Our Next Chapter - Shifting Paradigms
Being called to go deeper, Bridge Builders Collaborative (BBC) has a new mission for a new decade. After successfully investing in the “mind-training” field for the last eight years, BBC, as investors, explored where we wanted to focus our energy now that many of our companies have begun to scale. The answer is — we want to refocus our efforts to support deeper exploration of mental, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being through innovative applications.
For some context…In 2011, as the scientific validation of meditation was just reaching a pivotal point of proving the benefits, our founding partners Scott Kriens, Jeffrey Walker, and Austin Hearst wondered if they could support the applications of mindfulness through early stage investments. They formed a vision and mission for BBC, found me, and asked me to search the landscape for investible companies that could help scale applications for mind-training. When few people had heard of digital therapeutics, we found a company, Pear Therapeutics, and became pioneering investors. Pear is leading a global digital therapeutics movement. When mental and behavioral health platforms were just beginning to take shape, we invested in Happify. When people were just beginning to consider meditation, we led an early round of financing of Headspace. We led a bridge financing into the A round of “The Muse” by Interaxon, the first consumer grade EEG company that helped people learn to meditate through providing real time feedback of the brain.
As my wife, Maureen Pelton, had advised during those years, we were investing in “the gateway drugs” to higher levels of consciousness. Now, several of those companies are going to scale, globally. Hundreds of millions of people are meditating. Mental and behavioral health platforms are becoming important parts of company wellness programs. Insurance companies are bringing these applications to their insured populations. The FDA is approving software as drugs. Headspace has tens of millions of downloads. Pear’s reSET and reSET-O (software focused around treatment of addiction) have been approved by the FDA and are now being prescribed by practitioners. Happify Health has been brought into some of the largest and most innovative companies, and has begun partnering with pharmaceutical companies to supplement treatment of major health conditions. And Interaxon has developed the largest EEG brain database on the planet, helping tens of thousands to learn to meditate and calm their minds.
BBC has been a leader in creating this global movement and industry. Now, we are regrounding ourselves as bridge builders to a deeper human experience. We strive to be a collaboration for fueling paradigm shifts in humanity. Using wisdom practices and being grounded in science, we are looking for skilled entrepreneurs to inspire humanity to integrate deeper levels of consciousness, greater emotional intelligence, sustainable behavior change, and social wellness. We are expanding deeper into the trauma — so those willing can find support to transform their trauma and move past it. We are expanding deeper into integration — we want to find companies that invite people into awakening their true selves, and moving beyond their conditioned selves. We are looking for innovations that invite connection to higher selves, energy bodies, purpose, and conscious communities.
Here’s a few examples of the shifts we envision as we support going deeper.
As we evolve to our next chapter, we have a new mission: “To inspire and invest in tools for inner wellbeing, bridging the human energies that make social change possible.” With this new mission, our transformative investing, our powerful network of partners, and our commitment to add value to not only our investments, but also the whole field, we are excited and energized to see what unfolds. We invite those who share our mission to partner with us and with our companies to co-create a more sustainable society of well-being and evolved consciousness.