#19 - Nathalie Gouailhardou, Co-Founder of Neurode

0:00When I first flew into San Francisco, there was a batch of founders who were all raising at the same time. And we all started in January and seeing and checking in with them every month. Like people would drop out and give up and close our companies each month, each month, each month. We couldn't raise and like blame it on the market, blame it on this thing, blame it on that thing. And there was a small group of us, maybe like four or five that were just like relentless. We are not giving up on this rate. I don't care. We will like we will do it until someone gets it. So most people have probably never heard of Neurod.

0:32And so let's just start off with like, what is Neurod and why are you trying to solve like ADHD without the use of drugs? So Neurod is a startup that makes a wearable headband that treats and tracks ADHD, basically improving focus, memory and impulsivity in 20 minutes a day from home without drugs. And at its core, it is leveraging two technologies. One is for increasing brain activity. So it's the way that we improve focus. And then the second is, um, FNIRs or functional near infrared spectroscopy. And it's how we measure the brain. And that's the tracking part. And why do we do that? Um, I have ADHD.

1:17I'm also a neuroscientist and I've tried so many medications to try and improve my focus. And they just came with side effects that like were intolerable for me. And I think that has been echoed by a lot of people. Like not only do the side effects suck, they're hard to access. It's just really difficult. And so I wanted to have something that would improve my focus, not just in a day, but over time without the side effects. And so that's why we're working on Neurod. But outside of that, I mean, it's not just ADHD. I think the mission behind that mission is actually for us to understand our brains better because our brains influence everything we do um everything we think about uh and influence so much of how the the world like i guess it influences so much of how the world uh ends up because how we just the decisions we make um the discoveries we make the innovations we make all come from our brain so to be able to understand the brain will unlock so much more for i think humanity but then maybe more specifically for how we interact with our brains.

2:30So once we understand a system, we can influence it more. And so being able to do that would mean we could help not just ADHD, but a whole bunch of other brain-based conditions. I know that you were diagnosed with ADHD when you were like five. How did your family decide to go get you tested? And then what was it like growing up with ADHD? Yeah. So my parents didn't guess that I had ADHD. I my teachers called my I was five years old my teachers called my parents and they were like there's something not quite right with her they thought I was deaf um or blind because which is like it seems ridiculous it seems like a joke but that was genuinely the call my parents got they were like we think that she has hearing problems or vision problems because she's like you know in her own world sometimes we'll call on her in class and she will not respond um and we're not sure if she like can't hear us or if she can't like see what we're working on but there's something going on what you're like they're asking you to do yeah and so i think it was like and so they got my eyes checked they checked my hearing they were like my parents were like what do you mean she's like we definitely confirm that she can see and hear things um but yeah they got me tested um like for a whole bunch of other things and it was like no not my vision not my hearing not you know anything else.

3:48And eventually they were like, oh, it's she's not paying attention. So something that when I'm very focused or as a kid, very in my own world, in my own imaginary world, my internal world was as loud to me and as salient to me as the external world. And so when people were calling my name, it wasn't that I couldn't hear them physically. It's that like I was so absorbed in my own world that I couldn't like even hear when they were calling on my name. it like your your like internal stuff was just kind of like the overriding yeah thing and to be honest it's still like that like if i'm in hyper focus at work and someone like is like hey now no response you need to like physically tap me sometimes to get my attention if i'm really dialed in on something really um so yeah and yeah and so growing up with adhd like i mean my parents didn't make a huge deal of it i feel like pretty lucky in that sense like i think it's different for every person like what was right for me was to be like and you know she's fine just figure it out um and what might be right for someone else would be like okay we need like special uh like some people like really benefit from like special concessions and having like longer time on tests and things like that but I remember um for me what happened was they put me in special ed like special ed classes and I remember sitting in the assembly room for the special ed kids like spelling my name in plasticine being like something has gone very wrong I just remember like I like I have this vivid memory of like spelling my name in this like bright orange plasticine being like I don't know how I ended up here and then and then like two weeks later they moved me to like some accelerated classes and they were like okay so she doesn't need like special attention she needs maybe to be challenged and so then I went to accelerated classes and And that kind of also was difficult because I was like, yes, I'm challenged.

5:40But like, so like I can focus better here. But ultimately, I like, you know, regular classes were good. My parents tried medication for me. I constantly felt sick. And so they took me off it. And eventually, how many medications did you try before you just kind of like either found one that worked or stopped trying? Stopped trying. I don't know how many my parents gave me because they weren't like, you know, oh, we're like trying to treat your ADHD they were just like trying it and be like how do you feel um and like I eventually was like I feel sick on all these and I don't like it and then they stopped and I would be maybe like seven or eight I think when I stopped and then I tried again in high school because they were like your final exams are coming like you really want to like do well get in you get to like university and I was I had like never done homework at that point like I was one of the like kid like lucky kids that didn't have to do homework would just like be fine in class like even though i was really inattentive if i just like i could just get through school with decent you're smart enough to just like kind of coast or whatever yeah which really came back to bite me in the ass at university but um but still uh and then i tried different meds in high school i think i tried uh ritalin i tried dex which is uh methylphenidate i tried dexamphetamine isn't that like literally just meth it's a it's it is it is a it is an amphetamine um so it's in the same class of drugs it's pretty similar um it made me really wired and like I felt really weird at school because I think in high school you want to be you want to fit in and I already didn't fit in but then being like hyped like on stimulants um did not help so I really didn't want to take them and I felt really weird on them um and so yeah I ended up trying a couple things uh in grade 10 um and then was like no I can't do this yeah did you initially like get into or become interested in neuroscience because you had done this and kind of gone through this ordeal or was it just internal fascination I would like to say yes but to be honest I don't it wasn't the biggest thing that made me interested in neuroscience like my own personal ADHD journey I think because my parents were like, you know, for the most of it, they're like, you're fine.

