Emotional intelligence training app Ahead raises $1.3 million in pre-seed funding

The subject of emotional intelligence is nothing new. Plato once wrote, “Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotions, and knowledge,” and the phrase "know thyself,” is inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. And yet, in today’s data-driven world, the topic receives far less recognition than deserved.

Berlin-based Ahead is aiming to change that.

Emerging from stealth and announcing a $1.3 million pre-seed funding round, the Kai Koch (ex-Helpling co-founder / Casper Sleep VP) and John Roggan (ex ChefsList co-founder) startup is an app that wants to make mastering your emotions fun and easy.

Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve spent the better part of my adult life trying to get my head and my heart to work in concert. Let’s see what Ahead can make of all of this, hey?

Diving into the app, the onboarding was simple enough, and sure enough, a series of short and sweet 2 to 4 minute sessions cover topics that range from anger management to being assertive, charming, and/or empathetic. They not only cover the topics, but provide active exercises on how to apply these drills to real-world situations.

The app is currently beta testing thousands of users on a global scale and plans to launch in English-speaking markets, and presumably, markets where English is second only to the native tongue, The Netherlands, for example, later this year.

“There’s a $100 billion self-improvement industry promising to make us emotionally smarter. But we are lying to ourselves if we believe we can learn a skill by watching others and not actually doing it ourselves,” says Koch. We want to give everyone the chance to improve their emotional intelligence, so we’ll all fight less, laugh more, and be happier together.”

Ahead’s seed round was led by Speedinvest, with participation from prominent US and European angel investors including TinyVC’s Philipp Moehring, the founders of Casper Sleep, Tier Mobility’s Dr. Julian Blessin, Helpling’s Philip Huffmann, and former N26 CTO Christian Rebernik.