How a monk built a $150M app using one simple tactic most businesses miss
Quote I like: “To know yourself is to be confident. To be confident is to fearlessly express your potential.”
Solve the Time Problem
People hate spending time to get what they want. Nobody likes to wait.
For a business, the longer you make the customer wait for the desired outcome, the harder it is to sell.
That's why businesses that deliver outcome in quick time thrive:
Uber: Get a ride in minutes
Netflix: Watch movies with a click of a remote
Doordash: Fast grocery delivery to your home
ChatGPT: Get instant answers to any question
But businesses where the outcome takes longer struggle to gain traction:
Fitness, education, personal finance.
There are no quick fixes in these industries.
In health and wellness, meditation is considered as hard and the perception is that it takes the longest time to master. Everybody wants to be stress-free, but when they see a monk, they run away.
Enter Headspace, the meditation app founded by Andy Puddicombe, a former Buddhist monk.
Andy spent 10 years training in monasteries across India, Nepal, Thailand, and Russia. After years of deep practice, he returned home with a mission:
To make meditation accessible to everyday people struggling with stress and overwhelm.
He began teaching through small workshops, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. That’s when he and co-founder Richard Pierson teamed up to build a meditation app called Headspace.
If you have time, download the app. It’s a masterclass in how to make a product that is easy to consume.
So how did they tackle the "time problem" that every business in the health and wellness industry struggles with?
They condensed the practice to just 10 minutes a day.
“Do meditation for just 10 minutes a day and you’ll get mental peace.”
That’s Headspace’s motto.
“All you need to do is to take 10 minutes out a day to step back, to familiarize yourself with the present moment so that you get to experience a greater sense of focus, calm and clarity in your life.” – Andy Puddicombe, Founder, Headspace
When people heard this, they lapped it up and downloads soared.
Headspace became the biggest meditation and wellness app in the world, with 3 million paying subscribers and $150M+ in annual revenue.
Andy Puddicombe’s friendly guidance, fun-filled animations, and variety of meditation practices were all part of the company’s success, but it was the 10-minute hook that pulled people in.
Their paperback book is the most powerful lead magnet I’ve ever seen. But that’s a topic for another day.
Apply it: Whatever business you're running, think about how your customer can get from point A to point B faster.
For example:
Master coding in 3 days
Lose your belly fat in 2 weeks
2x your investment immediately
At the end of this video, you'll have 3 strong startup ideas
When time becomes part of the promise, there's a finish line in sight and people are more motivated to work toward it.
“Ok, I have to teach coding” suddenly becomes “I have to teach coding so that students master it in 3 days.”
The curriculum, the teaching method, the quizzes you include, the pricing, the promotion...everything is viewed from the point of view of time.
Remember: It's important to walk the talk.
Andy Puddicombe is not a businessman. He didn’t care about clever marketing tactics to get downloads. He genuinely believed he could help people. In business language: deliver value within those 10 minutes.
And he did.
You have to provide genuine value in a short time, not just a quick hack.
Hope you enjoyed that.
Talk soon,
Raghavendran
PS - When facing a problem always remember to: https://tenor.com/view/22012953