7:55I, it was actually a little later that I, like, I think I always was fascinated by how our brains work. Maybe it was because I was a little like different at school that I was always like, like interested in how other people were, how they were. Like I was probably a little weird. And so like other people's internal worlds just fascinated me always. Like, you know, when you like go to family reunions and stuff and see family members that you haven't seen for ages and they pinch your cheeks and like, I've known you since you were this big. Like that, those kind of aunties would always tell me, you know, you were the strangest kid.

8:26Like you used to come up to us when we were like the adults were talking, you'd be like, what are you thinking about? Like, do you remember your dreams? Like you would ask the weirdest questions like to all the adults. And so I think I was always inquisitive about people's internal worlds. And then after high school, started getting really, really interested in how our brains work just because of how little we understand about our brains, but how impactful that understanding would be. And I was like, how can it be that we understand so much about so much of the body, but not our brains, when our brains influence our everyday life the most?

9:02and so really it was like a fascination with understanding the brain for what that would unlock for humanity more than my own personal experience but yeah yeah so when you got to college I believe you studied in Sydney yeah right yeah UNSW yay so I know you met your co-founder Damien at university can you like tell me the story of how that happened how we met yeah um Yeah. So I decided to join the Latin Dance Society because because the university was like I was like the kind of I took I kind of got really into studying at university for the first time in my life. So school, I was the kid that never did any homework, just like showed up and luckily did OK.

9:53University was the first time where I actually had to like learn to study and then I got really into it and so I was like I took I don't know why I took university so seriously but I was like and so I thought Latin dance would be a good way to like have fun because you kind of can't not be smiling and laughing while trying to do Latin dance for the first time like in a group in front of people um especially like it was um like mostly uh like science like stem kids so just the awkwardest people you could imagine trying to do latin dance it was hilarious so i joined and i started talking to someone um while we're dancing like what do you study oh i study this what do you study and then i somehow went on like this rant about how uh like the intersection of neuroscience and technology and how impactful it would be for humanity to this poor unsuspecting like other student and Damien was dancing with someone next to me and he heard me talking about it and then he jumped and he was like while we're dancing with other people he's like I'm really into this too so we started like a parallel conversation um because like you could see this other person's eyes are just glazed over um and so we started chatting and then we were like do you want to switch dance partners okay cool and we switched uh dance partners and started dancing and mostly just talking about our obsession with what can be done with him on the hardware and digital signal processing side, which is really his passion, and me on the neuroscience side.

11:28And within two weeks, we had agreed to do a skill swap where he would teach me hardware, electronics, and digital signal processing. And I would teach him how to interpret the data and add that domain knowledge to it. And yeah, within two weeks, we had ordered electronics from China, started building EEGs, EMGs, all these different things to measure the brain and body. And yeah, what were the first kind of like not necessarily products, but, you know, when you were tinkering on stuff with him, what were the first few things that you guys made together? EEG and EMG. So measuring brain waves and muscle changes in like muscle.

12:09um and so yeah we thought like oh and heart rate sensors as well they're all basically very similar electronically and so we were like we kind of you can build like them all pretty uh just like measuring pulses it's measuring changes in electromagnetic fields generated by uh your heart rate your muscles and your brain um muscle ones are nice and big our brain ones are really tiny um and so yeah uh we like we're coming up with these like elaborate use like useless use cases like wouldn't it be cool if we went to a party and gave everybody a heart rate sensor but also tracked your location and then we like mapped on an like some kind of like digital artwork where everybody was at the party and when people interacted with each other like did their heart sync and we were planning to these things um you can imagine we were very cool at parties um but yeah that's what we are that's what we're building yeah why why did you decide to not like start a company with him in college because we were so obsessed with the stuff we were learning like we were we were the people who were like like i damien and i both were like working in labs for the whole of our degree obviously for free sometimes paid um so we would bug all of our professors to be like can we come in the lab we want to see what you're doing we want to like be a part of it how can i help i think damien was doing really cool stuff like he was uh working with one professor doing um a lidar sensor for when people fall in their homes or he was he was working in quantum computing he was building like his own projects like a shoe that would for blind people that would detect when you were going to fall or something was in your or something was in the way of your foot you know and he had a really good name for it he called it hap kicks like because it would it would vibrate like haptically on your shoe so like we were just like he was doing that i was um bugging all my professors to let me in their um labs like doing like rodent experiments like little brain surgeries and measuring their brain activity while doing different things um so yeah we're just really engaged in the stuff we're learning i don't know what the uh company is called that you went to work for but what was the you were building these machines that cost a whole lot of money i think at like five hundred thousand dollars or something for measuring brains in some way.

14:27Yes. What was the inception of like the idea for Neurod while you were working there? So I was working at a bionics company. We were doing predictive models of cochlear implant success. So like, how do we know before you do your surgery if your surgery is going to work well? And basically this is about modeling neuroplasticity. So how your brain changes and adapts over time. So when you put an implant in, you need to now relearn how to interpret those electrical signals as meaningful sound. And so I was building this model with data collected by a half a million dollar, bigger than a fridge, FNES machine.

