Steve Gullans - Co-Founder & Co-Chair @ Thynk

Welcome to another Founder Wisdom pod. We have Steve Gollins with us today. He's a PhD, he's a co-founder and co-chair at Think with a Y, um, he's building biotech's future, he's an investor, board director, keynote speaker, uh, he's all about cognitive training, uh, he's a pioneer in that, he's a futurist as well, an author, a speaker, you're a lot of things, Steve, um, and the next Harvard and Yale and Duke. So Uh, glad to have you on. He's live from Boston. I'm still in Oaxaca, Mexico. Steve, uh, give us a quick, uh, hello. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you're up to.

Uh, yeah, it's, it's great to be here today with you, Charles. The, uh, I'm very excited about the entrepreneur world. We're going to have an unbelievable breakout with the AI revolution. I preach that at universities all the time. I'll be at BU tomorrow, for example, and young people are really terrified. So I think it's the greatest time ever to history. My background is scientific as a professor at Harvard Med for about 18 years, and then I left to start companies and become a venture capitalist because I wanted to help more people than I could just running a lab. And I've had the pleasure of working with about 60 companies in my life, investing in probably 40 or 50 of them, and 5 years ago I was retired, actually 6, when COVID broke out, and I went back to work because I got bored and I could see an unmet need in the world. Everybody needs a better brain. So that's what I've been trying to tackle for the last few years, right?

Yeah, uh, Professor almost. Yeah, the, I don't know, first half of your career for 20 years. Why did you decide to jump straight into professorship and not launch a startup back then, for example, or go work for a Merck or big pharma company?

Yeah, that's a good question. Uh, so the idea, you know, it's a lot of it's generational. Uh, you know, I'm, uh, I, I'm in the retirement age bracket, so when I was young, it was aspiring to work at a large corporation was the last thing you really thought about. And I had actually started as a marine biologist and fell in love with science and wanted to do experiments, uh, just because the discovery of new and unknown things was important. And when, uh, I did very well at that, but in the late— in the mid-'90s, I had a little turn in philosophy. I had a cousin who contracted ALS and subsequently passed, but my father had Parkinson's, and a lot of my family members had cancer. So I refocused my career away from basic into more applied but basic mechanisms of applied sciences. And the things I was doing were a little too far out of the box to the point where NIH wouldn't fund it. My money, money was coming from Wall Street and Hollywood, giving patients hope that we would find things to move the ball forward. That's now changed, uh, 20 years later with translational medicine. But I felt the need to leave in order to make, uh, dreams come true, both mine to see real research in the world and to help people in need who needed, if nothing else, at least some hope that somebody's working on it. In some cases, miracles happen.

And back then, AI was not talked about much. It was actually frowned upon. If you were in AI, you were looked at with very round eyes. It was like, what are you doing? You're like in this fantasy land. What did you see in all these years in working in biotech, right? You've seen some pretty groundbreaking innovations, uh, sequencing of the genome, for example. But I guess like AlphaFold was like a holy shit moment that happened not so long ago. Can you describe the— that curve, uh, of progress?

Uh, sure. I was part of the genomic revolution. I actually put the team together to sequence the first tumor in history. We did the analysis in Malaysia because there was no AI team in this country, even at the top universities or Google, that could manage it. It was a small group in Malaysia that was doing language translation using neural networks, and we needed that kind of firepower to get through these genomic sequences. And I, I'd already had a lot of— I was really spending my time with technologies and how to deploy them into the medical universe. And the, uh, what I'd learned is we needed quantitative sciences. I had hired 6 physicists to work in my lab, young, young, uh, you know, recent grads, uh, because we needed people to understand how to actually put numbers and real mechanisms and pathways and molecular models together. So I've been living on that path for quite a while. Uh, the idea of AI coming together was really focused for me in a very directed way of trying to solve individual problems. And, uh, so that's really where I, you know, where I followed it along the way. I'm now a huge champion of all the utility of it, but from my perspective, most of the economy has not even come close to being touched. Uh, in fact, it's less than 10% of the economy today is digitized and represented by Silicon Valley companies. Over, over $100 trillion a year global GDP exists, and less than $15 million is from all the tech companies and all their products. And so we still have massive amounts of work to do generating first the data, and biology remains one of the frontiers. I loved AlphaFold, but I also know its weaknesses. You could only train something with data you have. The number of missing data points and black holes in the dataset is very large. People would argue with that, but you don't have ways to actually prove it. It's not like having a map of the globe, you know everything on the surface. It's more like having a map of the ocean. We know most of it, but not all of it.

