Self-care startup Shine has secured $5MM in a Series A round of funding to facilitate growth led by existing investor Comcast Ventures with participation from betaworks, Felix Capital, the New York Times, Eniac Ventures, Female Founders Fund, and BBG Ventures. This round brings Shine’s total funding to over $8 million.
WHO: Co-founders Naomi Hirabayashi and Marah Lidey launched Shine in 2016. Shine was designed to appeal to all genders, races, and body types with both its imagery and audio. The app sends users daily text messages to boost confidence and promote self-care. The app targets millennial women—88% of users are under the age of 35, and 70% are female. The app recently hit the 2 million active-user mark across 189 countries.
WHY: “Marah and I are both women of color, and we created this company from a very non-traditional background from an entrepreneurship standpoint—we didn’t go to business school,” Hirabayashi explains. “We saw there was something missing in the market because wellbeing companies didn’t really reach us—they didn’t speak to us. We didn’t see people that looked like us. We didn’t feel like the way they shared content sounded like how we spoke about the different wellbeing issues in our lives,” co-founder Naomi Hirabayashi told Techcrunch.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Shine plans to double its 8-person team, launch the app on Android, and continue to grow the business, including potentially launching new products.
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