15:05So FNES is functional near infrared spectroscopy. It's a way of using light to measure changes in blood oxygenation. And we use that to learn about brain activity. So similar sort of metrics to MRI. And what I learned in that role, which I think is probably pretty contrarian to where the whole sort of field was moving at the time, which was everyone was saying the data is not good. Like the data is not high quality enough. We need more sensors, bigger equipment, which resulted in more expensive equipment. And my experience from that work was actually the data was pretty good. Our models were good.

15:40But it wasn't translating into the real world. It was really disappointing for me in my first job. I was like shiny eyed out of university and then built the models and they were pretty good and seeing them not translate, ultimately not being able to help people because it just didn't make sense within the healthcare system. It was too expensive. It was inconvenient. It was all these things. And so I realized, actually, if we could make these devices smaller, less expensive, more accessible and kept the data quality the same, like, and just had more data, because obviously if your device is big and expensive you are limited on the amount of data you can have so actually if the data quality is the same and we have like 100x more data would that be impactful and so i thought yes um and like the work i had doing had indicated to me that that would probably be the case and so i called damien who was finishing up his postgrad in physics at the time um and i was like like is this a physics thing like is it a physical property of the world and how these things work yeah is it just like not possible to make these small people like yeah and he spent like a long time well he just kind of got obsessed with it for like two weeks really trying to find a reason why not and he came back and he was like i genuinely i don't know if i'm an idiot here but like i could not find a reason why we couldn't and so then we just like started we started um like he's such a legend like he was finishing up his thesis while starting to work on this project with me still won like best thesis award at university and um and started neurodemy at the same time and i quit my job and we just started building and then within like a couple months we had 100x cost and size reduced the core technology um without any loss in data quality and that's really impactful because today like if you think about even mris which is like the gold standard of high quality brain imaging um people might get one mri in their lifetime they may not get any it's just a huge hassle it's huge and it's so expensive and like the kind of disorder like the severity of disorder you would have to have in order to get mris every year is like pretty significant and so we don't actually know what the brain looks like on a daily basis and so the cool thing about neurod i think is that while we're solving a problem for people like we're improving their focus memory for adhd we're also imaging their brain every day to actually understand um what is what the human brain looks like on a day-to-day what fluctuations is significant and what fluctuations are just normal and so and like background noise and so it's kind of like a first to start understanding that and i think you know the nerd in me is super excited by that but also i think there's like a huge amount that we can do with that data to basically help people um navigate yeah understand how their brains work better but also that means we can help navigate like brain-based conditions so much more effectively yeah how long did it take in between i know that you said like a few months how many iterations did you make of you know going from zero to something that was actually usable functional um i'll show you in the other room we actually like have a wall of all the different versions we're currently at six v 6.4 really uh yes and so many uh but no it's been like uh you know like the iterate the size the jump of iterations like that we're doing has obviously reduced because we started out with a um like a pretty big pcb and it was not like it was not comfortable or no no no it was taped together it was crazy um and then i think two or three iterations in we were at like the general form factor and then we it became more like optimizing performance and also optimizing usability and so that's why we came with the so it used to be something that was like this and everyone said it looked like a vr headset and we were like true it does so then we changed the the shape again um and it was comfortable but only within like the kind of few i imagine like a bell curve only within like the highest average of head sizes and then so we started changing mechanics and now we can fit like i would say like 95 percent of head sizes and shapes which is cool when did you decide um to first start so i know that you started the company in like 2021 one uh when was the first time that you were like okay we need to take this seriously and like make this a company i think it was the first and like i want to say our core technical innovation on the brain imaging side when we were when we got that data back so basically we had built this thing we then went into the lab like i called like lucky we had been like kind of became friends with our professors because we were always like working for them through university so i called them and i was like can i come into your lab do you have one of these machines we've just built something and we want to see if ours like works as well as yours does um and they were used to this as a point like our professors had lent us so much lab equipment over the years of us like trying to do stuff um and so it's when we saw those readouts and the data was like exactly the same and we were like oh shit did we actually do something here yeah this is actually really cool um like we could have kind of couldn't believe it ourselves um and it was then when we were like okay this is gonna be really impactful we just need to figure out like now that like this and there's to be clear on like many technical um hurdles that we've like this was maybe four months into working on this that this happened um maybe a little less maybe three months um but and there was many technical hurdles after that but it kind of became then the question of like in what scenario does it make sense for people to measure their brain daily and like what is the value that they get from doing that, which allowed us to kind of like zoom in.

21:20Wait, so did you guys initially start this with just thinking about measuring brain activity and not at all about the ADHD part? No, not at all. Okay, so how did you make that transition? Yeah, I think it was like this interesting like collision between my personal life and and scientific interests and damien's as well so we started out obviously brain data nerds um really excited about like this didn't start off like we should start a company it started off as like wouldn't it be incredible if we could measure our brains in the real world yeah and then we were like well now that we know that we can like the world you change it is where you're like okay we can measure the brain in the real world how is this helpful to people and then i was like well I've been looking for drug-free treatment for my ADHD.

