MUSIC AND SOUND - THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE?

This year’s 50 Smartest Companies Of The Year winner is a Silicon Valley darling. Well, kind of. Synctuition Mindspa is based in Tallinn, Estonia - a little country in northern Europe with the highest number of Unicorns per capita in the world. For a while, insiders and investors have called it the new Silicon Valley.

In short, Synctuition Mindspa’s business is all about sound and mindfulness. But like their sound, you cannot compress the importance of mental health these days. In a world where happiness, not wealth, has become the holy grail, Synctuition Mindspa’s app is running well ahead of the pack.

To just say they are in the business of sound may not paint an entirely accurate picture. Like any good cocktail, the secret is in the ingredients. And when you own the ingredients, the recipe, and the final product, the competition may have to go thirsty. So about those ingredients - Ironically, the base of any cocktail is the spirit - and the spirit here definitely comes from the founders. Having started their journey over 13 years ago, the founders were adamant about building the world’s most sophisticated and scientifically sound mindfulness and relaxation product. It just took them a little longer than they expected. However, in the process, they built the world’s largest natural 3D soundbank, making every one of their sound journeys come to life in epic 3D sound or what they call “mind movies.” You own the ingredients; you get to name the drink.

These 3D sounds, which were recorded in over 3000 locations worldwide, are the modifiers that make this cocktail so tasty and, in the case of Synctuition Mindspa, an instantly recognizable and unforgettable sound. But as with any cocktail, you need a balancing agent, and this most definitely has to be the science.

The Synctuition Mindspa sound is a proprietary blend of technologies, sounds, and frequencies based on over 106 scientific studies. A dash of binaural beats, a sprinkle of gamma waves, a drop of rhythmic entrainments, and specific sounds and frequencies that have been proven to reduce stress, improve sleep and invigorate the imagination in just 25 minutes. Blended all together, shaken, not stirred. And that is the secret recipe behind the incredible buzz and craze that the Synctuition Mindspa app has created lately.

And science has recently become one of the key drivers for the app. As Co-Founder Allan Eesmaa says, “we started with a consumer app, but once we found out the true capability of the app, our attention has shifted to a much larger industry - healthcare.” Allan refers to a recent study done by Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, which conducted a study on stress for healthcare professionals using the Synctuition Mindspa app. “We were gobsmacked with the results,” says Allan. The study measured participants’ stress levels before the study using Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale, which goes from 0-40, with the latter being a state of extreme stress. The participants started the study with a high average stress score of 20. “A good result would be reducing the stress level by a couple of points,” says Allan, “but we saw the average stress score post-study drop massively to just 5 - this is not reducing; this is eliminating stress. These studies put us on an entirely new journey. We achieved results outpacing even what modern pharmaceuticals have achieved regarding stress, and we now look at ourselves as a digital sound medicine.”

It’s not too far-fetched to believe that Synctuition Mindspa is right on the money and that sound may very well be the future of medicine. Countless studies into neuroscience, Alzheimer’s, dementia, chronic depression, sleeping disorders, and other diseases have found the sound to be one of the most effective and promising treatments. If early studies using Synctuition Mindspa are a good indication, it just may be that the team has found a rare formula that can be used in the treatment of the conditions mentioned above. In fact, the app is currently in the middle of clinical trials with the NHS in the UK, which will only solidify its claim to becoming a digital drug. When we asked the team if they were not afraid of going after big pharma’s business, the founders disclosed that a representative of one of the big pharma companies had already flown to meet with them in Tallinn, but the conversation was far from confrontational. “They wanted to buy us,” says Allan, “but we wanted to have even more studies out there first. It will put us in an entirely different weight category.” Allan is right; once more studies are published and the NHS approval is received, Synctuition Mindspa may be on a fast track to a multi-billion dollar valuation within just a couple of years. Truly remarkable given that, to date, the company is self-funded.

Synctuition Mindspa has been downloaded over 8 million times, and in the short three years that the app has been live in the app store, it generated over $20 million in revenue. In 2020, it was the third highest-grossing meditation app in the United States and the most prominent mental health company in Europe. This year, the company projects to do $15 million in revenue. But what’s next?

Synctuition’s core business is ironclad, but as any responsible founders, the team decided to build a strong foundation by creating a few additional revenue streams. At the end of 2021, they launched the world’s first business-tailored Mindspa Booth (https://www.mindspa.com/). The booth has already found a home in countless of the world’s most innovative companies and is currently being delivered to hospitals and educational facilities. It has already won the incredibly prestigious innovation award from NeoCon.

But even that’s not enough to keep the team at bay. In Q4 of 2022, the team behind Synctuition Mindspa will release a full feature-length Hollywood movie about mental health (https://www.mygiftmovie.com/). The film is every bit as epic as the sounds in the app because it is the first film of its kind to be filmed in binaural 3D sound. “It’s a feel-good movie that inspires, instills hope and at the same time is extremely educational on mental health,” says Allan. From what we hear, the viewing experience of the movie in 3D sound is already a meditation in itself, which is radically different from anything done in the movie industry. While not revealing more, the founders said that the way the movie will be released is also anything but typical. But then again, that seems to be the underlying thread with everything this team does.

Some years are more challenging than others in picking the winner of the 50 smartest companies of the year. However, this year, Synctuition Mindspa has been a true beacon of light which is running a different race to most of the companies we’ve recently seen and not only in their industry. We will be keeping a very close eye on what they do in the future, and we suggest you do too.

“We started with a consumer app, but once we found out the true capability of the app, our attention has shifted to a much larger industry - healthcare.”