Headspace: Andy Puddicombe and Rich Pierson

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2019

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Andy Puddicombe is not your typical entrepreneur – in his early twenties, he gave away everything he owned to train as a Buddhist monk. But after ten years, he decided he wanted to bring the benefits of his meditation techniques to more people. While running a meditation clinic in London, Andy met Rich Pierson, who had burned out on his job at a high-powered London ad agency. Together, they founded Headspace in 2010. Nine years later, Headspace's guided meditation app has users in 190 countries and an annual revenue of over $100 million. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," how a quick fix to a broken pair of sunglasses inspired Jensen Brehm and Nikolai Paloni to create an armless set of shades: Ombraz Sunglasses. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:30.0	We knew the business that we had wasn't working, and so with the last bit of cash that we had,
0:37.0	we managed to pull in every single favor that we had left.
0:42.0	Our friends and family had said, we really love you guys, but we're not giving you any more money.
0:47.0	This is a terrible business like well done, but enough's enough.
0:56.0	From NPR, it's how I built this.
0:58.0	A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:09.0	I'm Guy Ross, and on today's show, I will Buddhist monk and a stressed out marketing consultant sat down in a Starbucks and wound up launching Headspace,
1:19.0	a meditation app that has millions of users around the world.
1:28.0	So we had several episodes that feature co-founders, and if there's one thing that's clear, it's that all of them brought different skills to the table.
1:38.0	And method Adam Lowry mixed the ingredients to make the soap, Eric Ryan designed the now iconic bottles.
1:45.0	And Reddit, Steve Huffman did the coding, Alexis O'Hanian did the content, and at a way, Jen Rubio focused on building buzz for the suitcases.
1:55.0	Steph Corey figured out how to get them made.
1:58.0	So you get the point, right?
1:59.0	And it's almost hard to imagine any of these companies making it without both co-founders, and that is also probably the case with today's story,
2:09.0	because it's a story of two totally different people with totally different strengths.
2:15.0	One of them, Andy Puddycomb, trained as a Buddhist monk for more than a decade.
	...

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