22:09I've been researching what the options are given like the general like medical view is like medication or therapy. And so I had been looking into a type of non-invasive brain stimulation that a type of non-invasive brain stimulation that boosts brain activity. And it was typically done in research or in clinics. And I was like, this is really cool. One, it's super, it's like$30 ,000 to get it done in clinics. so expensive for 30 sessions and it's a thousand dollars a session it's really yeah because you need like it's in a full um clinic and they do like measurements first and it's not always available for adhd it's most commonly used in depression and it was like all these very and but the the latest research was using a new waveform it was like limited and very expensive in clinic and then in research they were doing all the cool stuff um but it hadn't like made its way out and one of the limiters to that was measuring the brain in the real world and so being able to measure the brain allows us to personalize that therapeutic and um or that that stimulation and improve the efficacy of it so i was like oh this is so perfect because once we had built the brain measurement device we were thinking to ourselves like in what situation would we want to measure the brain like why would you as a person in the world get value from brain measurement actually adopt this yeah and we were like oh we need to solve a problem for people and while there is a greater problem which is we can't measure the brain and we don't understand the brain what's the more immediate problem that we can solve for people while moving this mission forward and that's when i was like oh this would really help me if like we just like looked at ourselves like how would this help me like why would i do it and then adhd was like the main thing um i love I love that you like started out just wanting to basically collect data on people's brains and then you had to transition into this because it just made sense for like a business.

24:05Well, even before, even more than just a business, we were like, if we had technology that can measure the brain in real world, which we now do, would people do it? No, you need the data. Like, and people will like, and you need a lot of data and people aren't going to want to do that just for philanthropic reasons. reasons and like we realized that if we wanted to like action on this mission of like having the world's largest brain data sets that we could improve the way we navigate and and treat brain-based conditions then we would need a lot of data and we can't get a lot of data if people aren't like bought in to if they're not getting some value every single day they won't put it on so this wasn't even like this wasn't even like us thinking about a business yet this is all us thinking about like how do we get lots of brain data so we can do really helpful things with it um and then we're like we need a reason for people to get value today from it so that they will um so they get value while investing in this like longer term value because you know we're like well this longer term monkeys yeah exactly so we need a short-term uh benefit and like that's been really incredible because stimulation's been really huge for me like improving my focus and things like that so there's just been um so much benefit to it um and yeah i guess at that point when we started thinking about like oh okay now we want to do the next iteration and the next iteration and we've already spent a lot of savings on this probably need some money um given it's hardware and then we started thinking like yes okay we should incorporate this as a company and maybe go raise some money yeah exactly yeah uh for the first like tests uh for the first how big was the first batch of people that you like used as beta testers 20 20 did you assemble everything and make everything, you know, in this house or another house?

25:49Or did you like have to fly to China and go talk with people? We flew to China for the first time this week. Last week. Oh, really? Yeah. So we did order the parts from China. So that's the enclosure, the mechanical and the electrical parts. And then everything was like QA tested, so quality tested, and then functional tested here and assembled. Okay. What was the biggest feedback from that first group of 20 people?

26:21So many things. I think I'm so glad we started with 20 as well, like really small so we could give them a really amazing experience. I think it was interesting to us to see the way that people – we thought that like everyone was most excited about the brain measurement because we were most excited about the brain measurement. but people were most excited about the stem obviously that's what's solving their problem so people were what surprised us was like how excited people were about um doing stem for adhd we call it stem it's the brain stimulation and um the people wanted more sessions because in our planning we were like let's try and make this as easy as possible let's do like 15 minutes or 20 minutes and make it something that like fits into their day so much and then within like a week or to people were like how do i do more stim sessions a day um like i want to put more i want to do more of this is there any reasons not to there is a cap like that we think is a good idea like i guess uh we're like limited by the existing research and so the research generally shows up to an hour being like totally all good so we probably wouldn't go above that until we have our own research to show that that's a good idea um but we started at 20 minutes um and we still haven't increased it yet but i think we'll look at doing two sessions per day or a 40 minute sessions people can get um like more benefit but we definitely um you know we'll stick to what has been like you know well proven yeah what is what has been your uh process for like iterating from the first design to what you have now and what you're actually like you know the trial three that you're about to start i think it's just like constantly like it really depends And it's hard to answer because we do hardware, firmware, software, and there's so much iteration across all three.

28:13I think it's just classic iteration where it's like, all right, what do we think this needs to do and have? And how do we think it needs to perform? Let's build that. What's the earliest version of that we can build? And then sometimes we'll get a little carried away and build the coolest version that we really want. But we try to keep it very like what's the minimum cool thing that it needs to do. And then try it with the team. Iterate it. Try it with users. Iterate it. But I think on the electronic side, it's much more like functional performance. Like how do we, yeah, like really improve the signal quality or the data quality.

28:54And that's also true firmware. And then software is where it gets into the fun, like user stuff. Yeah, I know that you talked about like trying to create a 10 star experience. And I was kind of wondering, can you talk about how you came to that initially? Or like who inspired you? You know, it's funny because I think you actually told me that Brian Chesky talks about 10 star experience. but like because i'm so like out of the loop on like all the like cool things that everyone like i mean i obviously like i'm like huge fan of brian chesky but it's actually my friend today who told me about like he uh we were like uh he's a founder of a really cool company called um but we were just having a like catch up after work and he and we were talking about product and he was like let's envision our 10 star experience and we were like you know oh so he just like Yeah, yeah, yeah.

29:52And then he just like asked me that question. I was like, we usually think of it as like, what is the future of our product? Like imagining the future. But I think thinking about a 10 star experience is like a different, it's slightly different in a way that makes you think about it a little differently. So that was really valuable. So thanks to having, it's good to have found a friend. yeah um what do you think the like advantages or have there been any advantages or disadvantages to being based in like sydney instead of san francisco or somewhere else there's definitely pros and cons to it um obviously like you're here in sydney it's beautiful um we're like like sweating doing this right now it's very hot um but it is the middle of summer um but But yeah, it's a great place to live.

