October 14, 2020
When’s the last time you worked out your soul?
A mid-spin pep talk at SoulCycle might make you shed a tear, but not in the way that the co-founders of Coa, Alexa Meyer and Dr. Emily Anhalt, want. The founders, instead, want people to ask themselves: When was the last time you worked out (just) your soul?
If you stutter in response, that’s the impetus for Coa, a gym for mental health and online emotional fitness classes. The company just raised a $3 million seed round led by Crosslink Capital, with participation from Red Sea Ventures and Alpaca VC. Other investors include Neil Parikh (the founder of Casper) and professional basketball player Kevin Love.
Coa’s core product, pre-launch, is small-group studio classes taught by licensed therapists. A customer will get onboarded, evaluated and placed into a series of classes spanning how to live alone during a pandemic to how to deal with political anxiety.
The class experience mixes lecture-style teaching with breakout sessions to breed conversations. Broadly, Coa is on a mission to take the small-group fitness culture that makes SoulCycle so successful and apply it to mental health. Read rest here.