Here's What Went Down With Simple Habit After Shark Tank

Even before Korean-born Yunha Kim found herself in the Shark Tank, she was certainly no newbie to the business world. After graduating from Duke, she became an investment banker, then when she realized she had an idea for a startup, she quit her job to launch it. When the business, Locket started to take off, she sold it and went back to school, this time to Stanford. It was there that she came up with the idea for Simple Habit, an app that helps busy people learn to mediate.

"In recent years, there's been so much interest in the mindfulness space," Kim said in Julius Bär. "There's been considerable growth in research on meditation and how it impacts productivity, happiness, creativity, sleep, and much more. People have started to realize the impact of their mental health on their everyday life."

From the success of her past experience with Locket — she managed to get Tyra Banks, as well as others to invest in it — Kim knew she needed capital and investors to make Simple Habit become a reality. Naturally, that meant taking her business and her pitch to Shark Tank in the hopes of getting $600k for five percent of her company.

Although Kim walked into the tank smiling, it didn't last. Even before things got heated among the sharks, Mark Cuban mocked both the amount she was requesting and the $12 million valuation of the company. Despite this, Kim proceeded with her pitch about how meditation can change the world and how they already had over a half million users who had downloaded Simple Habit. But once Kim shared that she currently had over $2.3 million in the bank, Daymond John questioned why she was there. When she explained that she believed having a shark would add value to Simple Habit, Cuban caught Kim off-guard, accusing her of wanting to use them for their money but not compensate them for their work. It was at this point that Cuban called Kim a gold digger.

Within a matter of minutes, things began to spiral. John told Kim she was taking away a business opportunity from someone who really needed it, while Lori Greiner also felt that Kim didn't need the money. Guest shark Sir Richard Branson came to Kim's defense and offered $300k for 10%, but when Cuban explained it had to be the full amount, Branson threw water at Cuban — and not in a playful way. Robert Herjavec also defended Kim and offered the same as Branson, but ultimately — after Kim cried — she walked away without any sharks.

To no surprise, you can't call a woman, or anyone for that matter, a gold digger without it being an issue. "If you watch the episode you'll see it on my face — being called a gold digger, something I've never been called before, was shocking," Kim told The Business Journals in 2023. "I'd guess Mark had never called a male entrepreneur a gold digger. In retrospect, part of me wishes that I'd responded by calling out the inappropriateness of the term, while part of me still thinks it wasn't worth responding to. I held my ground and left the show without taking a deal — however, that heavily televised moment taught me important lessons in leadership, which I carry with me to this day."

Kim also came under fire just three weeks after the show was filmed when she was publicly accused by Joe Burton, CEO of Whil Concepts, via an open letter published in The Observer, of stealing the business model for Simple Habitat from him. In the letter, Burton not only cites all the ways in which Kim stole from him in detail, but drags her, accusing her of using Shark Tank to boost recognition of her brand and company while not actually needing any investors — just as Cuban had done. 

Although Simple Habit is still in business, it has been rebranded as Sleep Reset after being acquired by Alpine Investors. "We decided to partner with sleep experts and build Sleep Reset — a 'digitalized, personalized sleep clinic' — that is available on a mobile app," Kim told Forbes in 2023. "Sleep Reset uses strategies based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) as well as one-on-one coaching to improve sleep and reduce sleep anxiety."

That same year, Kim told TechCrunch that Sleep Reset had doubled their subscribers in the first nine months of the launch. "We've made updates to our program which have driven increased engagement and our efficacy data remains very strong, with the average program graduate reporting over an hour more of sleep per night, and 53% less time needed to fall asleep," said Kim. As of 2023, Sleep Reset had five million users and was projected to make $1.86 million in its first year.

According to her LinkedIn page, Kim seems to be putting all her energy into Sleep Reset and making that business grow. Although she doesn't have a big social media presence, her Instagram shows that she's gotten married in the last year and has an adorable dog.

In October 2022, Kim sat down with Authority Magazine and shared what she believes is necessary in creating technology that impacts the world for the better. "If your purpose is to help improve peoples' lives, and you are truly focused on that, then everything you do will follow suit," said Kim. "The most important thing to know and keep top of mind is your intention — your 'WHY' for starting your company. I remember when I was building Simple Habit how I wanted to bring the benefits of meditation to people because it helped me so much... Helping people continues to be my intention." So despite the rocky Shark Tank appearance, the world definitely hasn't heard the last of Kim. In fact, she's just getting started.