30:41I think the great thing about doing a startup in Sydney, in Australia generally, is we have the R &D grants that are really incredible. So you get 43 cents back for every dollar you spend on R &D, which for us is most of what we do. I mean, obviously, we've been launching our beta. So now we're doing more user-facing stuff. But for almost four years, we were purely R &D. So that really, really helped with extending our runway. um and then also there's a lot of talent in sydney in australia um and there are not as many really exciting startups so being an exciting yeah and like being something where you're doing something impactful for the world genuinely novel technology like uh like a young cool dedicated team um who are like really like exceptional at what they do like there's not that many opportunities to do that in sydney and so you have a bit of advantage in assembling a really good team i think um downsides uh it's hard to raise money in sydney i find like it's much better in san francisco and then also uh it's much lonelier in sydney like there's not a lot of other founders i mean there are incredible sydney and australia-based founders to be clear but there's just much less of them and we're all over the place between sydney melbourne queensland so and i'm sure everywhere else but but it's not like you just walk into it's not dense shop and like it is in san francisco yeah and there's and so it's a lot more lonely um whereas i find in san francisco everybody's ambitious everybody's high agency like uh you feel less like a crazy person like you're like oh there are other people like me uh in the world um i i the first time going to san francisco was so like affirming for me because i was like whoa there are like are other people um like me and i'm not like that crazy um or that intense like i find in sydney i feel like I'm a very intense person and I am an intense person but at least in San Francisco I find other people as intense as me where I feel like chill um or not chill but like equally as intense and here um yeah it's a lot lonelier as a founder um and also I think there's opportunities like that just uh naturally occur when you're walking around San Francisco and then being there that you would not find in Sydney.

32:58So I currently we do 50 50, like I'm 50 50 between Sydney and SF. And I feel like I get the best of both worlds by doing that. Yeah. Um, so I know like at this, at the core, you're just like gathering a whole bunch of brain data and I'm kind of wondering what are future things that you think you can solve? Like right now you're solving, we're trying to solve ADHD. What other like mental disorders are you going to try and tackle? Yeah. I mean, the cool thing is that the brain data actually allows us to find and improve other conditions more. So the core improver is actually the stimulation. That's the thing that's going to improve other mental health conditions.

33:40But the way that we find those out is by looking in the data. And so the conditions we're really interested in outside of ADHD is age-related cognitive decline. Obviously, our population is aging and we want to be able to use our brains more effectively for longer. And there's a really good candidate. So we focus on the prefrontal cortex. That's the area responsible for focus, memory, impulse control, also decision making, planning, like so many different things. And we're also looking at anxiety and potentially depression. But we're very focused on ADHD right now. And I think it'll be a little while till we explore those.

34:17But I think what's impactful is that with the same hardware, we're able to address those other conditions. And I think that'll be really exciting. And then from there, like what would that potentially look at like improving focus, memory impulsivity for everyone so we can all, you know, perform at our best and reach our potential? How do you think about having like a co-founder and would you even start a company if you didn't know Damien?

34:47i kind of can't imagine doing this without him like he's my best friend we've been best friends for like seven years more um and i don't know i really couldn't imagine doing it with anyone else and there's something like uh really complimentary about your two personalities yeah we're like almost exact opposite so um it makes things really like it means that we always like when making decisions we bring usually very different points of view to this decision um or like perspectives to any conversation and we usually find something like either in the middle or on either extreme depending on who knows more about the situation and I think that like it's really nice to have like a well-rounded understanding of most things between our different skill sets um and different approaches to risk and different approaches to like everything and also just having someone to talk to about all the stressful moments and that you're not going through it alone I think is just like so critical to this like being like more a marathon than a sprint like we're for and a bit like surviving yeah surviving and like met like with with your like mental health intact because I think we're both like having a lot of fun and um like really enjoying it and i think a huge part of that is sharing it with someone um because when you're stressed you're like in the shit together and when things awesome happens you're like hell yeah like you have someone to high five someone to cry next to someone to high five like i think uh i don't know if i could do it alone but like when i see solar founders i'm like that's incredible but i don't i don't know if i could yeah it's just incredibly hard um how did you so i really like your like six core values and I'm kind of curious how you find people who are really aligned with those things for like hiring I think we kind of test them out in hiring sometimes and I don't know if I should give these all away because now maybe people if anyone listens to this and they come for an interview with us they'll know but yeah I'll tell you um well first of all I'm super I'm a pretty direct person um so I I'm like pretty transparent around what it's actually like working at Neuron in terms of like it's difficult and it's not like a nine-to-five and all those kind of things um and I think people who are excited by like technical challenge and find that exciting getting in the trenches yeah are like that's what I'm looking for I'm not looking for a job that I like check in check out um and so there's that uh and then things around our our um core values like integrity or intellectual honesty we will you know how everyone on their on their resume uh will like really embellish what it is they're done sometimes we'll be like it's incredible that you have achieved so much like you did this entire a project like we'll overplay their like achievement and we'll check if they go no this is the role specifically that i played within that like if they don't we will ask them like specifically what did you do but like we first start by being like to see if it's like kind of if they'll be like yeah and if they yes and you on the like you know like on the bullshit yeah on the bullshit or if they like correct you and say actually no this is part of a team effort specifically i did this because intellectually honest people with high integrity will do that um so like little things like that what other what other like tricks do you have um oh we've like i think there's just little things that you pick up about uh we have these like little like ideas like some of the we're very lucky to get to work with like some really incredible people um and we have this idea and if it's true that certain like great let's say uh electronics engineers will speak in a specific way and it's so far been true um like regardless of like age gender anything um like a great electronics engineer will be so detailed because they're obviously an ltm on these tiny like little uh really dense electronic boards they will edit themselves as they speak they will like they'll say something and decide that that word isn't precise enough and like interrupt their own sentence and change it and then to the point where you're like i don't know what we're talking about anymore but you got the right word and so um they'll like almost like zoom in on their own ideas like to a point of like specificity which is a very helpful for electronics engineering not so much for software but it's like um it depends but we've found these little like tells of um good engineers for different different areas of engineering that's awesome um what do you think like in the next you know 24 months what are going to be some of like the big milestones for this?