And nowadays, uh, first, what are the objectives? Is it solving cancer? Is it living forever? And second, what would be your timeline on those? And third, how would we achieve these next breakthroughs?

So I'm working on two things right now that are in those directions. One is retraining the human mind. The 20th— 19th and 20th century saw mechanization and really replaced our need to have muscle power, whether it was trains or tractors or automobiles or airplanes. We now have a very different world. And as a result, everybody today who wants to stay fit has to go to a gym. If you'd said to your great-grandmother, how many steps did you get today? How was your Pilates class? She would've thought you had 3 heads because she was chasing 6 kids around the yard and trying to, and walking to the store to get some food. But we're in that exact same moment as that in brain cognitive skills. We're about to hand over a lot of our skills to the computer. We need some of those skills. And so we're going to have cognitive gyms in the future.

And the cognitive revolution, I guess Neuralink is talked about a lot. What would be the goal here? Would it be to solve some disease, for example, like ALS? Would it be to delay Alzheimer's, even, uh, not even have to talk about Alzheimer's or dementia. Would that be the number one goal? What about the extreme—

that's not my number one goal by a long shot. I have a lot of— I've worked in the ALS, I've worked in Alzheimer's, I've worked in all these spaces, and I'm a huge fan of the invasive technologies that Neuralink and others are using. But frankly, Neuralink is no farther along than we were about 20 years ago. My cousin with ALS had a chip implanted in his head and he can move a computer mouse. What I'm talking about is just like going to the gym, something that's an everyday utility that we all use in our homes, in our schools, at work. Thanks to our distracted minds and living in a world where this is our reality every day, We open our phones 150 to 180 times. Nobody can pay attention. Kids are not doing well on standardized tests because— not because they don't know the content, they can't pay attention. Surgeons in training are very poor. So what I'm saying is we're building a beautiful brain for the 21st century, but we still need those 20th century brain skills. And so training those with off-the-shelf technology is based on deep neuroscience is here today, right?

To solving attention, sort of, because yes, there is a crisis of attention nowadays. Isn't the main solution though to not give them these devices, or kids, shape their brain in a very narrow and focused way, and give them something scalable to invest their attention in? For example, in my opinion, that would be starting a business. There's sports, of course, that can be used for that. There's meditation. Aren't these the, the main factors to focus their attention?

That's where the media and most people are focused, but I'm looking ahead. I'm saying those are passé. Banning phones from schools does not have the effect we expect. New York Times article this week, it does not benefit because you're still missing the core skill you need. And it's just like learning how to ride a bicycle. If you just get on it at the age of 15 and expect to ride the very first time, you're not going to be able to do it. You have to learn something at the baseline, and we're not learning core cognitive skills. And so attention is one of the many. There's 50 to 100 different, you know, there is selective inhibition, there's paying attention, there's working memory. All of these are corrupted by the distracted lives we live in, whether it's a device or just having every minute of every day occupied. And how often do kids sit around bored, just thinking? That's a skill we need.

I just realized there was the word vice in device, by the way, which is pretty interesting. I mean, my background, right, like I run an AI school for kids. So my first solution is like, don't send them to school because it's a system that I don't control. I think that's the first mistake parents do. It's sending their kids to a random school and hoping that, uh, it'll fix them. Because parents, I think, are overwhelmed. They need to work in this capitalistic world. My main solution would be to change the system, right? Like, I'm a systems guy, and if you just throw them in a system that keeps on breaking, I think that, that won't help. By the way, another fact about me: my first company was a nootropic, right? Uh, it was my first company 10 years ago. I still I take nootropics, I'm still biohacker obsessed with my health. I tried, was one of the first user of Muse, right? Like in your space. I just think, yeah, like, can you integrate these solution to the real world, like smart glasses style without me having to spend time like training off the side, not in real life is my question.

