So grateful to be able to talk about trip.And also I do wanna make sure I spend some time to talk to my journey of how we came to this point of being able to create something like trip, which is a platform for using XR technology to improve your emotional well being and mental health. So think of trip as sitting somewhere between the space of meditation and psychedelic. So we're somewhere in the middle of that, hence the name trip. But really what I want to talk about as well is that I believe that we are on the verge of a massive evolution of computing moving from the hand to the head. And if you think about it for the last 10 years, we've been walking around with our heads down, standing, bring out a small, you know, two inch screen and just that shift to be able to start looking out into the world differently with uh technology augmenting the way that we see the world around us.

And our mission is really to help change the way we see ourselves in the world. And trip is much more than uh meditation in VR. You'll see that we take a very unique approach to how we do it. You can try trip on the Oculus platform as well as playstation VR and you'll see us evolve into uh more cross platform development over the next 18 months. Um And but we're very happy with the way users have been using our application whole households. As you can see on the right. A mom posted on Instagram, her kid using trip to help uh get more focus before the online schooling, which has been such a challenge for kids. Over the last year, our uh app is really designed for use repeat usage. A lot of people use VR and they go wow, that was really amazing. And then the device eventually, you know, doesn't see the light of day. Uh It repeat usage is not the norm. And so we're very proud of the fact that in uh April and it was even higher in May, 54% of our returning MA E us have been using trip four months or longer. We see our mobile app is a key driver of engagement and you'll see more and more content being added to our mobile application. And also we have uh in addition to the own our own in-house content that we develop through our proprietary platform.

We've begun to distribute other people's content. There are many creators out there who have created more transformative focused content. They might not necessarily warrant building out a whole application around uh that, that piece of work that they've created. Uh we can provide a very meaningful channel of distribution, not only into consumer households, we work with many fortune 1000 companies or uh on their wellness offering to their employees. And we have several clinical trials which I'll talk about in the meantime, and you'll see content creation and partnerships and collaboration be a big focus for us. Over the next 18 months, our audience uh initially started off very gamer male centric usual early adopters in technology.

But after January with the Christmas holiday sales in January, we saw over 40% of our audience skewing female. And then uh we have very broad uh age segmentation, but it makes sense that the majority of our uh users would be those who are stressed out from work and also family um with a big population, they're very interesting, active group of boomers who are really our most uh consistent users once we can kind of help people get over the uh technology hurdles that they might have the uh mostly it's just intimidation and, and needing a little more hand holder on the um people who are in their seventies and above the next phase of our development.

And you're seeing more and more uh lightweight headsets getting into market snap. Just announced a new device, niantic that uh works on Pokemon go has a new device that they've announced. Facebook has announced their A R devices. We are launching wave of these experiences on the N real Glasses starting uh next quarter uh worldwide. And you'll see our content. Also, the A R contents get added to the trip mobile app on I Os and Android. So we're very excited. Our product looks amazing as an augmented overlay. That kind of helps you focus your attention, connect to your breath and you know, just stop for a moment and remember what's important to you. Our mobile app allows you to upload your own images into our VR and A R experiences. And sometimes we just need to be reminded what we're grateful for. We do measure uh with every session. This was designed with the help of the Me National Mental Health Innovation Center and our Neuroscience advisors. And so our data pool with over 2 million sessions of uh use. It has become very rich on analyzing how people are feeling different times of day, different uh seasons as well. And it's become a big part of our research focus.

Now we're gonna start to integrate biometric data from wearables as well as some of the next wave of devices are starting to ship with biosensors integrated into them, especially eye tracking is very um uh meaningful data set. We're very proud of the research that we have in the clinical area. Um We've had several studies in the category of substance use disorder. Most recently, we were approved for phase two funding from the National Institute of Drug abuse of a million dollar grant in collaboration with our partnership with Sober Grid. This has been especially meaningful for me because I did lose my sister Vicky to a drug overdose in 2012.

And so I feel in some way, you know, being I am just very personally connected to our efforts in the clinical area of mental health. We have a very exciting research initiative with the New York Office of Mental Health and their work with schizophrenics and our impact on how to help them uh uh deescalated aggressive behavior, which ultimately reduces the need to medicate them to stabilize them. And so we did a very exciting pilot study and the early results have led to a full blown uh double blind RCT uh randomized control trial that's up and running more data is being published. We just had a uh uh study protocol for increasing the quality of life in cancer patients published by the University Hospital in Germany in ABG. Uh and that's available publicly in BMJ and you can access it on the trip.com website. I think the thing we're most proud of is really, you know, during last year, we all globally went through a very challenging time collectively and the feedback that we got from the average person who was just struggling with this major shift in how we could move around in, in our day to day lives.