39:38I think in the next 24 months, the thing I'm most excited about is just getting to interact with more users. And so the kind of expanding our beta and allowing, that means we can get more feedback on the product and iterate it more. And so really, the year is going to be filled with iteration until we see like our goal metrics around how many, like how much we can help people, which is also related to how much they use the products So usage, because the more you use it, the better your results are going to be. And so it's kind of really tied in. So it's beneficial for everybody that we figure out how to make this really fun and beneficial to use daily.

40:18And so that's one of our goals in our beta. Have you noticed that people actually, like once they try it, they really just stick with it and keep on doing it? So far. So far. So far. And it's interesting because, and I'll get into it in a second. And the other thing is retention. So like if people are receiving value from it, obviously they will keep using it. And so we want to make sure that we're able to deliver a large amount of value to lots of people continuously through the beta. And then we're also going to look at exploring an FDA submission. So we've already done a clinical trial, seen really exciting results, and we want to take the next steps towards FDA.

40:59So far with our beta, you asked if we've seen like I'm using it. in our first month like 80 the first month of a beta cohort um like i think it's 85 or 87 percent of people see meaningful improvements in their first month and yeah and like generally the people who are seeing meaningful improvements are using it frequently obviously and so and they continue to do so because like once you've seen the benefit and have that aha moment you don't want to stop yeah yeah yeah okay um how do you have any other stories that are like really good but i just didn't know to ask it was our first proper fundraise um so we had like angel checks right at the beginning but it was our first time doing um like meeting bcs yeah and so we we didn't necessarily know what we were doing um so but you know we had the product it was work we had a really cool demo um but it was really like a process of learning like how to tell the story and how to like package what we're doing in a way that made sense.

42:07It definitely didn't make sense for lots of VCs. Like I think we had like, we met with like 60 people and they didn't get it. What were their main like complaints or why did they say no? The classic, this is too early. What does that mean? But yeah, we had a lot of that. There were a few VCs who have to say were like really awesome and spent time, had like actually booked a call to tell us no and tell us why they no no but this is good because they told us why they said no and they actually gave good reasons what were those reasons i can't remember now but it was like things around like uh and the thing is we're still in touch with them and there are things that we couldn't like do they weren't like i don't like this company they're like the ones who spent the time with us were like i would want to come in like when i've seen these things um uh or they just like didn't agree that you know adhd like they didn't think adhd like was a big market or mattered um or was the right use case yeah that we got that um so like there's many things um but really it was just like we had like the technical innovation and our team and so basically i think what it was is like we don't believe in you guys right like it's probably that fundamentally we don't believe in you yeah like you suck um so i I think, and no, like obviously it was, it's on us to like give people a feeling that they should believe in us.

