ECOSYSTEM MATCHMAKING

BrainMind acts as the connective tissue between scientists, entrepreneurs, and funders. Our ecosystem runs more than 5,000 members deep, and within it sit more than 1,300 active investors.

The BrainMind Ecosystem comes alive through curated gatherings, warm introductions, and data-driven matching across our network to help connect the most impactful ideas with early stage capital, allowing us to help turn dormant ideas into companies, and promising companies into funded rocket ships.

The Valley of Death separates promising research from reaching the people whose lives it could impact the most. BrainMind’s connection engine helps close that gap. We understand the interests of the investors in our network, so when a founder comes to us raising, we go looking for the few who are genuinely right for the science, the stage, and the moment, and we help to open doors.

Matchmaking Methodology

Companies within the BrainMind ecosystem often reach out for help finding interested funders within the BrainMind ecosystem. Behind every investor ecosystem search lies a data-driven approach to matching, resting on three things:

• Stage and check size: the round type and size, from seed through later growth, against the stages each fund actually invests at.

• Science and modality: the indication, modality, and underlying technology, matched against each investor's stated thesis.

• Portfolio precedent: each investor's actual portfolio, including prior investments in comparable companies and shared academic origins, drawn from Pitchbook and Crunchbase data.

With that data, we send targeted outreach to the investors in our network most likely to engage with a company. 

BrainMind serves as an independent ecosystem connector and does not have any financial relationship with or investment interest in the startups we introduce. Our role is solely to help facilitate connections across researchers, founders, and funders in the neuroscience and neurotechnology space.

Get early access to the most fundable brain science emerging from our ecosystem. Apply to join BrainMind.

The best ideas in brain science surface inside this ecosystem before they reach the wider market. Join the investors in our network and we will bring you the companies built for your thesis, your stage, and the science you believe in, drawn from a community of more than 5,000 and growing at the frontier of the field.

FAQ

How does BrainMind match companies with investors? We search our network of more than 1,300 investors and score each one on stage fit, science and modality fit, and portfolio precedent. The company receives a ranked shortlist and targeted outreach to the strongest fits.

How do you decide which investors are the best fit? We set the round size and stage, the indication and modality, and the underlying science against each investor's actual portfolio and investment history.

Do you guarantee funding? No. We make warm introductions to the investors most likely to back a company like yours, and we help strengthen the pitch. The funding decision stays with the investors.

How can investors join the BrainMind network? Yes, through the form on this page. Tell us your stages, sectors, and check size, and we will send you the companies that fit your thesis.

What funding stages does BrainMind work across? From pre-seed and seed through Series A, Series B, and later growth rounds.

BrainMind Incubated Companies: Case Studies

Outside of Ecosystem Investor Searches, another facet of the BrainMind engine is connecting entrepreneurs with the team they need to make a company successful. BrainMind matches the best serial entrepreneurs with innovative scientists, and funds knowledge sharing and collaboration even before a company is created. Learn about some of the companies sprung out of BrainMind connections below.

RetainYourBrain

RetainYourBrain is a free, clinically-validated digital platform that helps individuals reduce their risk of Alzheimer's disease through personalized, AI-powered lifestyle interventions.

Website: https://retainyourbrain.com/#!/

Team: Richard S. Isaacson, MD (Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Florida Atlantic University)

Milestones: BrainMind Grantee; NIH-funded randomized controlled trial demonstrated a 16% reduction in Alzheimer's risk at six months.

Origin Story: Dr. Richard Isaacson is a longtime BrainMind ecosystem member and Harvard-trained preventive neurologist who founded the nation's first Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in 2013. His clinic pioneered the precision medicine approach to Alzheimer's risk reduction, combining personalized lifestyle guidance with biomarker tracking. The challenge was scale: even the most effective clinical protocols could reach only a fraction of the people who needed them.

RetainYourBrain was built to close that gap. The platform assesses individual risk factors across ten domains including nutrition, sleep, exercise, cognitive activity, and stress, then delivers tailored recommendations through AI-driven two-way text messaging that supports sustained behavior change. With BrainMind's support, Dr. Isaacson advanced the platform through rigorous clinical validation, culminating in a large NIH-funded randomized controlled trial of nearly one thousand participants that confirmed the tool's effectiveness. The trial is now free and publicly accessible at retainyourbrain.com.

Rhythmic Health

Rhythmic Health builds biosensors for precision health and wellbeing.

Website: https://rhythmic.health

Team: Nick Melosh (Stanford), Marc Ferro (Stanford), Ben Lowenstein (Serial Entrepreneur, ex-Airbnb), Paul Litvak (ex-Airbnb)

Milestones: Team met through the BrainMind Engine in 2019, Founded 2020

Origin Story: Nick Melosh is an accomplished Professor of Materials Science and serial entrepreneur at Stanford University and Marc was a post-doctorate researcher focused on brain computer interfaces. Their research was pivotal in the bioelectronic interfaces field. BrainMind brought them together with two serial entrepreneurs in our ecosystem, Ben and Paul, whose expert product management and machine learning skills were cultivated at one of the largest marketplace technology companies in the world. With a natural rapport and unusual creativity, the team rapidly crafted the idea for an ultra low-cost biosensor, with potential to transform the precision with which we manage our wellbeing, in illness and in health.

Reveri Health

Reveri is a new self-hypnosis program that draws on over 40 years of research and clinical experience by psychiatrist Dr David Spiegel, helping alleviate chronic-pain, smoking addiction, anxiety, and insomnia

Website: https://reverihealth.com/

Team: David Spiegel (Stanford) and Ariel Poler (Serial Entrepreneur, Angel Investor)

Milestones: Team met at BrainMind Summit at Stanford 2016, Founded 2020

Press: Big Think

Origin Story: The first company born at a BrainMind summit started with a Stanford scientist’s research using hypnotherapy to help people quit smoking. Dr. David Spiegel’s guided hypnotherapy approach was so effective that half of patients quit smoking after one face-to-face therapy session. However, without a recurring revenue business model and rapid scaling ability, Spiegel could not find investor interest to deploy this life-altering therapy, and this breakthrough was restricted to use in the lab for years. At the first-ever BrainMind Summit in 2016, Dr. Spiegel had a spirited conversation with Ariel Poler, an angel investor and entrepreneur. Overnight, Ariel coded an Alexa Skill for Spiegel’s hypnotherapy program that could be invoked by any of the 100 million Alexa-enabled devices in the world. Any of the millions of smokers in the world can now tell their enabled devices “Hypnosis Quit Smoking” and immediately receive hypnotherapy. Since then, they've expanded the capabilities to include programs for anxiety, chronic-pain, and insomnia.