What You Should Know:
– TRIPP, a Los Angeles-based digital psychedelic platform, announced it has raised $11M in funding led by Vine Ventures, and Mayfield with equal participation from Integrated. TRIPP’s Series A also includes particpation from AlphaBridge Ventures, Beni VC, Berkeley Club, CJ Group, CTR Capital, Evolution, Robert Goldberg, Tony Greenberg, Grit VC, Incisive Ventures, Inflect Health, Iter Investments, Joanna Popper, Jim Dew, Joe Polish, JLS Fund, Lionheart Ventures, Matt Mullenweg, Mike DeLuise, Murtaza Hussain, NeoKuma, Presence Capital, PsyMed Ventures, Redbeard Ventures, Re.Mind Capital, Social Leverage, WhatIf Ventures, Mike Wilson, Mark Zittman and other individual investors who actively support mental health, psychedelic and consciousness research.
– The funds will be used to meet growing demand, create customized VR, AR, and mobile experiences at scale with content from Grammy Award-winning artists and talent from Disney, and help even more users manage their stress from the comfort of their homes using TRIPP’s clinically-tested platform.
Psychedelic VR Meditation App
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 1 in 5 American adults experienced mental illness, and fewer than half of those received treatment. That number has since soared, with 41.5 percent of adults flagging symptoms of anxiety and depression between August of 2020 and February 2021. For some, the costs and accessibility of treatment prevent them from seeking help — for others, it’s the stigma surrounding mental illness in general, particularly for men.
The platform, which immerses users into alternate realities that promote emotional wellbeing and transformative states through the use of psychedelic visuals and targeted sounds/interactions, has already delivered more than two million TRIPP sessions on the Oculus and PlaystationVR platforms.
Each TRIPP experience is procedurally generated with research-based designs to create unique, 2D, and 3D worlds. TRIPP’s platform collects data with every session and the next phase of TRIPP’s technology evolution is to train the TRIPP platform to learn over time how to tailor experiences to the individual. TRIPP plans to expand its offering across both mobile and mixed reality smart glasses to allow for more personalization, accessibility, and integration of different alternate reality experiences throughout one’s day.
With award-winning content generated by creative talent from Disney, Qualcomm, EA, Nerd Ninjas, and grammy-nominated music artists, users can select from a variety of different teachings and pair it with a beautiful computer-generated imagery (CGI) world-scape and binaural music selection. The combination of mindfulness structures, targeted sound frequencies, visuals, and interactivity have been clinically tested to improve users’ mental and emotional states. In a testament to the product’s effectiveness, 54 percent of TRIPP’s returning monthly active users (MAUs) in April 2021 have been using the product for over four months — unlike most other VR products that are used once, and once only.
Pricing
Subscription plans are $14.99USD per year or $4.99USD per month.
“The pandemic accelerated at-home therapy, a trend that we were already seeing grow since we launched TRIPP in 2018,” remarks Nanea Reeves, CEO and Co-Founder of TRIPP. “As an accessible, non-invasive interactive solution to promote wellbeing, TRIPP allows users to manage their stress and mental fitness in the comfort of their own home. Last year, 67 percent of our user base on Oculus and Playstation platforms were men, showing that TRIPP’s innovative meditative experiences in virtual and augmented reality provided support for this demographic of gamers during a challenging year. With this funding, we’ll be able to expand our reach to more platforms and ultimately to help more people.”
