Today, Shleep, the leader in B2B sleep coaching technology announced it has attracted €1.4M from VCs including Global Founders Capital, and Health Innovations to further develop their existing sleep platform. Their clients include The Huffington Post, Deloitte and Spotify – who have experienced strong improvements in sleep (up to 50% reduction in sleep debt) and performance improvement (up to 25% increase in productivity).

Shleep is the first science-based sleep coaching platform for companies, created by Dr. Els van der Helm (previously at McKinsey) and Jöran Albers (previously at Bain), and their team of sleep PhDs, health experts and software engineers. Dr. van der Helm has been named by Arianna Huffington as one of the 5 most influential people in the field of sleep and top 20 in well-being. Driven by the latest neuroscience research and the founders’ business expertise, Shleep supports employees, teams and leaders in changing their behavior and habits around sleep to avoid burnout and increase employee productivity, health and engagement.

“This funding round is a major milestone for Shleep,” said Albers, COO of Shleep. “It will allow us to scale our platform much faster to more employees.” Linze Dijkstra, Partner at Health Innovations: “Corporate wellbeing is a fast-growing segment, where we see sleep taking a prominent role.” Gerald Parloiu, Partner at Global Founders Capital added: “I was very impressed by the team and their track record, and I’m very excited to get onboard and support the Shleep team as it works on tackling this ever-increasing issue of sleep management."

Almost two thirds of adults are not getting enough sleep and need to catch up on the weekend (Philips Global Sleep Survey 2019); as a result, they suffer from fatigue and diminished productivity, costing U.S companies alone $411 billion per year. Employees are working longer hours and experiencing more work-related stress, and only 13% of employees worldwide feel engaged (Gallup 2013). Professor Nick van Dam from IE Business School and the University of Pennsylvania, previously global chief learning officer at McKinsey: “More businesses are starting to realize that people have higher expectations from their employer than ever before. They care less about their salary but more about a positive environment, doing meaningful work and feeling supported by the company to prioritize their own health and wellbeing”. Research shows that “Getting enough sleep” is the number 1 issue employees want help with when it comes to their physical health and 40% of employees would ask sleep support from their employers – and for millenials, that figure is even higher, at 50% (Consumer Health Mindset Survey: Aon Hewitt, the National Business Group on Health, and Kantar Futures, 2017)

“With so many people disengaged and unproductive at work, we believe that we need to fix one of the root causes,” said CEO Dr. van der Helm. “Research now shows sleep is a critical driver for your burnout risk, your ability to come up with new insights or ideas, to manage your own emotions and recognize emotions in others, and even your ability to trust others and behave ethically.”

About Shleep

Shleep focuses on improving the performance of companies by improving the sleep of employees, teams and leaders through a digital sleep coaching platform. Users of its platform have access to a tailored exercises and courses, a sleep expert, relaxation and jet lag tools, individual and group sleep consultations and live webinars on topics such as how to cope with sleep deprivation, insomnia, jet lag and sleep in babies. Shleep supports clients in creating a cultural change around the topic of sleep and performance through the platform, an HR dashboard and a team-based program. Clients include top consultancies, tech companies and banks. Follow Shleep on LinkedIn or learn more at their current job openings in their Product and Sales teams.

About the founders

Jöran Albers is a business expert and founded Shleep after realizing that people in the business world are less productive, healthy, and happy due to a global sleep deprivation epidemic. At Shleep, he overseas product development, client delivery and finance & operations. Prior to founding Shleep, he worked as a management consultant for more than 7 years, most of which spent at Bain, serving as a project leader. Jöran advised leading clients across industries on strategy development, transformation program planning and delivery and change management. Jöran holds an MBA from INSEAD in Singapore/France and a BSc degree in business and law from EBS University.

Dr. Els van der Helm is a sleep expert, former McKinsey consultant and adjunct professor at IE Business School in Madrid. She studied sleep extensively, starting with her Master’s in Neurosciences, where she investigated the effect of sleep on memory (Netherlands Institute for Neurosciences) and emotional processing (Harvard Medical School). She also investigated the effect of sleep on the brain as a Fulbright scholar during her PhD in Psychology (University of California Berkeley) before working at McKinsey as a strategy and management consultant. Her publications have been featured by Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The Economist, Inc. Magazine, McKinsey Quarterly, and many others.

About Global Founders Capital

Founders drive incredible opportunity in the world, and we are their greatest advocates. That’s because our team has built multi-billion dollar technology businesses from scratch and has thrived through all the twists and turns of entrepreneurship along with it. Over the past two decades, we have backed over five hundred entrepreneurs worldwide. Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Eventbrite, Canva, Away Travel, HomeAway, Zalando, Revolut, Funding Circle, Lazada, Traveloka, Trivago, Jumia, HelloFresh, and Delivery Hero represent a few of our global successes. Global Founders Capital invests out of eleven offices worldwide.

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