The Munich-based startup My Blossom aims to help people live healthier and happier lives with a holistic app that focuses on self-care. The app offers the right program for each mood. For CEO Julia Laukemann, the idea for My Blossom has fundamentally changed her own life. An interview.
Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do?
Julia Laukemann: Ralph, Marc, and I founded My Blossom as a trio. I originally studied political science and spent more than twelve years in the media industry, primarily developing digital products. My husband, Marc Laukemann, is a lawyer specializing in commercial law and mediation, and is also a trained coach. Our third founder, Ralph Karliczek, is an industrial engineer. Together with him, I developed the first streaming-based TV products for a major German media company.
Together, Marc, Ralph, and I have a wealth of experience in building startups. I led a startup accelerator, Ralph built a successful streaming platform as a startup before his corporate career, and Marc advises many startups during their founding phase.
My Blossom: Considers emotional balance
What unites us? The firm belief that everyone can be happy. This is and has been our motivation to build My Blossom. Because we are developing the first Self-care app tailored to emotional balance of our users. Based on how our users feel, they can choose the right 'recipe' for their personal self-care from over 100 yoga, Pilates, meditation, and nutrition programs. Our 'Wheel of Fortune' tracks our users' emotional state and how it changes over time. We also offer a mindfulness diary in which the happiest moments of everyday life are recorded daily, thus training sustainable balance and contentment. As a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), My Blossom has not only already convinced thousands of people, but has also been featured by established media outlets such as Fit for Fun, Shape, and Brigitte.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Julia Laukemann: Not in this holistic approach. That was also the reason why we founded My Blossom. I was literally knocked out after a serious surgery a few years ago and was looking for an app that catered to its users' individual healing and development processes with exercise programs, meditations, and nutrition programs. There was, of course, plenty of content on YouTube, vertical meditation apps, and yoga apps—but no app that presented everything in one place and tailored to the individual's mood.
Since Ralph and I had already built several digital products in the corporate environment, we decided to develop such a product ourselves.
Financing to scale quickly
Munich Startup: What has been your biggest challenge so far?
Julia Laukemann: Certainly, building this startup and the app part-time or during my parental leave. We're proud that we were able to launch our MVP ten months after the official launch—and three months after the birth of my and Marc's son.
Our biggest challenge now, of course, is raising the necessary funding to quickly scale My Blossom and thus make our holistic self-care programs available to hundreds of thousands of users in Germany and internationally. Marketing tests are currently underway in other European markets. Initial indicators show us that women, and now increasingly men, are finding My Blossom a fascinating product there as well.
The marketing and sales strategy is working
Munich Startup: Let’s get to the point: How is business going?
Julia Laukemann: Our first product version has been very well received: With a marketing budget of just €20,000, we were able to gain over 16,000 downloads and over 1,500 subscribers—who, in turn, have used more than 20,000 of our yoga and Pilates videos and meditations and have left several thousand entries in their personal mindfulness diaries. This showed us that our funnel works and that the app is well received. And this ultimately led me to my decision last fall to leave my management job at a large German media group and devote myself entirely to the further development of My Blossom.
Munich Startup: What does Munich mean to you?
Julia Laukemann: I was born in Munich, Ralph was born in Tegernsee, and Marc is a traditional immigrant. Therefore, Munich is not only our family home, but we all have excellent connections here. Furthermore, Munich offers a fantastic ecosystem of first-class universities—I myself earned degrees from both LMU and TU Munich. Additionally, there are companies with startup acceleration programs, mentors, business angels, and platforms like Baystartupthat connect us with investors.
What's unfortunately still difficult—but this applies to all of Germany—is finding funding programs that support startups in the early and seed stages. Personally, I'm very hopeful that politicians, as well as other stakeholders, will make the location more attractive, especially for female founders.
Psychology meets philosophy meets startup
Munich Startup: How can your startup become the next unicorn? Or will we see you soon at Epic Fail Night?
Julia Laukemann: We're not specifically striving for one or the other. My personal goal is to make hundreds of thousands of users in the DACH region and several European countries more satisfied and happy over the next five years. This is already happening on a smaller scale with our MVP's self-care programs.
In the medium to long term, however, we will expand our program offerings with values-based and personal coaching approaches as a platform. Here, we draw on the psychologically researched happiness approach, which combines hedonistically influenced regular self-care—so-called 'feel-good happiness'—with the eudaimonic approach—'value happiness'—founded by Aristotle. If I live according to my personal values and purpose and take care of myself, I will be sustainably happy.
Munich Startup: Get up early or sleep in?
Julia Laukemann: Since we have a young son at home, we're not only early risers, but also constant night owls (but only within our own four walls). The great thing, however, is that working on My Blossom has also taught me to take care of myself and consciously create my own balance in everyday life. As a former manager, founder, and mother, regular yoga, meditation, and my mindfulness journal help me continually recharge my energy reserves.
