When Naomi Hirabayashi and Marah Lidey first met seven years ago while working together at a nonprofit in New York, they just clicked. Their easy friendship evolved into a work marriage, where they leaned on each other for advice on “sexy stuff like our credit score to being managers of a large team at a young age,” says Lidey. The support system they built with each other was seen as a rarity to the people around them. “We often heard from our friends, ‘you’re so lucky to have each other,’” she says.
The duo wanted to provide a solution for likeminded ambitious Millennial women who lacked a solid sisterhood. Enter Shine Text, a peer-based support network that sends out daily text messages “with the goal of being a pep talk in your pocket,” explains Lidey.
Mindfulness and self-care weren’t just buzzwords to the duo, they were “a matter of survival,” says Hirabayashi, especially for marginalized groups who are often on the periphery of the self-care movement. The startup evolved from an SMS best friend to an app that is dedicated to building a positive community through self-care audio tracks and daily Shine messages that Hirabayashi says “empowers [users] to move from thinking to action in all about five minutes.”
With three million members and counting, the pair is well on their way to their ultimate goal of making wellbeing accessible, affordable, and representative to all. “We’re creating a global movement,” says Hirabayashi, “to help individuals become more self-compassionate in order to build a more compassionate world.”
