Announcing Zen’s $3.5 million Pre-Seed Raise

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” — Seneca

Alex and I came to San Francisco prepared to turn our professional dreams into realities. However, the degree of luck and opportunity that we experienced when we met each other far outweighed how prepared we were to get to this point today where we are announcing Zen’s $3.5M pre-seed raise to empower billions of people across the world to work and live with peak health and productivity.

Luck + Opportunity

Let’s start with the slim to none odds of us traveling from opposite sides of the world and meeting each other in a 10-bedroom hacker house with over 30 people living in it. We both recently graduated from college, where we both played varsity sports. Furthermore, we were both outwardly passionate about staying in peak physical shape as we immersed ourselves in the corporate world. However, we quickly realized that the corporate world had other plans for us.

I went from being a very active NCAA Division-One college football player at Yale University, that could do a gymnastic-style split, to working at Adobe in San Francisco and living the typical sedentary corporate lifestyle of sitting in front of a computer for over eight hours a day, which eventually led to me developing severe low back pain and carpal tunnel.

Adobe offered great ergonomic resources, like a free ergonomic consultation, a stand-up desk, and I used my wellness stipend to purchase different devices that claimed to improve posture. Despite these efforts, my pain levels continued to rise. I eventually reached out to Mary Kay Gilhooly, Director of Global Wellbeing at Adobe, hoping to learn more about the issues I was facing. She shared some surprising insights during our sync that inspired me to conduct independent research. I interviewed ergonomists at other leading tech companies, like Apple and Microsoft, and leading physical therapists in the San Francisco Bay Area.

My investigation ultimately made me realize that billions of people are suffering daily from back and joint pain and a plethora of other problems due to unhealthy workday habits, specifically hours upon hours of sitting and standing in front of screens with detrimental posture.

Here are a few insights that stood out to me, starting with the impact of back and joint pain from an individual point of view.

• Low back pain is the leading cause of global disability.
• Back and joint pain leads to health costs of $600BN in America, that’s more than heart disease ($309BN) and cancer ($243BN) combined.

I was even more shocked by how back and joint pain impacts businesses.

• U.S. employers spend over $300BN a year on employees’ back and joint medical treatments, which leads to 150M lost workdays.
• $1 out of every $3 in workers’ compensation costs is attributed to back and joint pain.
• The average short-term disability claim for chronic back and joint pain costs employers about $10,000 in benefits and wage replacement and 50 lost workdays.
• Long-term disability increases to about $35,000 in benefits and wage replacement and 169 workdays.

Diving deeper, the insights that I found on how back and joint pain impacts mental health literally brought tears to my eyes. Furthermore, chronic back and joint pain increases the risk of developing depression and vice versa. This feedback loop is known as the depression-pain dyad.

Here are some of the insights from an individual perspective:

• 95% of people who have refractory depression (depression that does not improve after 12 months of treatment) have an underlying chronic back and joint pain condition.
• Of people who have chronic back or joint pain, 27% will experience depression compared to 5–10% of people who don’t have chronic back or joint pain.
• Of people who live with depression, 65% also have chronic back or joint pain, compared to only 25–30% in the non-depressed population.

Continuing my research, I found that extended periods of sitting and standing also increase the risk of obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, stroke, memory loss, heart disease, and the list goes on. And while heart disease, memory loss, and even back and joint might not be immediate concerns for some, I believe that most people would be shocked by how their daily posture and movement behavior impacts their productivity.

For example, a study conducted by Microsoft’s Human Factors Lab found that back-to-back meetings without short breaks leads to increased activity of stress brain waves (beta waves). Studies like this made me realize how workday behaviors that we often overlook, like taking short breaks between meetings, can ultimately lead to significant changes in daily performance.

As I concluded my research, I began to think about new approaches to improve workday health and productivity, starting with posture. Luckily for me, one day after work, Alex told me that he developed a posture correction software for himself in college to help with his kyphosis (excessive outward curvature of the spine, causing hunching of the back) after long hours of coding during his summer internships at Adobe and Intuit. We ultimately decided to join forces and build Zen alongside top ergonomists and physical therapists in the San Francisco Bay Area for the next few months.

The Preparation

We ran into some pretty serious speedbumps on the road to launching Zen, which I detail in privacy>traction. Most importantly, we realized that we have to be the most privacy-centric company ever so that people trust that we would never “spy” on them in any way. This realization ultimately led us to build Zen as a desktop app, enabling our posture correction software to run locally on user devices, completely off the cloud, meaning that no visuals are ever recorded or stored.

Furthering research and development, we worked with top ergonomists and physical therapists in the San Francisco Bay Area to develop a solution that would systematically empower people to sit better, stand better, and move more throughout the workday. We realized that our solution would need to incorporate education, real-time feedback, and positive reinforcement, in order to systematically change a person’s workday behavior and lifestyle.

With this in mind, we locked in on these core features for our solution:

Posture & Workstation Tips — Learn how to sit/stand comfortably and how to set up a healthy, productive workstation.

Real-time Slouch Alerts — Zen mirrors your posture and gently alerts you when you slouch.

Movement Nudges — Zen reminds you to stand up, take walk breaks, and stretch so that you reduce screen fatigue and increase blood flow.