So the answer is yes and no. There's often you require a training component. I mean, would you let— expect a surgeon to go into surgery without having— with a robot without not having been on the training robot at some point?

No, no, not a good idea.

But it matters.

It's all not the best analogy.

And so I— there's a— I'm a huge fan of AI for schools because it will individualize everything, but you still need human involvement. And in fact, the Alpha Schools in Texas— you may have seen these— they only do 2 hours a day of of didactic learning by a computer through an AI system, and they achieve the highest scores nationally of anybody because the rest of the day they're learning, they're teaching their mind other things. Let me talk briefly about the company that I founded called Thynk, T-H-Y-N-K. This technology works. The only thing we have as a problem is people don't believe it works because there's so many failed promises that you cannot train the mind to do something beneficial. I love the Muse headset. I know the founder, Ariel. It is great for learning to meditate, which is great if you plan to live the rest of your life in a cave in the dark. I don't plan to live like that. You know, if you're taking a test or you're driving an F1 race car, or you're just trying to drive down the street, you need to learn how to be in focus with high pressure around you. So that's what Stinq does. That's what we do. We use a video game context to have your brainwaves play the video game. And with it, there's a training curriculum that actually takes you through a series of skill-building activities. It's calibrated to every person, child or adult.

Right. And if my kid's going to play video games, might as well play your video game so that they can learn some useful skills. Although I do think that some video games can also have them learn useful skills. Let's take two case studies, right? My kids, what, what kind of skills would they learn that they could output in their current life? Let's start with that one.

Let me tell you about the kids. We're already— we're in schools in Florida, Puerto Rico, Ohio, and Tennessee, and other states already, where there's very open-minded thinking about the future of education. And kids who have behavior issues, it's generally an attention issue. But they come in all, all sizes and shapes. And across society. Uh, we, we take these kids and have them play this game, which by the way is not addictive. It's like learning to play the piano. All right.

Huh.

Uh, you get enjoyment as you get better and it's always challenging, but there's nothing addictive about it. You just did. We like the kids enjoy it by the time they get pretty far into it. I'm talking about only children. We have plenty of adults who use it, athletes in particular. And we find that kids who, after 2 weeks playing an hour a week in school with some guidance, not very little, their behaviors calm down and they're no longer getting reported to the principal. They're no longer threatened with leaving school. And academically, if you give them math and reading standardized tests before and after 6 weeks of playing this game, on average, their math and reading scores advance 1 grade level. One grade. And all we're not teaching any math or reading whatsoever.

Interesting. Um, quick question before we get our attention on this graph. Um, why is it not addictive? Is it because it's boring?

No, it's because it's challenging every second and you don't, and not, you don't, you don't succeed in every mission. Okay. It's like learning to play the piano. You get to your certain level, you're very good. And boom, you hit a wall because we've been pushing the skills. Every 10th of a second, it recalibrates to challenge you just a little harder than you're capable of.

Got it.

At every level. So you can't just say this is easy and give up or say it's too hard. And it's also— we haven't gotten there yet, but we're going to be dynamically adaptive to how well you're playing.

Interesting. Okay. Uh, adults, do you also deploy that product towards adults?

Yes. We've had a number of pilot studies. Uh, we've had one in a mental health setting with a tele-mental health group, uh, a self-pay thing, cause we don't have insurance. There's no FDA need for this device. It's very passive. And, uh, the adults suffer a lot of anxiety, attention issues, and their number one complaint is that at work, they don't get their work done. Because they're distracted and have no ability to focus on long need to write or whatever. At home, they have challenges with their kids and their, and their family. And what, and what they're— these are in some cases, these are people who are already, well, they're all seeing, seeing a therapist weekly already. They're already, most of them are already on meds of different versions. When they play our game, to a person, they've all said it's life-changing. I've learned something, a skill I didn't know I needed. And I can now know what it feels like to be in a flow state.

