Category News & Announcements

In our early conversations as we prepare to raise our pre-seed investment round, there are five main questions we’ve continued to get. I’d like to address those here.

#1. Are there FDA or regulatory concerns? What about liability and litigation from consumers?

No. Since we’re not deploying into medical environments, making diagnoses, nor sending a signal through the brain (only reading existing brainwaves), we’re clear from a regulatory perspective. Our early adopters will be avid wellness tech enthusiasts who are more interested in getting their hands on the hottest new thing than jumping to sue if something isn’t perfectly right. We’ll need to include liability disclosure in “the small print” of course, and we already have corporate counsel ready to go on the sidelines who will connect us to the right tech-specific firm to handle this.

#2. How will you go up against big tech players already patenting and building comparable BCI?

We don’t see any of The Big 5 as direct competitors as much as potential acquirers down the line. Our form factor itself isn’t as defensible as what is does. Our moat is really our proprietary AI algorithm. Moreover, it’s our system–“brainwave to tech to content” for a wellness application. That capability will be hard for anyone to duplicate especially given our experience being in the 100+ clinics we’re in now, using that data to inform our app, and having the wellness background we do. Any innovation in the category is a net positive for us.

#3. Why would a consumer buy your earbuds versus regular ones and wellness apps they already use?

Existing earbuds and wellness apps aren’t cognitively connected. And, these are separate products. Sure, apps like Calm, Headspace, or even YouTube adapt based on how you use them. But they don’t operate based on how you think–on what’s going on inside of the brain. That’s our big value prop: using your brainwave data to guide your app experience. If you just want regular old earbuds, go for it. Our earbuds are merely a conduit to enabling a completely “neuropersonalized” device experience.

#4. Making and selling hardware is a difficult road. Why not stick to (or start with) software?

We know scaling the hardware piece will require tact and smart execution. Two things here: one, we are not a hardware company. We’ll sell hardware, but the value is in the experience of customizing your device interaction based on EEG data. That’s our focus. But we need hardware to do that. Two: we’re not set in stone on the hardware piece. We’re open to pivoting and innovating away from hardware if we find we need to. Our vision is to create an ecosystem of products, not to be beholden to earbuds. We can license either software or hardware, sell the rights to the hardware side of the business, or eventually evolve to not needing the hardware component in the future. But for now, it’s the most economical, efficient, minimalist form factor to enable our application.

#5. You guys already have traction with clinics. Why not stick to B2B? Why pivot to consumer?

The market cap is limited for B2B–there’s only so many psychotherapy clinics doing so many EEG tests per year (an active one might perform 6,000 in a year). But there’s virtually no ceiling on growth potential for consumer wellness. By 2030, that market will be worth $7 trillion. Numbers alone support our decision to go the B2C route. Eventually, BCI will become mainstream. It may take 10-12-15 years to get there but a technology this pioneering and innovative will become mass adopted on a global scale just like the iPhone did. We’re aiming to lead that charge–we can built it, we can ship it, and we can market it.

Please reach out to me directly with any further questions or clarification! I am here to help! Stay tuned and subscribe for more!

~ Michael

In November, our founding team had an amazing opportunity to travel to Dubai to attend, exhibit, and pitch our venture at the largest startup event in the world, GITEX’s annual North Star.

Since deeptech is the next big frontier, we weren’t surprised to meet a dozen or so other neurotech firms all doing innovative things in related fields, which further proved the efficacy of the space as a “next up” technology. This was good to see on an international scale.

This was our first in-person event as a founding team which made it all the more exciting, as well. This was also our first time revealing our “Phase II” to the world which is the consumer focus.

Almost all of the startups in attendance we tech firms. We’re incredible excited to be on the. very forefront of this mounting tidal wave that is human-computer interfacing.

One of the things we discussed as a team was the evolution of technology over the past decade and how the First Wave (Web 1.0) led into the Second Wave (Web 2.0). We’re noticing an acceleration in terms of both speed and capability, though, as the Third Wave continues to mature which will rapidly lead into the next wave, The Fourth Wave, which will be characterized by deep AI connected to BCI which will mark a major step-function change to the AI-driven technologies consumers are more or less used to by now.

Siri, Alexa, GPT, Cortana, voice search… these are all great, and they set the stage. But they require actively prompting the tech in order to get a desired result.

We don’t. The big value point with BCI is that it removes the work. You don’t need to think about it or do anything and it still works.

The wellness angle is extremely intriguing from this perspective. Let’s say I’m doing a dopamine detox. I’d program my chat-enabled app with my objective one time. Then I’d let it get to work. It may ask me if it can silence certain notifications and restrict access to Netflix and Facebook if it knows I’m over-stimulated using those apps. I’d simply tap “yes.” Then it may create a compilation of music frequencies specifically geared to suppress stimulation in the part of my brain associated with dopamine release to help me rebalance. Again, I tap “Listen” and there it is.

It’ll never override or dictate what I choose to think or do, always asking for approval to implement recommendations or to alter my feed. What’s cool, too, is that BCI tech like ours can filter through every single naturally-occurring brainwave pattern, feature, and amplitude… all of which have distinct meaning.

One of the “catch phrases” we came up with at the event that really stuck with us was, “imagine having complete cognitive control of your digital world.” That’s exactly what we’re building, and will be offering to the world, at scale.

Stay tuned for more by subscribing. Much more to come!

~ Michael