After creating one of the most globally recognizable media brands with The Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington is poised to change the media game once more with her latest venture: Thrive Global. On Wednesday, the health-oriented startup announced it had closed its Series B round of funding, successfully raising $30 million, and thus bringing the company’s total funding to $37 million.
The latest round was led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), who has previously funded big names like Snap, Slack and Twitter. Somesh Dash, General Partner at IVP, sounded particularly enthusiastic about the deal: “We came away [from the funding] incredibly impressed with Arianna’s vision to improve wellness in the global workforce,” he said in Thrive Global’s official statement. Dash also joined the Thrive Global board of directors as part of the deal.
Other investors included Marc Benioff, the Salesforce CEO notably committed to employee wellness. Former investors Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Greycroft Partners and Female Founders Fund all signed on for the second round.
Since its founding in 2016, Thrive Global has straddled the line between tech company and digital media platform, working to advance both individual and workplace wellness. In the fast-paced world of high-tech companies and rapidly-growing startups, employees can quickly become accustomed to long hours, extensive meetings and little time to focus on personal health.
We set the ambitious goal to end the collective delusion that burnout is the necessary price we must pay for success.
It may seem counterintuitive, but the burnout created by this lifestyle can actually decrease individual and company-wide productivity, in addition to crippling the global economy by billions of dollars. Though a five-minute lunch break or 10-hour workday might not seem like it could have that big of an impact, business resources are claiming burnout as a “crisis” of “epidemic” proportions. So how do you combat the problem of startup fatigue? When you’re Arianna Huffington, you create another startup to fight it!
“When we launched Thrive Global exactly a year ago, we set the ambitious goal to end the collective delusion that burnout is the necessary price we must pay for success,” said Huffington in a statement.
Thrive Global’s unique platform pairs a traditional online media platform with corporate services and digital tools to create a consummate wellness experience. Thrive Global’s website, accessible to all with an internet connection, features health-focused contributions from everyone from Jeff Bezos to Selena Gomez to award-winning doctors.
The company’s corporate components include wellness workshops and virtual tools like their “Pathways, Journeys, and Microsteps” platform, which can help an individual achieve goals like “joy,” “calm” or “productivity.”
Thrive Global has already managed to achieve significant success in its market through the creation of its unique tools. Moving forward, the company plans to use its additional funding to expand virtually every element of its platform. In the official statement, Thrive Global noted plans to expand into international markets, develop video content and ramp up the functionality of its currently existing products.
Thrive Global’s latest success compounds a solid week for New York media fundings: On Tuesday, Group Nine Media rallied $40 million to expand its video capabilities, proving NYC is still the center of the media universe.
