Mental health app encourages mindfulness

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have a reputation of reinventing the tried and true, from how we communicate and socialize, to how we consume entertainment. And now founder and CEO Nima Yazdani wants to reintroduce meditation to a new generation with his meditation app called myMentalPal, which he’s been working on for two years.

Yazdani, now 28, moved to Los Gatos from Iran 12 years ago. He’s built a global team with help of Harvard-backed professors. “Growing up in Iran, the opportunity to build something that would help people was not there,” he recalled. “It was always my dream to be an athlete to inspire people. When that wasn’t reached, my second way was to help people through a product, in a shape or way that would make them a better person.”

The American Dream

Yazdani migrated here with the dream of becoming a professional athlete. Mental health struggles started when he began athletic training multiple times daily in high school. “I grew up playing basketball, (looking up to) Kobe, Lebron (and) Michael Jordan. As you’re training, your mental health kind of also declines, because you have to push yourself in situations you don’t want to be (in) often.”

This setback inspired the concept behind his startup. He describes myMentalPal as a “mental training and mental fitness platform that uses technology to help people meditate on big ideas.”

During Covid-19, with yoga studios closed, Yazdani came up with the idea of creating a website that fuses meditation and yoga as one. This grew into myMentalPal. “Training the mind through meditation (and) mental fitness challenges on a daily basis and building routine out of it” is Yazdani’s vision. He notes that everyone faces mental challenges: from sports, to sleep problems, to lack of productivity and ADHD.

Meditation, according to Yazdani, is the best way to train your mind to bypass those barriers. Competitors like Calm and Headspace offer meditation guidance, but Yazdani says his competitors don’t provide the same level of foundation, despite being ahead of him to the market. Yazdani highlights that a competitive advantage of his company is that they don’t use actors promoting personal brands, but rather, they rely on teachers known for high-level meditation in the platform.

According to Yazdani, thousands of candidates were screened for their team of 15. Motion illustrators, mental health experts and developers—based in the U.S and India—help bring myMentalPal to life. In 2022, Yazdani also began a video production company named Studio Siddha, to help fund the development of myMentalPal. “I really love story telling; that’s part of my passion,” he said, adding he’s also enjoyed production, creating cinematic videos and working with CEOs from around the Bay Area.

Challenge-based learning

The first thing a newcomer encounters after downloading myMentalPal is a series of lengthy questions, which builds a 28-day plan. This is designed to establish a habit. “You come to the app 15 minutes a day to take a book-based meditation class,” he said. “The teachers and instructors are highly credentialled, working at Harvard University, Stanford University and Google.” Classes were created to train the mind in a specialized area, including one by a Harvard Professor he met on LinkedIn.

Though myMentalPal is introducing itself with a mental fitness approach, Yazdani has a vision of building an ecosystem, consisting of physical fitness and eventually nutritional fitness. Over 5,000 people downloaded myMentalPal between a soft-launch in May and a hard launch in the first week of September. His goal is to achieve 100,000 downloads (by scaling through social media ads, gorilla marketing and working with influencers) by year’s end. myMentalPal wants new users to experience the type of meditation you might learn about reading bestselling books, but via the app.

Once a user creates an account, a specific time is set for practice. Meanwhile, the app blocks their calendar from sending interruptions. This encourages the member to train daily and build a consistent practice. There is a reward system built into the app, where the consumer is granted a gold medal when completing the 28-day challenge. If days are missed, consequently a silver or bronze medal may be given instead.

The option “accountability friend” can be added to help keep members on track. Though it’s free to use the app, there is an option to pay to get more help. “What we do charge for is a unique feature that was released on the 29th called micro-learning meditation, which is taking great books and turning them into meditation with instructors.”

myMentalPal is available to download on the Apple app store or at mymentalpal.com. It will be available for Android users shortly.