What You Should Know:
– Stellar Sleep, a San Francisco, CA-based company offering the first digital solution specifically designed for chronic insomnia management raises $6M in seed funding to expand its reach and make effective treatment more accessible. The seed funding was led by Initialized Capital with participation from Y Combinator, Lombardstreet Ventures, Switch Ventures, Moonfire Ventures, Scrum Ventures, 8vdx and Goodwater.
– Stellar Sleep’s innovative approach offers a beacon of hope for millions struggling with chronic insomnia. By providing personalized, effective, and accessible therapy through their app, they aim to transform the landscape of sleep healthcare and empower individuals to reclaim their health and well-being.
Beyond Sleepless Nights: The Rise of Chronic Insomnia
Over 25 million Americans suffer from chronic insomnia, experiencing sleep problems at least three nights per week for three months or more. This condition can lead to a cascade of issues, including trouble concentrating, memory problems, and even an increased risk of heart disease and stroke. Unfortunately, for those seeking help, traditional options often fall short.
Superficial Solutions and the Need for a New Approach
Current advice often focuses on surface-level changes like reducing caffeine or screen time, which offer little relief for those with deeper-rooted problems like anxiety, burnout, or depression. Sleep medications, while offering temporary relief, can come with dependency risks and are not meant for long-term use.
The Stellar Sleep Solution: Personalized Psychology-Based Therapy at Your Fingertips
Stellar Sleep fills this gap by offering a mobile app that combines personalized sleep coaching with proven psychology-based techniques. Co-founded by George Wang and Edrei Chua who themselves struggled with chronic insomnia, the app leverages evidence-based approaches like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to address the root causes of sleep issues and equip users with long-term solutions.
Key features of the Stellar Sleep App include:
- Personalized Assessments: Users complete an in-depth assessment to understand their individual sleep patterns and underlying challenges.
- Interactive Programs: Based on the assessment, the app creates a personalized program with daily and nighttime guidance to help users learn healthy sleep habits.
- Progressive Personalization: The program adapts and evolves based on user progress and sleep data collected through wearables.
- Long-Term Management: Stellar Sleep goes beyond symptom relief, providing tools and techniques to manage anxiety, stress, and other psychological factors that contribute to insomnia.
Early Success and Future Vision
Initial results are promising, with a clinical assessment of 500 users showing a 50% improvement in sleep compared to sleeping pills. This seed funding will allow Stellar Sleep to expand its user base, personalize the experience further, and develop even more comprehensive content.
“What we found as we tried to get treatment for ourselves was that sleep clinicians are in such short supply – waiting lists of 6-12 months are common – that access to psychology-based care is a significant obstacle for the average person,” said Wang. “In addition to the waiting list, the cost and time commitment involved meant that out-of-pocket sleep therapy was out of reach for most. We founded Stellar Sleep with the goal of providing broad access to insomnia care via an app, a solution to a widespread public-health problem that was previously unavailable to many. Stellar Sleep is the solution that we wish we had during our multi-year struggle with chronic insomnia,” said Wang.