Yeah, and I can see it. I can definitely see it because when you force your mind to focus and when it becomes a habit, like it solidifies the neural pathways in there and then creates habits, right? So next time my brain is found in a situation that requires focus, if the reward is clear, then I may remind myself consciously or subconsciously that, yeah, I could achieve that on the video games. I've already done it. And now The neurochemicals flow better in a more aligned way. I'm, I'm curious about the product in itself. What's the cost of it? Is there subscription? What's the business aspect of Think?

So the business aspect, what we find, we've had great success with kids. 95% of the kids finish it in the context of a group setting. Doesn't matter where the group is because there's a little bit of a camaraderie there. They're there for a purpose, like in school. With adults, we get about a 50% attrition rate because people are asked to do it at home, and it's like going to the gym— you don't end up going every day. So, uh, right now we do not sell directly to consumers because we have a very small team, but we do sell into very large school districts. And we start with a pilot. It's, uh, you know, several hundred dollars for for a child, uh, for a program. And you can— one headset, we actually give away the headsets. One headset could be used by a multitude of kids and everybody has an individual user account where the first mission calibrates your brainwaves to your settings. And then your progress through the game is calibrated, is individualized as well. So you have your own scores, your own metrics, a teacher or a parent, or even the user can see how they're doing at the end of each event. Uh, we're now looking heavily into sports, working with some of the elite hockey training academies around New England, and, uh, which has been very rewarding. These are people who are used to competing and used to winning, but they also feel all the pressure on the ice to score or stop the puck. And if they don't, they're worried they're not going to get that college scholarship or that contract. Oh yeah, enormous pressure that disseminates through their whole life. And so under pressure, you learn to be in flow. That's what we do.

There you go. And the economics of it, is it a couple of thousands of dollars that I need to pay upfront for the hardware and then a couple hundred per month for the software?

No, the hardware is free. Okay, so it's purely monthly subscription, just a monthly subscription. We have, for individuals, we haven't figured out the right rate exactly. And people are willing to pay $2,000, but we just have, you know, 6 people total on our team. We can't support a network of sending it to thousands of people around the country right now.

Are you raising capital for that one?

We're raising, uh, yeah, we're doing some right now. We've raised before. We'll be looking for a Series A in the fall, but, uh, we now have proof point that we can generate repeat revenue. Our model is you go into, say, the schools are our first focus. You go out with a pilot study, $5,000 to $25,000 for X number of kids. You pick your own metrics to measure whether you think it's successful, because we've never failed, whether it's academic or behavior or you name it. And then at the end of it, people migrate to a larger contract. The key to the model is the success of the pilot and then stepping up. The first school system we've had big penetrations in Orlando, they have 71,000 kids in one school system. We're going into Puerto Rico next where they have over 800 schools and 250,000 children, we'll have pilots there. The idea is you step through larger contracts. When it comes to kids in the education space, kids are struggling, whether it's behavior, academics, you know, not enough to eat or whatever. It seemed a bit— they have programs to benefit these kids, so there's pots of money for us.

Yeah, for sure. Um, you said you never failed. How do you rank up, or do you want to rank up, against meds, for example, like Ritalin, or I don't know what, all these kids' meds, right? These amphetamines.

There's a, there's a scientist, uh, Steve Ferron, who analyzed our data, because we did run clinical trials at one point for ADHD. No, we decided that was too small of a— for me, it was too small a use case. I want the whole world to use this. And so we pulled it off the clinical track, and Steve Ferron looked at our data where we used the exact same metrics you use for, uh, ADHD drugs and decided we were better than the non-stimulants and almost as good as the stimulants. And on top of that, we were sustained for months without training afterward, which they never are.

Do you sometimes question the educational system in itself, or is it too big of a problem for you to solve and out of your focus?

