Based in Shrivenham, Oxfordshire, MyMynd is a proprietary digital health workplace mental health and wellbeing platform. They proactively identify issues for early intervention and direct personalised support precisely where it’s needed to strengthen resilience and wellbeing.
MyMynd’s co-founder, Leon Rodin, speaks to us about the inception of the business. “During my MBA, one of my classmates – who was a clinical phycologist in the US – and I were having a conversation about a tool he’d been working on to be more proactive around mental health. We worked together for about nine months and then teamed up with another friend, Henry Majed, to explore using the tool further. We did a small successful pilot in an NHS Trust that was really successful then applied for an Innovate UK grant to repurpose the product into a full platform for employees in the workplace. That was the start of what is now MyMynd.”
Leon shares more information on how MyMynd works and who it helps. “The MyMynd platform is designed for both employers and their employees. Our technology uniquely starts with a combined assessment of both risk and resilience, to provide a holistic measure of current mental health and wellbeing, kind of like an ‘MOT for the mind’. Individual employees then receive support, guidance and activities, based on their results, to help them improve or maintain optimal mental health and wellbeing. Employers get detailed aggregate insights into their workforce and support from MyMynd to inform and drive their wellbeing strategy or activities. We never share individual or identifiable data with employers and where we spot signs of distress or concern we have a team of clinically trained staff who will reach out to individuals to help them navigate their next steps directly.”
MyMynd were seeking local support opportunities to help with business decisions and scaling the business to new clients. Leon shares his experience working with OxLEP Business on both the eScalate and Innovation Support for Business Programme (ISfB).
Leon continues, “Towards the end of last year to further grow our business we set about building on our revenue generation by targeting new enterprise clients and new sectors. We were seeking funding opportunities to employ a team of consultants who could build and develop our sales function and grow our client base. OxLEP Business had contacted us about the Go-Create innovation grants which were part of a different programme, ISfB.
“In the early stages we connected with OxLEP Business as part of eScalate. We had some initial one- to-one support sessions which really helped us shape our thinking. We would talk through business ideas and plans as well as the different networks in Oxfordshire, and received guidance on connecting with the community.”
“We were successful in our application for grant funding and used our Go-Create grant to hire professional consultants to develop our systems and processes and help us create new business opportunities. Some of the funding was also used to create client testimonial and onboarding videos that will be used within MyMynd over the coming months.
The OxLEP team were really helpful both pre and post grant award. They provided constructive feedback on our ideas which helped us refocus our application prior to submission. I’ve dealt with European projects in the past and they can be challenging, but OxLEP took much of the pain out of the process. They were always responsive whenever we had questions and guided and advised along the way, keeping us in the loop on other support available to us as well.”
“It was while working with our consultants that we pivoted our strategy slightly to focus more on expanding the clients we already had, rather than throwing limited resources on reaching out to new organisations. The funding from OxLEP provided us with the external insight from the consultants to help us better understand our business needs more quickly and therefore drive our focus to expanding with existing clients. Our platform is constantly evolving and we are investing more heavily in improving our technology, working with existing clients including several universities (Oxford, Portsmouth and Nottingham), parts of the NHS (NHS England, Oxford University Hospitals) as well as commercial clients. All of these are looking to expand the usage of MyMynd to many more staff over the coming months.
Our biggest challenge is revenue growth, but with our amazing new team we aim to reach break-even within the next 12 months. Things are looking good for our future and knowing that we’re making a real difference to people’s lives makes all the hard work worth it.”
