Journify - Helps You Beat Stress and Stay Motivated through Audio Journaling

“The starting point of discovering who you are, your gifts, your talents, your dreams, is being comfortable with yourself. Spend time alone. Write in a journal.” says popular and best selling author Robin Sharma. The simple act of journaling can indeed make a huge difference in your life. While there are probably thousands of thoughts that crosses our mind everyday, keeping a record of those ideas and thoughts that matters, helps us in keeping our minds more organized, focused and thus peaceful. There are many successful people who religiously pen down their plans, thoughts and aspirations, and swear by the benefits of journaling. In today's world, where increasing number of people are experiencing stress and burnout, journaling can do wonders in maintaining good mental health. If you still have an excuse for not building up the habit of journaling, well its time you forget them all, as now journaling is even simpler with Journify.co. Journify app does away the need to write down a journal by letting you maintain your journal via audio recording, which not only makes journaling fast, but also you can record your journal anywhere, anytime and even on the go!

We interviewed Journify founder Lamia Pardo to know more about this interesting startup that is working with the vision to incorporate mental wellness habits into the lifestyle and daily routines of today's busy generation.

About Journify
Journify - Industry Details
Journify - Founders & Team
The Idea Behind Starting Journify
Journify - Name & Logo
Journify - Revenue Model
Journify - Marketing Strategies
Journify - Challenges
Journify - Funding
Journify - Growth & Future Plans

About Journify

With 7 in 10 millennials already suffering from burnout before the pandemic, Journify’s mainstream approach to burnout prevention incorporates audio journaling into our daily routines.

The app is built around a mobile and voice-first user experience. All voice notes are encrypted so think of an off-the-record judgement-free option for venting. Users can tap to record at any time, organize their timeline with tags and notes, and replay or share the voice recordings via Whatsapp or email. Journify also lets users track their mental wellness journey with quick sleep, energy and motivation check-ins, and a burnout assessment.

"Journaling has many benefits similar to meditation, such as improving mindfulness, reducing tension, and counteracting the effects of stress. Due to its ability to help us slow down, journaling has also been linked to higher IQ, a boost in creativity, and better cognitive skills. Audio journaling is an easier way to leverage those benefits on the go with a more intuitive behavior. We already consume our content on audio, so it only makes sense we start producing content in the same way" quotes Journify founder Lamia Pardo emphasizing on the benefits of journaling.

Journify - Industry Details

With written journaling clinically linked to improved mental and physical health, and the global notepaper market expected to grow $18.8bn from 2020-2024, diary recording increasing popularity looks certain. In addition to that, millennials are also known as the wellness generation. The mindfulness trend (or brain hacking trend) is projected to become more dominant over the next 2 years and the self-care market is already over $10B.

Journify - Founders & Team

Lamia Pardo along with Justin Scott founded Journify in 2019.

Lamia and Scott met a few months ago on The Pond, an app that matches potential co-founders.

"The Pond app doesn’t show you many options every day, but they’re highly curated. I had already started the research process and, since our first conversation, he was immediately adding value from a product strategy perspective. We’ve been really efficient in bringing the app to life and hitting our first milestones, but we also had fun working together, checked in on each other’s mental health, and have a very strong vision for where we want the company to go. #CofounderGoals" Lamia says commenting on how she found a co-founder for her startup.

Presently, Lamia Pardo is the CEO  of Journify and looks after demand generation and engagement, product design, analytics, and operations.

Journify CTO Justin Scott has a background in home automation devices and so he already had some experience with audio. Justin has done a fantastic job on building both the frontend and backend of the Journify app.

Zak Williams, who is a serial entrepreneur, investor and a mental health advocate is the advisor of the Journify team.

