Munich Startup: What does Lumeus do? What problem does it solve?
Verena Herzog-Pohl, Lumeus: Lumeus is a mental health app, a self-help tool for your own mental health, an emotion training program for the whole family. The emotion training sessions consist of spoken visualizations, narrated by professional voice actors like Yvonne Greitzke (the voice of Anna from Walt Disney’s “Frozen”) and Tobias Krell (known as “Checker Tobi”) and accompanied by music individually composed and produced by symphony orchestras for each scene.
The strong positive emotions generated through voice and music reach the root causes of numerous mental problems stored in the subconscious and can dissolve old patterns of thinking and behavior. Positive emotions release happy hormones that act like medicine for body and mind, but without any side effects. Lumeus has helped numerous users with:
- Reducing anxiety, stress, depressive moods, and sleep problems
- Dissolving addictive behaviors (e.g., obesity or smoking)
- Strengthening self-confidence, inner peace, concentration, energy, and motivation
- Boosting the immune system
The method was developed together with numerous doctors, psychologists, and scientists and evaluated by the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich and the psychiatric university hospital in Giessen, with its effectiveness confirmed.
Lumeus primarily offers insurance companies and businesses a solution for strengthening the mental health of their insured members, employees, and their families. One billion people worldwide suffer from mental illness, and during the coronavirus pandemic, conditions like depression and anxiety disorders increased by 25 percent. Mental illness costs German insurance companies approximately 44 billion euros annually. Companies face rising costs from absences and reduced productivity due to mental illness. This is why we primarily offer Lumeus as part of corporate occupational health management measures or for health insurance companies. We have also recently been certified as a preventive measure and are reimbursed by all statutory health insurance providers in Germany.
Lumeus provides the soundtrack to your own film
Munich Startup: But that already exists, doesn’t it?
Verena Herzog-Pohl, Lumeus: No, we’re the first! Current emotion research confirms that positive emotions can prevent certain illnesses and even cure them. We’ve developed a tool that helps our users evoke strong emotions themselves. To conceptualize these scenes as realistically as possible, our team works together with psychologists, screenwriters, and film composers. The music was individually composed for each piece and recorded with the Berlin and Budapest symphony orchestras. This sets us apart significantly from classical meditation apps, because with Lumeus, people experience the soundtrack to their own film, their wishes and longings. This makes the emotion training so active and effective.
Munich Startup: What’s your founding story?
Verena Herzog-Pohl, Lumeus: My mother Dagmar Herzog developed what is called the “Herzog Method” over 25 years ago for herself, as neither therapy nor medication worked for her long-term. Together with scientists, psychologists, therapists, and doctors, she developed emotion training based on neuroscience and emotion research. As a screenwriter, she immediately had the appropriate emotional scenes in mind. A film composer developed the music for it, and the Berlin and Budapest symphony orchestras provided the music. She conducted numerous seminars, including for health insurance companies, businesses, and private users, and wrote bestselling books.
Relief in family stress situations
Together with my brother, I founded an IT security company. At that time, I had twins, my husband worked in another city and was only home on weekends. This pushed me to my physical and mental limits. Sleep disorders and a prolonged tinnitus were the result. My doctor’s advice was to reduce stress. But how? That was the moment I started using my mother’s emotion training myself. The result: after three weeks, the tinnitus was completely gone and I could sleep again. This personal experience was the reason why I founded a second company with my mother to bring emotion training into the digital world. Together we developed a special children’s training with prominent voice actors. This makes Lumeus an app for everyone, big and small – because when one person in the family suffers, the whole family suffers with them.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Verena Herzog-Pohl, Lumeus: Developing our app, finding the right team for it, and getting certification from statutory health insurance providers so that our users’ costs are reimbursed. We’ve managed both.
Munich Startup: Where do you want to be in one year, and where in five years?
Verena Herzog-Pohl, Lumeus: Next year we want to have acquired further well-known customers, health insurance companies, and partners in the German-speaking region. In five years, we want to be internationally recognized as an effective and sustainable mental health app.
More support for childcare
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Verena Herzog-Pohl, Lumeus: Munich is predestined as a diverse business location for B2B solutions, and networking with other startups is very good here. But I would like to see more support in the area of childcare for working mothers. This has presented me with challenges several times both during my founding of the IT security company and now.
Munich Startup: Risk or security?
Verena Herzog-Pohl, Lumeus: When you build a startup, in my opinion you always have to take some risks. As the saying goes: nothing ventured, nothing gained.
