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SAGE Going to Market Snapshot

Half the work

Making SAGE work is half our job. The other half is getting people to want SAGE, try SAGE, and keep using SAGE. We give the second half as much attention as the first. In our experience, many good practices never reach the people who need them, because the way in was never clear.

The model we're following

Jon Kabat-Zinn began teaching mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979. Mindfulness is a deep and broad way of living. He offered mindfulness through one door everyone understood: stress reduction. He later wrote that "stress reduction seemed ideal, since pretty much everybody can relate to that instinctively." One participant told him, "This isn't stress reduction. This is my whole life!"

People came for relief from stress and found a practice for their whole lives. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is now offered in more than 700 hospitals, clinics, and programs. We intend to give SAGE the same kind of door.

The leading concept

People already spend heavily to calm themselves: meditation, breathwork, cold plunges, saunas, counseling, and supplements. In our view, most of these work after we've made meaning of what happened. They leave out what may be the most powerful lever of all: the words we use as we make that meaning. In our experience, those words shape how much agency people feel in their own lives.

The language is the practice, and the mind shift is the point, the way meditation is the practice and a more present mind is the point. Inside-out language has been practiced for more than fifty years, hidden in plain sight. SAGE now brings the practice to everyone, at any hour, through the SAGE Companion.

Finding the clearest door

Stress and anxiety are the proven market. Connection and conflict are a large, underserved need, and the area where SAGE works most distinctly. Rather than guess, we intend to test.

1. Build three versions of the public signup page, each leading with one door: stress reduction, nervous system regulation, or connection and conflict.
2. Send equal traffic to each version.
3. Measure how many visitors start the Companion, how many become paying members, and how many are still practicing after 30 and 90 days.
4. Refine the brand around the door that performs best, with a branding and marketing partner experienced in consumer health and wellness.

By the seed round, we expect to show investors which message brings people in and keeps them, with data instead of opinion.

Two channels

Practitioners. Doctors, therapists, counselors, and coaches use SAGE with the people they serve, and their recommendation carries trust. Partners ready now:

• The William Glasser Institute, with trainers in 17 countries.
• True Life Medicine, a functional medicine practice with an active patient list of 300.
• Compass Integrative Recovery, with centers in Colorado and California.

The public. People buy the app for themselves, the way people buy Calm or Duolingo. We intend to reach them through:

• Kevin's network of experts in psychology and personal growth, built over more than a decade and more than 400 podcast interviews.
• A podcast series on the themes behind SAGE, with returning guests.
• Short social posts that people want to share, because sharing them makes the sender look thoughtful. Researchers call the effect social currency (Berger, 2013).

Calm and Headspace followed a similar order: consumers first, then employers, health plans, and clinical care. We intend to grow both channels together, with consumer subscriptions as the core business.

Trusted endorsement

We're building SAGE as a premium product, and we give branding, positioning, and marketing as much attention as the validity of the product. We also see trusted endorsement as one of the most valuable forces in this market. The effect is often called the Oprah effect: a recommendation from someone people trust can move sales, and even votes. Economists Craig Garthwaite and Timothy Moore estimated that Oprah Winfrey's 2008 endorsement of Barack Obama brought him about one million additional votes in the Democratic primary.

Endorsement isn't our only path, and we see the network behind SAGE as a rare advantage. Over more than a decade and more than 400 podcast interviews, Kevin has built authentic, collaborative relationships with many of the most influential voices in human potential, self-improvement, therapy, and medicine. Through them, he has ties to their institutions. Many of these relationships have grown into collaboration. SAGE itself began that way: Jake Eagle first came to Kevin as a podcast guest.

Purpose, the AI mentor app co-founded by Mark Manson, seems to center its growth on one well-known founder. We intend to grow SAGE through the endorsement and collaboration of many respected leaders, providers, and practitioners. In our view, endorsement from many credible voices tends to reach more people, for longer, than one person's fame.

An example of the public message

A six-slide Instagram post built on the leading concept:

1. What if the biggest source of our stress is something we say all day without noticing?
2. We meditate. We breathe. We take cold plunges, sit in saunas, see counselors, and try supplements. Each one can help.
3. Yet most of these seem to work after we've already decided what something means. I sense we make much of that meaning in words.
4. "He made me angry." "That meeting was a waste." Sentences like these seem to hand our calm to everything around us.
5. For more than fifty years, people practicing a different way of speaking have described feeling steadier and closer to the people they love.
6. Maybe the practice we've been missing has been hidden in plain sight, in the words we already use.

What we'll know by the seed round

• Which door brings people in, and which keeps them practicing.
• How many paying members we have, against our goal of 500.
• How members found us: partners, the podcast, or social media.
• How practitioners are using SAGE with their clients.
• What the pilot study shows.
• Whether members report greater inner agency, alongside the pilot's measures.

Continue reading

• Back to the SAGE Investor Summary, with the terms and how to invest.
• SAGE Market Case Snapshot. Where the market is moving, the Waking Point, and the research behind SAGE.

Sources

• Kabat-Zinn, J. (2011). Some reflections on the origins of MBSR, skillful means, and the trouble with maps. Contemporary Buddhism, 12(1).
• Jon Kabat-Zinn, About: jonkabat-zinn.com/about/jon-kabat-zinn/
• Berger, J. (2013). Contagious: Why Things Catch On. Simon and Schuster.
• Garthwaite, C., and Moore, T. J. (2013). Can celebrity endorsements affect political outcomes? Evidence from the 2008 US Democratic presidential primary. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 29(2).

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