Wait, can you repeat that? I'm sorry.

Do you sometimes question the educational system, or is that, is that too big of a problem and outside of your area of expertise to actually fix?

No, no. I'm a huge fan of the educational system. It's going to change radically with AI, and I teach my own grandkids AI because they don't get it at school. Uh, the— but the diff— the difference here is the teachers are bound by what we think are the problems with education. As you pointed out, maybe it's the phones, maybe it's X, Y, or Z, but meanwhile grades never rise and behavior gets worse. We've uncovered with our ex— with our example the real problem, is core cognitive skills. If you don't have the ABCs, you can't move on to making sentences. So we teach the ABCs, and with that, the kids can now achieve their best. It's that— that's what's making the teachers so delighted. And so I think there's huge potential in synergy, and with AI, they'll become guides, not teachers.

Why do I view this— why do I view the educational system as a fundamental problem? Because I was, quote unquote, ADHD. I was always gifted at school. Until like I really had to sit down and study in high school, right? Most of the time I was the class clown because I would get bored the eff out of my mind. And I attribute that to a bunch of things. One, I think my energy should have been used in a better way. It's not one teacher for 30 children. I should have probably had 3 teachers myself. And that's the kind of talent that I had that was quote unquote wasted for society. Then I think grades are not so good. Why grade like people all the same way to do the same thing if I should specialize myself in one specific thing, right? And a bunch of people I talked to still have like nightmares about being graded, right? That's how bad it is. It caused like trauma at scale in children. So why am I like, why is this so obvious to me that it's a system that's wrong, not necessarily like the, the kids or their attention in them. If you mold the system in a different way, I think you're going to get a different outcome. So about the environment and incentives in my world.

Yeah, no, the system— the part of the system that's broken is the traditional classroom we've been running for 140 to 150 years, where you expect all kids to operate with kind of the same conditions and achieve the exact same amount every day. Nobody's supposed to be ahead, nobody's supposed to be behind. The best education system is one-on-one tutoring. You can go back to Alexander the Great and Aristotle. That works better than any— that's why homeschooling is successful. I know so many kids who've been homeschooled who finished high school 2 to 3 years early.

Yes.

Did well because it goes at their pace. That's where we're headed with AI. And in that case, the kids aren't burning out because they're getting individualized attention, but it's requiring one person per student. In the Alpha School, for example, that's in Texas, they're showing a different approach. You have a guide along with technologies that are helping people achieve individual goals and spend half their time doing other things, playing or, you know, starting a business. It's coming. And the other piece of it is I have a very good friend who's the world authority on what should we teach He says we should throw out the entire high school curriculum.

Most of it, yes. Um, it depends on what the kids want to do, but like me, I teach them meditation, right? I teach them how to build relationship with fellow humans. That's a skill that won't disappear even with AGI. Of course, I teach them technology and how to use AI. I teach them how not to get addicted to things, how to think about things generally in the future. Where they stand in their position, uh, as little human beings in society and in this world. And most importantly, as we live in a capitalistic system, how to start a business and how to run a business and how to not work for someone, because that's not going to scale in the age of AGI. I think, um, yeah, like most schools— Alpha School I like, right? I studied them. That's what, like, uh, that's at least 40% of Define School's model, my school. Um, I feel that's where we should bring your children, right? And the social dynamics is so important because you might remember your time in high school, but it was so emotionally volatile, right? Like, you don't know where you stand and you're trying stuff. It's pretty traumatic. Um, but yeah, thanks for being on, Steve. Where can people find out more about you and the company?

Uh, just go to think.com, T-H-Y-N-K. Uh, here's the info thing. I'll get the information if you want to email me. You can just email me steve@think.com. That's direct to me.

That was—

I get busy, but— and follow me on LinkedIn. I do post about things like this. And I like to push people into new directions. When you— like you— when you live and see the future every day with leading smart people, it's frustrating to see the world go so slow.

Oh, yeah. And I'd buy your device, by the way, for my school 100%. So that was Steve and Charles Cormier for another founder