And the this really was motivating to us as a team. Running a start up is never easy and to get the emails that we we and the feedback and the reviews that we got from users and how they were sharing it with other users. All of our growth has been word of mouth to date. We will be starting marketing, but this really, you know, has been a dream come true to be able to work at uh company like trip and build a team that's very mission aligned. And so I'll uh stop presenting. Um And uh I would love to just tell you a little bit as well about how it came to this, you know, being here with you today with taking an idea and executing on it. Um You know, I mentioned I lost my sister to a drug overdose in 2012 and then I lost my grandmother. Uh um And uh and then my husband got diagnosed with cancer and it, you know, it was very rapid. Uh He died within a very short time and it was one of those life changing events where I could see how both of us had a very deep meditation practice and we really were carried and supported through that journey in a way that you just can't turn that on. It really takes a dedication. And for me and my husband, it was a decades long practice.

I was gifted me meditation as a teenager as the result of a um uh uh a psychotic break that I had, you know, my, my family has been wracked with problems from substance use disorder. And I ended up in the hospital, you know, at, at a very young age and the therapist that I was connected with for an ongoing maintenance support taught me how to meditate. And this was way before my mine and I could really see that. Um probably the reason why I didn't end up like my sister was because of the compassion and mindful awareness that another person had and the difference that she made in my life. And I was able to really change my whole decision framework. And concurrently, I also had uh a deep love of playing video games. It was a way that I could escape and control my environment and a lot of people don't talk a about the benefits of playing video games. I've actually given public talks on it. I do think it's a key driver of getting an interest developed at a very young age in technology. And I really do believe in the context of what this conference is about. It's really important for our girls to play with video games to start seeing themselves as builders and makers in products like Roblox and and Minecraft. You can already see the impact of, of young girls playing Minecraft growing up to enter into university on consumer uh computer science tracks.

And so we need more of us to think of ourselves as builders and makers. And it's not something you can just bolt on. It really has to be uh addressed in the toys we give our, our young girls and the way we talk to them and encourage them to make things. And for me, it was really a respite in a way that I could control how I was feeling by controlling my environment. Seeing myself as a hero too, was really important during a time where I felt like a lot of uh I had no power in, in what was happening around me. But it did give me a great career in the video game industry. You know, because I started off wanting to know more and more about how games were made and, and that got me or, you know, just on the path to learning as, as I went. And, uh you know, there aren't a lot of women in the games industry uh who run technology and product and it's, uh you're seeing more and more of us show up and, you know, surprisingly, we're all very good friends.

Uh And anyway, so getting back to the journey of the trip after my husband died and I emerged through my grief process, it was really about thinking, how do I um rebuild my life, you know, that not by choice but uh very unusual for someone at my age and in the stage of life that I was in to have this clearing and I could really in my contemplative practice, ask myself, what do I wanna build?

What's the contribution that I wanna make? And uh and what I came up with was this idea of using virtual reality. I've been an investor, early investor in Oculus. So I was really fascinated um my co-founder and I would notice we were building a game for fun to the platform just trying to think about, you know, why is this feeling so good to come in and out of VR? And I started to investigate some of the research that people like Walter Greenleaf and Skip Rizzo and Jeremy Bin and have been doing at Stanford and US C and many of the other uh researchers out there have been working in VR and how to address mental health. And the data was really interesting and while most people were thinking about simulating reality in it, I was wondering, could we stimulate beneficial reactions and could we use gameplay mechanics and mindfulness structures and bring them together with technology to actually create good?

And maybe we could use a lot of these mechanics that we've learned in the video game industry and in the uh digital advertising arena to manipulate you, you know, in many ways, advertising works by making you feel so badly about something that you need to buy a per uh you need to buy something to fix it.

And there's a lot of science about how to use technology and algorithms to drive that kind of purchase intent. And could we use those same kind of mechanics to create network effects around concepts driven by compassion and personal happiness and well being? And I don't know that trip is actually in the three years of our existence, fully realize that vision in my head, but we're certainly on the path and I'm very proud of um what we've built to date and where it's going to go in the next five years. I'm really excited about the road map. But what I'm really most excited about today, I had a board meeting and uh I introduced some new team members, uh a new head of technology and a new head of product and the head of product said he, when he introduced himself that he's been a meditator for a long time and working at companies like Disney and other VRXR health companies.

And, and that trip was a dream job for him to think about how to create these new experiences that can help you change the way that you see the world around you. And it just made me really proud that we're creating a culture that is motivated by mission, but that we can do it in a way that's also a good capital, uh investment for someone, you know, that I think that conscious capital can actually return uh good, uh you know, can make good returns for our investors as well as well.

It doesn't have to just be a philanthropic or impact investment that, you know, might not have the returns of something else. So anyway, I'm excited and I will pause there and, and uh answer any questions with the time that we have left.

Thanks and we have about 45 seconds left. So it might be hard for us to answer any questions you actually did. So perfect. Go at using your exact amount of time. So bravo to you. Um And of course, like there are, you know, people commenting in the chat and I'm sure would love all those resources that you have around where to send, you know, parents with young girls who want to get involved in tech and, and some of the amazing things you were talking about.

And thank you so much and too for sharing your personal story with us. Stories can go such a long way to us understanding the vision behind what you're creating. And so thank you for being with us here today.

Yeah, you're welcome. And one thing that I will say is uh um I'm available on Twitter at Nanea and I'm happy to answer any questions there. We can hop into quilt or clubhouse and some of the new platforms and do a chat. Thank you.

OK. Thank you so much.