Meditation has helped Nanea Reeves through some of the most difficult points in her life, including the loss of her sister and husband.
 
Longing for a deeper and more visual experience, Reeves decided to meld meditation with her other passion — gaming — to create Tripp Inc., a “digital psychedelic” technology company.
 
Founded in 2017, Culver City-based Tripp uses virtual reality experiences to promote mental health by fully immersing users in digital meditations.
 
Guided meditations through Tripp last at least 10 minutes and offer users experiences they can’t have in real life, such as visualizing breaths or a feeling of floating in space, said Reeves, who is the company’s chief executive and co-founder.
 
The sessions are available on Oculus, PlayStation VR, and Apple and Android devices. The company plans to release its own physical products in the third quarter, Reeves said.
 
“Being fully immersed, in and of itself, has its own positive impact on the user,” Reeves said. “We can create a sense of psychological safety.”
 
On June 24, Tripp announced the closure of its $11 million Series A funding round, led by Mayfield Fund and Vine Ventures, bringing the company’s total to $15 million.
Reeves said the company will use the funding to invest in marketing to further grow its audience and team. Tripp has already filled several director and executive positions for its staff with hires from companies such as AppliedVR Inc. and Walt Disney Co.’s interactive team.
 
Tripp has made strides with investors, but growth hasn’t come without challenges, said Reeves, who added she felt she had to prove herself and her company more than male founders.
 
Many investors also believed the product only appealed to women, she said. But the opposite turned out to be true. Throughout 2020, 63% of Tripp’s user base were male millennial and Gen X users. In May, 53% of its returning users identified as men, and 43% identified as women. A “growing number” of Tripp’s users identify as nonbinary, she said.
 
Tripp’s user base has boomed in the past year. Though Reeves declined to release exact user figures, she said the company tripled its audience in 2020 and has “tens of thousands” of users.
 
Reeves aims to triple the company’s audience again by the end of 2021, she said.
Along with bolstering its audience, Reeves plans to further the company’s clinical research in substance abuse disorders, she said, including tapping $1 million awarded to the company by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in August.