do that.
• 16:13
  Do you-- any thoughts on how you guys have re-- thought about the design of your product and how to really kind of bring everybody's anxiety down, their kind of frenetic kinda side down? Yeah.
• 16:23
  It's a, it's a good question. So we spend a lot of time thinking carefully about the, the product itself at Calm. We use a lot of nature themes, which calms people down. Yeah.
• 16:31
  We try and reduce, uh, overload and, and clutter as much as possible and keep it simple. But, but I think this is a really good point.
• 16:38
  And we, we've had a lot of folks that have asked us and, and questioned the fact that, you know, phones and technology are making us more stressed. We're surrounded by these screens, and yet here we are saying, "No, no.
• 16:50
  It's okay. Use the phone. [laughs] Use our app to, to calm down." And I think the way we, we respond to that is that, you know, technology is not the problem.
• 16:58
  Uh, it-- there's a big tech lash going on, as, as you say, at the moment. But it's, it's a tool. These mobile phones are incredibly powerful. It's how we use them that matters.
• 17:08
  And we can use them in, in many, many positive ways to enrich our lives and connect us with other people.
• 17:14
  But when we do it in a mindless way, that is when it can lead to, to problems and stress and anxiety and, and information overload and interfering with our sleep and on and on.
• 17:23
  So it's about changing our relationship with our devices, so we use them for us, uh, instead of, uh, against us.
• 17:31
  And the user interface and the engineering and everything through it, is, is, is there a kinda redesigning for calm or something that you've kinda been trying to master? Yes.
• 17:40
  Just as I say, very thoughtful, um, approach to, to making sure it is as simple and enlightened experience as possible, so when you finish with Calm, you feel better and lighter and, uh, calmer and happier rather than many apps, you know, uh, a game or, or if you're on a social, uh, media app for a while that can often feel us leaving more frazzled and, and stressed when we put the phone down, if we ever manage to put the phone down.
• 18:04
  So I mentioned you're the first of the unicorns in this space. Um, hopefully many more. And again, a lot of folks here might wanna aspire to that. Um-Clearly you're looking to scale, and you are scaling.
• 18:17
  Can you talk about how many people use it now, and what kind of-- when you look ahead in the next five years, uh, what is the kinda reach that you're trying to do, and how globally are you thinking about your product?
• 18:26
  Yeah. So it's a subscription product. Um, and, uh, we have about two million, uh, well over two million people now that, that, that pay and subscribe and are members. Uh, about seventy million total downloads.
• 18:38
  Uh, we're just starting now to launch it around the world in different countries. And we would love this to be as widespread as a consumer subscription product like a Netflix or a Spotify.
• 18:49
  You know, could we see a world where people value, uh, looking after their mind and understanding their mind, um, uh, that greatly.
• 18:57
  So we still think we've got a, a long, long way to go, and, and one of the ways we're accelerating the growth is through, um, B2B, bringing calm into companies. Hmm.
• 19:06
  Helping workplaces become more emotionally intelligent, uh, helping employees cope with stress and resilience to reduce six day-- sick days, to increase collaboration, um, improve creativity, and, and on and on.
• 19:18
  And, and the inbound interest we've had from, from companies h-has been amazing.
• 19:23
  Again, just a few years ago, this would've been seen as a little bit weird, but now companies recognize the value of, of looking after the, the mental health of their employees. So that's a big area.
• 19:32
  And then connected to that is working with the big insurance companies- Hmm...um, to help them, uh, cover lives and, uh, stave off downstream problems where, you know, people need to see therapists and psychologists.
• 19:48
  But hopefully using a product like Calm is almost like the equivalent of using the gym to, to keep a body healthy, uh, before needing, um, sort of major health, uh, down the line.
• 19:58
  H-have you made inroads with, with the insurance, or that's a- Yes. Yeah. Okay. Good. We-- You know, we're learning that it, it takes a little bit of time.
• 20:04
  [laughs] There's a lot of, uh, boxes to tick and, uh, admin to wade through, as, as there should be because, uh, these are very, very important matters.
• 20:12
  But, um, yeah, we have, uh, some big announcements, uh, coming up very soon. And, uh, so this is definitely the fastest growing part of the business and, and a very important one.
• 20:20
  The global side, uh, do you deal with m-multiple languages yet, or are you, you in English and- So English is the dominant.
• 20:26
  Uh, the US is about fifty percent of our, our total downloads, but we're in Korean, French, German, uh, and Spanish, um, a-and, uh, I think Portuguese as well. Those are the, the current markets.
• 20:38
  So again, a lot of ent-entrepreneurs in the audience here.
• 20:41
  So, so when you think about your success, getting to where you are, and even in your ambition about where you wanna get to, are there any kind of-- when you start thinking of advice, if like, what would you...
• 20:51
  What, what were things that you kinda came across that you say, "Wow, if I were giving advice to someone, I'd say focus on this, focus on that"? Or any, any thoughts on that? Yeah.
• 20:59
  So again, as I mentioned, there are hundreds of apps for, um, uh, mindfulness and meditation and sleep in the App Store, and, and Calm has, has risen to the top, and we're often asked, you know, "What is it?
• 21:10
  What is the secret?" And I wish there was kind of one silver bullet. But to answer the question, I'd say maybe four, four broad areas we, we've thought carefully about, um, and we touched on them during the talk.