43:31And so maybe I wasn't doing a brokerage of that, which is very believable. It was like my first raise, but it was really, really tough to, and I think, you know, every founder experiences this. Like you have a call, you like pitch your little heart out. You really believe in what you're doing and you just, everyone's like, no, no. And so it just feels like these gut punches every time. and the hard thing is like keeping the level of conviction that you have when people constantly tell you no um but yeah which was hard and I think like um it was such like it kind of makes me feel like good thinking back about it because even though it's really rough we ultimately met um the the guys at Crystal Ventures and they like instantly believed in us and it was really cool to see because it was like it showed us like why did they have an instant conviction what did you what did you guys do what did you show them we showed them the product we did the demo and they like understood they just got it intuitively yeah they just got it and i think that really like made me realize that um it's not necessarily about like it's very difficult to convince someone something about the world that they don't believe um if they if they if they fundamentally don't believe it and so then i started realizing it's not about like it's about finding people who already see the future of the world that you are trying to create yeah like you see the world one way and you see a path to a bit like a different a world where it looks different in a good way and they like also see that and they're and then so all you need to do is show them like the plan you have for enacting that um and i feel like if your plan makes sense and you've got like some show of like hey like this uh like i built a thing it works like these are the next steps these make sense because like i think these make sense you also think these make sense given like we're seeing the world in a similar way it's a lot it makes a lot more makes it a lot easier of a conversation rather than um trying to convince someone the world is fundamentally different than how we think it is yeah yeah like yeah exactly um but i remember like a specific day I had flown to health health is like a big healthcare conference in in Vegas um and I just arrived and I opened up my laptop and I see like five no's and I just like it was so rough I just like I start crying in a Starbucks and then and like two hours from then I had to like get on like a like a stage and pitch to like all the people like so many people and I was like I'd seen five no's and I just felt like I remember feeling so like heartbroken just because it was like uh Damien's depending on me like this is my this is like I have to do this thing because other people like Damien have dedicated his like the last few years of his life to this me too our team and like oh no I'm gonna be a failure and I have to call my parents and be like I couldn't do it um and I remember just crying and like calling my parents I'd be like what if I can't do it and I'm like it's fine I'm calling Damien like what if I let you down he was like you're not going to let me down um and like I think the resilience that like one support from everyone they're like you're not going to let us down and like it really showed me the resilience I have so like I think it was I kind of think back on it really fondly because it like pulled that resilience out of you to be like no I am I can do this we're gonna do it um stop crying get it together get on stage pitch again keep the conviction like uh it was it was it was when you know the movie moment like I often think of my hype as a movie but you know the movie moment where it's like you're down on your luck like nothing's going right everything's going and you have to make a decision and like that's the decision is we're not giving up and when I first flew into San Francisco there was a batch of founders who were all raising at the same time we all started in January and seeing and checking in with them every month like people would drop out and give up and close our companies each month each month each month we couldn't raise and like blame it on the market blame it on this thing blame it on nothing and there was a small group of us maybe like four or five that were just like we relentless we are not giving up on this raise I don't care we will like we will do it until someone gets it um we had plans for me and Damien had made like cockroach mode plans this is what we're gonna do until we like get to if we're too early what are we gonna do to get to the next milestone with the same amount of money that we have like how how do we do this there was like never a world in which we didn't do it and so you're just gonna make it happen 100 yeah we never entertained like there wasn't even a thought that like had occurred to was that we weren't going to do it um and I think that yeah it kind of reminds me of when we first started Neurod and I went to our like my university professors the people that I looked up to um so much through my university career um and I said to them like guys I'm going to start this thing uh here's my idea here's the science behind the idea that you know I've come up with around stimulation and monitoring and personalizing it and um all these things and they were like don't do it it's not going to work like i don't think the science is strong enough i don't think it's gonna work now obviously now we've done a clinical trial no they didn't believe in that in this they were like i science is a really weird consensus thing because you think that it requires like and it does require like novel innovative ideas that you then use the scientific method to demonstrate does or doesn't like to you know build up evidence for and against this this principle um but it's weird it's a weird consensus thing where people in academia it's easier to say you're right more of the time and it's easier to say it's not going to work than to believe that it is and so uh some of my professors it's it was easier and they'd more likely be right to tell me don't do it it's not going to work than to say like go for it go for it try doing new like novel something novel and like both in science and engineering and so they like talked me they were trying to talk me out of it don't do it um and I just kind of felt like no like hell no um like fuck you guys like I I I don't know something in me was just like no this is what like how is science going to or like yeah how is science and innovation going to progress progress if we take this like this viewpoint i think like we should do it anyway and so when i got um the clinical trial results from our studies uh being like as exciting as they were and i was like yes like i knew it i knew we shouldn't like um i mean i didn't know it there's many times where i like but yeah i felt like yes i knew it although obviously there were many times like oh my god what if what if this and like what if this what if that there's many cycles of like refinding conviction on our core idea re drawing out the logic behind the core tech like I did this so many times um every time I would lose conviction I would like have to rediscover the idea and re work through like the principles behind it the core thinking to refine conviction but when those study results come out yes and the coolest thing was that one of my professors like two years later called me saying like i want to start a startup can you give me like and commercialize this research that i'm really excited about like can we talk about it and it was so cool to really encourage him to do that um yeah and so it's a very um full circle moment but i think that like basically the thread there is like being really resilient whether it's like fundraising like people just like always telling you know have you ever have you tried to be kind of a voice of when have you met with any founders who considered or were considering like giving up or whatever and you helped them steer actually a better path yeah um one of my founder friends um called me and did the traditional like feces suck they don't get it like this is like they're i'm giving up and i was like and i gave them the i was like no one check throw that victim mindset right like out of the door like do you hear yourself too like it was like a it was like a staged intervention um and his company's amazing and i was like we're not you're not there's no way you're throwing this away like get it together this is gonna be this is like your movie moment this is your turnaround like i feel like the way i think narrative in your own world is so helpful to like being resilient where you tell yourself the story of what's really happening um because you can tell yourself the story of like investors are not getting it and the world is against what i'm trying to do and this is you know like really hard and not possible and therefore i should give up or you can tell yourself the story of like this is what did i expect it to be easy this is obviously challenging this is my this is a bump on the road like this is and when i hit the other side it's gonna feel so good because I had this like extra challenge um and so yeah I sat him down and I was like we're not you're not doing that I'm gonna keep going um and your company's incredible you just need like one person to recognize that and this is your this is your like comeback story and yeah he kept doing going and actually like because I was so adamant that he not quit I was And I will introduce you to every, not that anyone's interested in my company at this point, but like I will introduce you to every VC I know.

53:22And then actually he's from San Francisco, but funnily enough, an Aussie investor that I introduced him to ended up investing in his company. And yeah, and they're doing really well. And he just submitted to the FDA, like, I don't know. Is he another like health, health company? Yeah. Awesome. So glad for the world that, that he didn't give up. Yeah. Yeah. What is, so final question. What's the hardest thing you've overcome? I think the hardest thing I've done is working on Neurod, but also the like most rewarding and most fun I've ever had. Um, for all the same reasons, like you're navigating the unknown constantly, um, over an extended period of time, you make a lot of sacrifices, um, in like your everyday life in order to do something like exceptional.

