How Prince Harry became celebrity frontman for a very questionable industry

Prince Harry is now chief impact officer for BetterUp, a Californian corporate consultancy whose ‘mission’ is to sell online life coaching with — in his words, — ‘innovation, impact and integrity’. Harry may not realise it, but he is the latest celebrity frontman for the rapidly growing, broadly unregulated and frequently dubious corporate ‘coaching’ industry. And you might not realise it, but Harry, Duke of Malibu is your future, because California’s today is America’s tomorrow and Britain’s next week.

BetterUp is one of a group of Californian companies on the growing, corporate edge of life coaching. Its competitors have names like Workbot, Hone and Clear Review and they all claim to have discovered the secret to improving motivation and productivity at every level of corporate life — using data modelling and artificial intelligence to target what BetterUp calls ‘hyperpersonalised coaching’ at every employee. Imagine Big Brother running the department of human resources in the voice of an especially insistent yoga instructor. Imagine a future in which your boss feels you’re not productive enough, so he sends you to online therapy to make you a better worker, and receives reports on your innermost emotions.

BetterUp was co-founded in 2013 by a 27-year-old Texan named Alexi Robichaux. At the time he was, he says, ‘bummed’ by his experiences as a Silicon Valley product manager and ‘soul-searching’ for a better way to do digital business: ‘I started to look for help and engaged in everything from executive coaching to life coaching to therapy to self-help books. I even walked across Spain on the Camino de Santiago.’ Robichaux says that his vision ‘crystallised’ on his pilgrimage: to ‘use technology to scale coaching and make the lives of millions of professionals better’.

BetterUp now calls itself the world’s largest coaching network. It has 270 full-time employees, and subcontracts the services of 2,000 coaches to more than 300 companies, including Nasa, Hilton, Chevron and Warner Media.