The Idea Behind Starting Journify

Being a millennial in a busy city, with a busy lifestyle, Lamia and her friends were quite aware of the importance of mental wellness. But most of them did not have enough time to dedicate for maintaining their mental health. While meditation is a great way to boost mental health, meditation is not for everyone as it requires expert guidance and also devoted time. Lamia started researching on the tools available for maintaining mental wellness and found that there are some goal setting apps which are very hard to use more than once and the mental health apps are strictly focusing on mental health illnesses. She felt that technology can do more to help the busy lot have a better mental health without devoting much time, and thus she stumbled upon the idea of starting an audio journaling app that millennials can use to keep a track of their thoughts and feelings on the go, without spending much time.

"When I started researching the space in early 2019, I noticed a big opportunity for a go-to app for mental wellness on the go. Now with COVID-19, I believe this opportunity has grown faster. We spoke to over 100 millennials to design the app, but also got really important inspiration from in depth conversations with therapists and coaches" Lamia quotes

Journify app initially included sessions with mental wellness specialists in addition to the tools, but a few months into it the company pivoted to only focus on the app.

To check the response of the potential users towards Journify, and their willingness to pay, Lamia also ran some digital tests.

Journify - Name & Logo

While finding a name, the Journify team's goal first was to iterate around words that meant progress, advancement, betterment, etc. However, every mental wellness journey is messy and not always going up (and that’s okay), so from journey came Journify.

Journify - Revenue Model

Journify's pricing model based on engagement. Everyone gets access to the basic features for free but if users want to audio journal more than 5 times per month then they need to subscribe for $6.99 USD/month or $69.99 USD/year.

The company is now offering a free month of access to its premium option to the new users.

Journify - Marketing Strategies

Journify team is not spending much on paid marketing, but is focusing more on content and social media marketing. They started working on social and content marketing in parallel to building the product. They are constantly developing a more relevant content hub called 'The Burnout Lab' for millennials, with practical advice and audio experiences, which has helped them to attract potential users.

Besides the company is also working on App Store Optimization and has tied up with nano influencers to attract new users.

Journify - Challenges

Budget constraints is an issue faced by Journify, like many other startups do. In the absence of budget, deciding on how much and where to spend on marketing is also a dilemma faced by the founding team.

Also, finding pricing-market fit has been a challenge till date, since the company pivoted to focus on just audio journaling from offering audio journaling+ sessions with mental wellness specialists. While there are people who love to use tools for mental wellness, not many are willing to pay for it.

"There is a very unique behavior to the wellness industry that I wasn’t aware of before. Everyone believes they have to react positively to wellness ideas and at least most people are willing to try new options when they’re free, but willingness to pay was really hard to measure. I think we still have a long way ahead on pricing optimization. Our goal is to still offer a free version so we can reach anyone that would like to start working on their mental wellness, but as we add more features we are also incurring more costs. That’s why I’m very aware that we will also need to evolve pricing options as we evolve our offering." Says Lamia speaking on the challenges the startup is facing.

Journify - Funding

Journify received pre-seed funding from Antler.co in 2019. The startup is also looking forward to raise a seed round soon to accelerate its growth.

Journify - Growth & Future Plans

Within just a few weeks of its launch, the Journify app has reached 1000 downloads, and also made it to #3 product of the day on Product Hunt.

The startup is planning to offer its users much more. Though currently the app is available just in English, the team is panning to make it available in other languages soon.

Journify is also planning to launch an audio live stream podcast. The interesting part about these podcast will be that it will not be the  typical interview model podcast, but instead follow the life of 4 millennials (who are real users of Journify app) audio journaling their hectic lives. Through this podcast, Journify wants to give a fun, addicting and relatable experience to the listeners.

"We’re off to a good start but still very early in the process. In a few years from now,  I would love to go on my audio journaling walks and bump into other people doing the same thing :). Our vision is to incorporate mental wellness habits into our lifestyle and daily routines. Maybe even make mental wellness more social. Audio journaling is our first step, but there are many more evidence-based methods we’re also considering for the future" Lamia says commenting on the future plans of the startup.