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About Selena

Selena is a sound therapy app for women, built at a kitchen table in London by a husband-and-wife team and their teenage son.

Available on iOS and Android. Free to try, with a Premium subscription that unlocks the full library.

The story

Valentina Sibilio worked in IT for over twenty years before she had enough.

In her mid-forties, she went back to university to study social work. Italian, London-based for fourteen years, mother of a teenager — she wanted to help people directly rather than ship software features for a living.

During a course on nervous-system regulation she came across binaural beats and sound therapy. The science had been sitting in academic journals for decades, but almost none of it had reached the women she was training to support: mothers managing burnout, women in perimenopause, the ones who wake up at 3am for no obvious reason and can't find their way back to sleep.

So she came home and told her husband Gio Scalzo, a software engineer, that they should build the app she wished existed. Not another productivity-flavoured meditation app. Something quieter. Something that felt like it had been made by a woman who actually needed it.

Their teenage son Luca took over the social channels.

Selena is the result: a sound therapy app for women, made in a small London flat by a family that uses it themselves.

Why Selena and not Neurona?

Selena shares its audio engine with Neurona, the team's earlier app for a general audience. Neurona proved the technology worked. Selena is the app Valentina wished existed when she realised how little of the research on sound therapy had been translated for the women she was training to support — in tone, in language, in the way it meets you when you open it at 3am.

The two apps are siblings, not duplicates. Neurona is calm and clinical. Selena is warm and unhurried. Same science underneath, different conversations on top.

Key facts

  • Founders: Valentina Sibilio (concept, research) and Gio Scalzo (engineering)
  • Social channels: Luca Scalzo (16, with parental supervision)
  • Based: London, UK
  • Team: Two founders plus one (family)
  • Publisher: Effective Code Ltd, an independent London studio
  • Platforms: iOS, Android
  • Languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean
  • Pricing: Free tier with limited library; Premium at £6.99/month or £39.99/year, with a 7-day free trial
  • Sister app: Neurona (getneurona.app)

What's in the app

  • 63 pre-built soundscapes across categories for sleep, focus, meditation, relaxation, and grounding
  • 25+ ambient sounds: rain, ocean, forest, fire, distant city, and more
  • 15 binaural beat presets across Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma states
  • Solfeggio frequencies (432Hz, 528Hz, and others)
  • Isochronic tones
  • Seven coloured noise generators (white, pink, brown, green, blue, violet, grey)
  • 3D spatial audio for immersive soundscapes (HRTF-based)
  • Sound mixing with individual volume control per layer
  • Smart timer with gentle fade-out
  • Backdrop mode for sleeping with the app open

The free tier includes a curated set of soundscapes, all seven noise generators, and a 30-minute timer cap. Premium unlocks everything, plus longer sessions (up to 12 hours) and multi-layer mixing.

Quotes (use freely, no permission needed)

Valentina, on why Selena exists

"I kept finding research papers on sound therapy that nobody outside academia had ever read. Meanwhile the women I was training to support were burning out, sleeping badly, and being told to download yet another meditation app. I wanted something that met them where they actually were."

Valentina, on what 'designed for women' means in practice

"It means quieter type. Slower onboarding. No streaks. No badges. No telling you that you've been bad for missing a day. The app waits for you. That's the whole brief."

Valentina, on the 3am audience

"There's a particular kind of awake that hits women in their forties at three in the morning. Most apps don't know that audience exists. We built Selena for them first, and worked outwards."

Gio, on the engineering

"The hardest part wasn't the audio. It was unlearning every loud, shouty, productivity-flavoured habit I'd picked up over twenty years of building software. Selena is the first app I've made where the design brief was 'don't try to be impressive'."

Visual assets

Available immediately:

Additional screenshots, founder photos, and a higher-resolution media bundle are available on request. Email [email protected] and we'll send the latest set.

Available for press

  • Written Q&A with Valentina Sibilio, co-founder. Two-day turnaround. Email your questions to [email protected].
  • Lifetime Premium access for journalists, no review obligation. Email and we'll send a one-page setup guide.
  • Per-outlet reader codes, available if you write about Selena. We'll generate a unique URL for your readers that grants free Premium on first install.

Valentina is happy to discuss her research background, the career pivot, the family dynamic of building the app, the choice to design specifically for women, and the science behind sound therapy. Live phone and video interviews are not available — written only.

Press contact

Selena is published by Effective Code Ltd, a London-based independent studio. Press contact: Luca Scalzo, with parental supervision.