But no investment for Soulfi – Nils Glagau cancels deal

Soulfi has developed an app for "first aid for mental health issues." Despite the founding team's expertise, only one lion wants to invest – and then backs out after the broadcast. This is the reason.

They want to provide "first aid for mental health issues." To this end, the three founders, Thomas Bolz, Ciro Paolo D'Andrea, and Eray Özmü, have developed an app called Soulfi. There, users can find instructions for dealing with various problems such as stress , panic attacks, or fear of heights, as well as breathing exercises and guided meditations, or chat with an artificial intelligence .

Ahead of the performance, the Soulfi founders are confident. Psychologist D'Andrea even believes that more than one lion will invest. Things won't go quite so smoothly, however. In the end, only one lion will make an offer – and the deal will fall apart later.

The founders aim to raise €200,000. In return, they are offering 15 percent of their young company. While almost all of the Lions emphasize how relevant they consider the topic, opinions on the founding team are mixed. Carsten Maschmeyer criticizes the fact that the founders are not yet working full-time for their startup and are still working in their old jobs. In theory, the founders seem to complement each other well: D'Andrea is a psychologist with 20 years of professional experience and his own practice, Bolz, a business economist, handles the numbers, and Özmü is the group's techie with his own software company.

But Maschmeyer also sees another sticking point: The competition is fierce – several digital health apps have already successfully established themselves in recent years. Maschmeyer doesn't see Soulfi surviving in this highly competitive market. "They're not that strong," says the entrepreneur and investor.

Janna Ensthaler, for her part, is impressed by the founding team. "What you're doing makes sense," she said on the show. However, she finds the founders' offer too ambitious, "considering you're barely generating any revenue right now." The app has been live for almost two weeks at this point. Ultimately, the intense competition in the digital health sector is also the reason Ensthaler is dropping out. She apparently doesn't want to negotiate with the founding trio either.

After Ralf Dümmel and Tillmann Schulz had already declined (saying the product wasn't a good fit for them), only Nils Glagau remains. The lion, however, is known for subsequently canceling deals from the show – and this time will be no different. Glagau negotiated 20 percent instead of 15 percent (and apparently could have gone even higher, according to founder D'Andrea, who said after the deal that the founders' pain threshold hadn't been reached by a long shot), but then canceled the deal. In the aftermath, it became clear "that the founding and investor team couldn't find a common strategic path," Glagau was quoted as saying via his spokesperson.

Soulfi's founders are continuing on. Even though Glagau didn't want to invest in the young company, he apparently encouraged them nonetheless. "His words that he sees us as a ' unicorn ' mean a lot to us. They encourage us to work on our mission with even more passion and determination," says D'Andrea. Unicorns are the term used in the startup scene to describe startups valued at more than one billion euros.

The founder had already stated on the show that Soulfi has big plans. The startup intends to expand as quickly as possible. D'Andrea announced during the show that they are already in discussions with psychologists and coaches, for example in the US and Australia, to roll out the app there soon.