Motivational Dashboard — Set goals and keep track of your posture improvements on your personalized dashboard.

The Unexpected

Shortly after we locked in on our core feature set, COVID-19 spread across the world. Worldwide, companies began to implement remote work policies, ultimately leading to more detrimental workday habits, as people struggled to work comfortably from their home couch, kitchen table, and beds (yes, we all do it).

People and companies across the nation started to reach out to us for our solution. Unlike ever before, we had the opportunity to empower people with our solution, and we were prepared.

Within weeks we delivered Zen to thousands of people working at some of the most innovative companies in the world.

This momentum propelled us to partner with Y Combinator. We were surrounded by amazing founders and world-class mentors that religiously voiced the motto of Y Combinator, “Make Something People Want,” by talking to users, aggressively iterating, and launching more products. We followed the Y Combinator playbook which ultimately led us to launch Zen on Product Hunt, and we won #1 Product of the Week!

Pulling from dozens of user interviews from our Product Hunt launch, we realized even more that in addition to staying privacy-centric, we have to seamlessly integrate Zen into people’s workday. This led to us expanding our feature set to include:

Zoom and Google Meet integrations — Zen will automatically start up in the background and mirror your posture from your menu bar. Don’t worry, Zen will never interrupt your call. No messages will be sent.

Mac and Windows Native UI — Completely revamped user interface that seamlessly integrates with your native operating system (Mac, Windows, and a brand new Dark Mode!).

ZenInsights — You now have a better understanding of your posture improvements with ZenInsights which includes an all-new Posture Score.

Zen Menu Bar Widget — You can now access Zen within one click from your menu bar with the new Zen Menu Bar Widget to quickly check posture stats, change your camera settings, and more.

Significant Resource Improvements — We optimized Zen to take less CPU, GPU, and battery, so that you can use Zen while using Figma, Zoom, and other resource-intensive applications.

Automatic Calibration — Zen can now startup and stop at any time(s) you set without pressing a button. Or you can leave Zen on at all times if you choose.

After months of preparation, opportunity, and luck, we decided to put Zen to the test and conduct our most extensive study to date.

Our early outcomes showed that when using Zen:

• +90% of users saw improvements in back and joint health
• +80% of users reported boosted productivity and alertness
• +86% of users learned how to sit and work in comfort
• +98% of users take more stretch and walk breaks
• +95% of users feel more confident about their posture during video calls while using Zen

While our early outcomes are promising, we are just at the tip of the iceberg regarding the opportunities ahead of us. That said:

We are excited to formally announce our $3.5M pre-seed raise.

We are grateful and excited for the support and partnership from great firms like Y Combinator, Valor Equity Partners, Goodwater Capital, Samsung Next, SoftBank Opportunity Fund, Socii Capital, Dragon Capital, and TRUE Culture Fund. We also want to shout out a few funds that bet on us very early, such as Toy Ventures, VentureSouq, Halo Labs, Blue Trail Partners, Asymmetry Ventures, Warbler Ventures, Diverse Angels, Thredbo Ventures, and Alchemist. We are also thrilled to have the support of a diverse group of angels such as Collin Wallace, Dan Hill, Yuan Chen, Peter Hazlehurst, Ralph Gootee, Ciara Peter, Marlon Castillo, Ishan Chhabra, Roman Rosario, Daniel Shi, and Toshi Masubuchi.

We also want to shout out a couple of people who believed in us very early, as their capital and expertise empowered us to push forward to this point. Mitchell Jones, whenever we come to you with what seems to be such a difficult, complex problem, you brilliantly disengage from the situation, look at the core of the issue, and eloquently offer straightforward strategies and tactics that we can immediately action and they literally ALWAYS work. You’ve believed in us from Day Zero and have formed valuable connections for us in so many ways in the midst of scaling your own company. We can’t say thank you enough! Ian Bateman, similarly, we are forever grateful for your unconditional support and guidance. You’ve stuck with us through the darkest and brightest times, always believing that we will get to the next level!

To every single one of our investors who bet on us, we are incredibly grateful to have each and every one of you on the team.

Our fundraise would not have been possible without the hard work of the Zen team and our partners. To Alex — while I don’t miss those days in that crammed hacker house, I am forever grateful that we met each other there. We’ve formed a lifelong relationship that goes beyond what we do at Zen, and I am truly lucky to know you. To all present and past members of the Zen team — thank you from the bottom of my heart. You’ve built the foundation to get us to this milestone, and I’m excited to continue on this mission with you.

Preparing for the Future

It’s time for us to take Zen to the next level. We must continue to “Make Something People Want” by talking to users, aggressively iterating, and launching more products. We must innovate to seamlessly integrate our technology into people’s workdays by meeting them where they are through key workday integrations with Slack, Google Calendar, Microsoft Teams, and more. We must relentlessly expand our product offerings to more devices, including mobile and tablets. We must expand to larger enterprises, platforms, and ultimately more people.

Imagine a world where people can work and live with peak health and productivity, fully thriving in flow, free of back and joint pain, free of mental illnesses, free of the diseases that plague our society… free.

We are truly lucky for the opportunity to make this happen.

Daniel James, CEO, Zen