Hello, I’m Robin Cartwright. I’m a Cognomie coach.
I wanted to share a little about my story, and why I’m investing in Cognomie, because I want to encourage you to do the same. Bear with me, this isn’t a hard sell, but I do think it is an opportunity.
A little about me. I’m an ex-KPMG Mergers & Acquisitions consulting Partner. As well as being a practitioner coach, I’m also an organizational psychology Masters student, and an organized crime researcher for non-profits. I like to think of myself as a polymath, but I’m probably more a jack of all trades. On the face of it, my career looks normal, successful even. But beneath the surface things have not always been easy. I have suffered from chronic depression for the last 15 years, caused by a combination of things: the pressures of the job, the declining health of a parent, a moving abroad. Like many, I got medical help, but I never ever got support from my employer. Why? Well, I wasn’t confident they would react supportively. Of course, as someone with mental health challenges, I wasn’t alone – employees have been overwhelmed by mental health issues, and depression affected 1 in 4 even before the exacerbating effects of COVID over the last two years.
Fast forward to my life post-KPMG and I was driven to retrain as a coach, but with a real focus on helping people who, like me, needed some support for their confidence and their resilience. It was then that I came across Cognomie.
Cognomie represent a real zeitgeist moment in the life of organisations. Mental health and resilience are such vast problems that they can no longer be simply placed upon the shoulders of the health sector. So, with the support of policy makers and medical professionals, the conversation is swinging towards self-care. In short, we all need to prophylactically manage our mental health. And Cognomie, to my mind, is the only serious player offering organisations credible support for this.
For me, it felt like I had finally found a business and a bunch of people who ‘got’ me. They are doing something good and they are fundamentally making the world a better, kinder place.
And believe me, I’ve looked. The closest I can see is BetterUp, a US offering with revenues in the $100ms and a valuation in the $billions
I met Alain de Botton a couple of years ago, the philosopher and writer who started the brilliant ‘School of Life’. He said that the coaching and mental wellbeing ‘market’ was still incredibly underdeveloped. He thought that whoever developed a brand as closely associate with mental wellbeing as Coke is associated with carbonated beverages, would be the market defining leader. I think that could be Cognomie.
But, Cognomie is a start up. There are simply not enough hours in the day for John, Kate Tim and colleagues to get this extraordinary service out there. So they need to expand, to hire, to scale, and fast. This is why, they are offering equity to you, in a crowd funding round which opened a week ago, which is where you come in.
You can invest any amount you like. If I put my investor hat on: yes equity funding start-ups is inherently high risk. But the EIS tax break offsets a significant proportion of that risk. Moreover, a relatively small proportion of higher risk investing (in something you really care about), is, in my view justifiable in an overall portfolio. Many of us will against the larger, safer, anonymous pension investments you’re likely to have.
So this is a shout out to those who haven’t yet taken the plunge. Cognomie needs your support to meet growing demand, and in return they are offering you a chance to own a piece of the business.
You can invest here www.crowdcube.com/cognomie
Remember, capital is at risks with investments of this nature