BRAINMIND MISSION
The mission of BrainMind is to support and cultivate the most important and impactful ideas in brain science -- focusing our collective energy on critical gating discoveries and structurally underserved areas. To do this, BrainMind is intelligently reorganizing abundant energy, capital, expertise and resources already in the system.
THE CHALLENGE
The Funding Gap
The current economically driven engine of capital formation was not built to support the ideas that will most benefit humanity.
At the front of the funnel, capital is abundant. Over $38 billion is donated annually to healthcare causes from philanthropic sources, much of it to basic research at universities, and government grants amount to over $100 billion annually for basic scientific and medical research. At the far end of the spectrum, venture capital invests roughly $20 billion in healthcare companies each year.
Neither is failing. Philanthropy was built to fund discovery without expecting return. Venture capital was built to fund companies that can multiply the capital invested in them. Each succeeds on its own terms.
Between them sits a category no institution was built to serve: ideas mature enough to leave the laboratory, too consequential to abandon, and too modest in financial return to attract a fund.
Figure adapted from Steinmetz and Spack, 2009
Our Thesis
Founder Michael McCullough outlined the core thesis of BrainMind, and explains the strategy of assembling a multidisciplinary community to incubate high-impact ideas out of the lab to improve brain health.
The observation that led to BrainMind was this. The most consequential ideas in brain science do not stall because they lack merit. They stall because the systems that fund innovation measure worth in financial return, and the ideas that would most benefit humanity are rarely the ones that promise it.
Caption: Philanthropic and government grants support innovation in the lab with zero expected return. Venture and impact investment dollars support high-return company ideas. The less profitable ideas, even those that could revolutionize the field or transform public health, have no clear funding source.
The Valley of Death
Technologies mature enough to leave the laboratory, yet unable to meet venture criteria, stall in what is often called the valley of death. They are too developed for a research grant and too modest in return for a fund. Promising research is separated from mass-scale innovation, and the ideas most likely to be abandoned are precisely those offering significant health impact and modest financial gain.
Impact investing, in its dominant form, does not resolve this. Funds that target venture-like returns above three times their capital are by definition not making investments in the companies most likely to return one to two times, which is where the majority of impactful ideas live.
BrainMind exists to coordinate capital across philanthropy and venture capital, delivering stewardship of fundamental neuroscience to impact-focused stakeholders.
OUR VISION
We see the current state of idea formation as a meadow, where growth happens semi-randomly and opportunistically. BrainMind envisions the future of brain science innovation as a garden, wherein ideas are seeded and nourished according to a plan, with specific results in mind. This is why we are establishing a multidisciplinary coalition supporting both impactful innovation and ethical stewardship for future research
The Promise:
The science has arrived. Implanted brain-computer interfaces have restored speech to people who lost it and movement to people who could not move, and the first devices are now approaching regulatory approval. Foundation models trained on neural data are beginning to predict brain activity across individuals, regions, and species, compressing decades of fragmented mapping into a single interpretable framework. Closed-loop stimulation is entering trials for depression that has resisted every other treatment. This work is underway at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, and many more.
What arrives next is not a question of whether the science is capable. It is a question of which ideas receive the capital, the coalition, and the care required to reach the people waiting for them.
By exploring the intersection of brain and mind, we gain insight not only into how the mind shapes the brain and the body, but into consciousness itself. By convening the world's leading thinkers, researchers, and innovators at that intersection, we open the door to collaborations and discoveries that quicken the pace of innovation. The BrainMind team is uniquely equipped to execute on this strategy, with experience in medicine, social entrepreneurship, venture capital, and donor development.
The capacity to read, restore, and influence the human mind is arriving faster than our collective wisdom about how to use it, and technologies of this consequence should not be shaped by those who build them alone. Through our neuroethics program, BrainMind convenes ethicists, scientists, policymakers, and those with lived experience to consider how to maximize the potential benefits and minimize the hazards of emerging innovations in brain science.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Our vision takes shape through the following guiding principles:
CONVENE
Create a high-consciousness community of powerful and influential people interested in brain science to drive a cultural shift valuing ideas principally on their potential human impact.
CURATE
Establish a roadmap for effective forward progress maximizing impact in brain science, focusing special attention on areas and ideas that are currently under-supported relative to their importance.
CULTIVATE
Infuse these ideas with high consciousness capital, leadership, and network support to grow and scale innovations that can benefit humanity from the lab to society.
FOCUS AREAS
The Ecosystem supports the full spectrum of idea formation across neuroscience and the study of the human mind, from basic science research to commercial ventures. Within our wider roadmap, BrainMind is surfacing and focusing special attention on ideas that are either critical to the advancement in our understanding of the brain or underfunded in relation to their importance. Examples include:
Prevention and wellness-focused innovations
Research tools that will enable faster discovery at scale
Mapping in the brain: proteomics, cell types, circuitry, systems
Neuroethics
Neuroscience-informed AI research, and vice versa
Educational neuroscience, and other areas of neuroscience focused on human flourishing
High risk / high return, non-venture backable but sustainable, capital- or time-intensive ideas with high potential impact on public health
Large-scale efforts to generate and share data
INSIDE BRAINMIND
The people and resources supporting our mission.
BRAINMIND SUPPORTERS
BrainMind’s initiatives have been made possible with generous philanthropic support from Reid Hoffman, Bo Shao, David Sze, Josh Koppelman, and all ecosystem members who contribute via their participation at our gatherings. BrainMind’s summits have also been supported by the Stanford Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, and MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. We would also like to honor and thank the following sponsors of BrainMind:
Evolve Foundation makes philanthropic grants and pursues direct philanthropic initiatives that reduce human suffering and facilitate the evolution of consciousness.
Greylock Partners is a leading venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. They back entrepreneurs who are building disruptive, market-transforming consumer and enterprise software companies.
Felicis Ventures is a boutique VC firm that backs iconic companies reinventing existing markets and creating frontier technologies.
The Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute is a non-profit institute founded by husband and wife Tianqiao Chen and Chrissy Luo with the aim of supporting study into the human brain.
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is the premier legal advisor to technology, life sciences, and growth enterprises worldwide, as well as the venture firms, private equity firms, and investment banks that finance them.
VeriTeam is a strategic consultancy partnering with innovators and investors seeking to impact the fields of human health, wellness, and performance.