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Founder-story archive · 2026-10-14 · 50 seconds

Andy Puddicombe and Headspace

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Source check

Founder testimony supports the monk-to-app history

Headspace’s published interview transcript identifies Andy Puddicombe as a co-founder and records his own account of training as a monk, returning to London, teaching meditation and building Headspace with a friend. This is attributable first-person history, not independent evidence for every audience or business metric. A user count also should not be treated as evidence that every user received a clinical benefit.

Headspace’s Andy Puddicombe interview and transcript ↗

Scope: the statements above, checked 16 October 2026. Other claims in the video remain unreviewed.

Automatic captions can mishear names, numbers and wording. They have not been checked word-for-word against the audio. Do not use them alone as evidence for a claim.

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Timestamped caption record

Automatically generated captions, reproduced as a record of the video—not as independently verified reporting. Timestamp links open the relevant point on YouTube.

Read the caption record (24 lines)

0:00He spent a decade in monasteries across
0:02Asia and was ordained as a Buddhist
0:04monk. Then he came home and built an app
0:07that taught millions [music]
0:08to meditate.
0:10Andy Puddicombe left university to study
0:12meditation in the Himalayas. Back in
0:15London, he met Rich Pierson,
0:17>> [music]
0:17>> an advertising executive who couldn't
0:18switch off.
0:20Andy taught him to meditate. [music]
0:22Rich helped him turn it into a brand. In
0:242010, they launched Headspace. [music]
0:27Simple animations, a calm voice, a few
0:30minutes a day.
0:32Andy's voice became the voice of
0:33meditation for millions. [music]
0:35By 2018, more than 30 million people in
0:38over 190 countries had signed [music]
0:41up.
0:42A monk, an ad man, and a few minutes a
0:44day.
0:45>> Follow The Vibe Economies for more.

Original publication and evidence scope

Original YouTube title: “A Buddhist monk built a meditation app for millions”. The original title may contain claims not confirmed by this companion.

Upload date, duration and captions were retrieved from the public YouTube record on 2026-10-16. Dates are day-level, not an asserted exact upload time. Market values, audience totals and references to “today” belong to the original publication context.

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