• 21:20
  One is content. It's easy to make content. It's very hard to make extraordinary content that really changes people's lives. Absolutely. Um, number two is user acquisition and growth.
• 21:30
  That's a science, really understanding that, and Calm has some extraordinary people that, that know that world and that space, uh, very, very well.
• 21:39
  Um, number three I'd say is the experience, making it wow when someone comes to the app, that they wanna share about it and talk a-about it with other people and, and they have a, a, an incredible, um, time there.
• 21:52
  And then the four-fourth one, as we talked on earlier, is brand. You know, making sure you wrap it in something that can scale and is defensible as the, the business grows.
• 22:01
  So those are probably the, the four most important things I think to, to get right for a company in this space. Four good ones. Um, the Nike of the mind. Mm.
• 22:11
  So looking ahead here for your own company, what does that mean to you, and what, what do you see, uh, on the horizon here potentially, without giving away any secrets here?
• 22:21
  But, uh, what, what, what does that mean to you? What, what, or what other things could you get into? What, what, what are you trying to aspire towards? Yeah. We, we mull on this a lot.
• 22:29
  So we have a very big, um, mission, which is to make the world, um, happier and, and healthier. So a lot of things can sit under that. We started, as I said, with meditation. We moved into sleep.
• 22:40
  But we'd love to create other audio content that changes people's lives.
• 22:44
  There are so many other occasions in someone's life where that could be valuable, from, um, coping with a fear of flying or giving up smoking- Hmm...or battling an addiction or becoming a parent for the first time, on and on and on.
• 22:57
  And we'd love to create this very deep library, potentially the world's largest audio library, that helps people better understand their own mind, 'cause it's pretty complex up there. There's a lot going on.
• 23:07
  And it doesn't come with an instruction manual. So, um, uh, we would love to kind of help, uh, go some way to, to, uh, to creating that.
• 23:16
  And then in terms of, um, you know, how we become Nike for the mind, we're-- we've grown to be a billion-dollar business, but we think, and it sounds a little crazy, but we think this-- we could 10X from here, maybe even 100X, and I would love for us to build one of the most not just valuable, but meaningful companies in the world.
• 23:32
  You know, some of the biggest companies now are tech companies, but why not over the next few years, uh, given health and wellness is a $4 trillion global industry, why won't some of the biggest new companies be folks sitting in this room, companies focused on wellness, people taking a proactive approach to their health?
• 23:48
  I, I think we're gonna see some enormous businesses built, and we'd love Calm to be one of them. Well, actually even tw- four trillion just in the United States, actually.
• 23:56
  I mean, the, the, the, the market is insanely big. And as we're kinda coming to the end here, I mean, one of the things that we're, we're, uh, we're at the beginning of a decade, right? Mm.
• 24:04
  And we kinda watched the last decade. There's been a kind of a-struggle in this industry to kinda digitize and get to where we are at here.
• 24:11
  But looking ahead, um, you sound like you're certainly excited about the future of Calm, but how, how excited are you for this whole industry, and do you see really that we're entering a much more rapid period of change?
• 24:23
  Are you seeing some really transformative potential changes over the decade? What, what, what, any final thoughts here? We just have a few seconds. Definitely. So, so many positive things going on.
• 24:31
  I mentioned psychedelics earlier. Yeah. I think that's fascinating.
• 24:34
  These, these compounds that have been vilified for, for decades could be the solution to some of the most d- debilitating diseases in the world, such as, you know, depression. I think that's incredibly exciting.
• 24:47
  And mental health just generally, I think as the stigma fades away, as it steps out of the shadows, I, I think it's just an extraordinarily exciting time.
• 24:56
  And healthcare in the US, you know, health and wellness is 4 trillion. Healthcare, I think about 3 trillion is, is spent a year, most of it on physical health.
• 25:02
  So as we start, why do we not treat our minds with the same respect and care we do our bodies? And I think we will.
• 25:08
  So many, many opportunities there over the next few years for people to build great new businesses that improve the, the quality of, of people's lives.
• 25:16
  Unfortunately, we're out of time, but it's been a fantastic conversation.
• 25:20
  Everyone seems to be, uh, listening closely here, and, uh, let's hope that you are the first of many that's gonna come down that path, and, uh, great conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
• 25:29
  [upbeat music] At StartUp Health, our motto has been together we can. By uniting a global army of the world's top health innovators, we believe we can solve the world's biggest health challenges,
• 25:41
  including challenges like the one we currently face with the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this month, we launched a pandemic response moonshot that makes it our 12th health moonshot.
• 25:54
  To learn more about our commitment to invest in startups working on COVID-19 solutions, visit startuphealth.com. I appreciate you joining me today. Tune in later this week when I talk with Kevin Deadner.
• 26:06
  Kevin's the CEO and founder of Henry Health, where he's on a mission to increase the life expectancy of Black men by 10 years. We'll get into his company's culturally relevant behavioral and mental health services,
• 26:19
  and then I've asked Kevin to share his insights on how to address racial disparities in the pandemic response. Meanwhile, stay safe, stay healthy, and if you can, stay home. We're all in this together.
• 26:33
  [upbeat music] Three, two, one, go! [upbeat music]