54:10And I think like trying to do something exceptional is like the first step of actually doing it. But then you also have to make exceptional sacrifices and like live a very different like lifestyle than a lot of your friends probably um maybe not if you live in San Francisco you really care about it and yeah yeah um yeah and like the amount of self-belief is insane and I think that uh it's something that like I've definitely like been building up like I wasn't I'm not the person who like was just born being like you know I can do literally anything and like I'm amazing like How do you think you like went about building up that conviction in yourself to a point where you can actually say, fuck you, these people that you looked up to?

54:55I mean, and obviously, but yeah, I don't I think. that's where having a co-founder is really um helpful because often your co-founder kind of like your best friends see you in a way that you don't even see yourself so having like support from them to be like oh my god I don't know what I'm doing like everyone just told me like everyone I looked up to just told me this was a bad idea and then being like no you went from first principles like you're good you're a good neuroscientist you understand like you went from first principles you have this idea there's no reason just because these four people said it wasn't gonna it doesn't actually change any of the logic behind this like no we're gonna keep trying to do this um like do you still believe a one plus one equals two like in your own you know first principles logic as to why this would work and i'm like yes and you're like okay well so like that doesn't change anything um so having that person um who sees you as smarter than you see yourself more capable is really helpful but then also I like to like remind myself I'm like of like my life that things that I've done so far and I'm like has anything not worked out in any like horrible way like no difficult things have happened many many times but like you've never not overcome them like you're still doing the thing um and so i try to remind myself i've done really hard things and i've overcome everything so far so hopefully why wouldn't i be able to do okay yeah this probably i've heard why wouldn't i be able to do this next time um yeah i've heard i've heard sam uh altman talk about basically when you know the first like world shattering everything's failing uh event happens it's really scary but when the seventh or eighth when happens at that point you're like okay well I got past the last seven or eight so it's probably fine exactly um and then I find it really helpful uh I question everything I'm like always questioning uh everything around me and therefore also always questioning my own logic and my own ideas and so this can be really helpful but it can also get to a point where it's not helpful or like I think it's always helpful but it's not always pleasant and so um like you know for me and so uh I find it helpful when I have a like I'm in a moment of like doubting something to like be like all right well like let's rework through first principles ideas of this and like do I still like end up in the same place and if not cool and I ended up I I understand something more deeply now and I have like more conviction on it and so I can believe in myself and it more strongly or it's the same thing in which case I'm like cool another the point of like thumbs up towards this idea and um and it gives me like more confidence to to do it also uh i try to like i have like songs that make me like pump me up and make me like believe that anything's possible so i remember i i don't know if this is right but i'm pretty sure that travis kalanick uh from uber had like a playlist that he would do before investor meetings or whatever in the early days yeah uh yeah um oh and like optimistic nihilism really helps okay so tell me about optimistic nihilism this is a big thing but it's like uh basically the idea that like you're basically insignificant like the universe doesn't really care about you you're just like a speck so that's very freeing because it gives you the like it reminds you that you're not like the center of your own like yes you're the center of your own universe but like you're basically insignificant so you can fail massively and nothing matters no one cares you can like succeed really incredibly and nobody cares like hopefully the world's better but like even earth doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of like the universe potentially like through but like that is can be really positive because it allows me to try really hard like try anything um and know that like the outcome to the greater world doesn't really matter so it's just you just succeed eventually it'll be okay and if i don't it also doesn't like nobody tried at least like in my own personal world yes it'll be devastating and i'll be crushed and all those things but like um really nobody else cares and it's like it gets rid of only like anything around embarrassment any caring about what anyone else thinks any like fear of like like public failure Yeah.

59:33It's really just like me being, you know, disappointed in my own, like, self and my own, like, not reaching any potential that I think I have or want to have an impact that I want to have. But I still I also want to know, how did you come to the kind of like mental framework of questioning everything? It's kind of I feel like this is very similar to just asking why a whole lot. And you basically kid. Yeah, well, I know. I mean, it's funny that you'd call it that and people might consider like a kid asking why a bunch as annoying but then when it comes to you know building a company it's actually extremely useful uh to be constantly got like questioning the requirements and stuff and like you know i know that elon talks a lot about like you know does the uh is it like a law of physics or is it just some law someone made up and maybe that law can be changed yeah true literally the question that started everything with neuro like is this a physics thing i think being deeply curious as a person like i always have been and always just wanting to understand why things work how they work it's why i studied neuroscience it's why damien studied physics it's like we just both had questions about how and why things work the way they do and um wanting to understand that just from different perspectives um like me with the brain and with like everything um so uh really it's just like a deep curiosity for understanding um and i think understanding is the first step for everything else that comes after like if you understand something then you can apply that understanding in novel in novel situations um or you can influence a system that you understand um or yeah so i think uh it just comes from always wanting to understand how something works or why we're doing something um

1:01:33yeah and i think the like more things you understand the more your like view of the world is enriched because you're only able to like I think yeah the more you understand I think what drives errors between your your reality and the actual reality I have no idea about actual reality but um potentially I think my the more that I learn I feel the more like enriching my life is and it just it like colors your perspective in your world so much more and so it's just like an obsession with understanding and learning things that um me and Damien really share uh selfishly for my own like enjoyment of life and general curiosity but it really applies to um how we can do things faster and better uh what sort of like limiting beliefs we have and where they come from um and uh a great way of making like product decisions and um yeah super helpful everywhere I think yeah okay perfect I think that's a great place to leave it