- Today is going to be really fun, and I hope
a little bit relaxed.
In front of you, you have a panel of students,
first year, second year, third year, PhD.
And they have all either are in Newton or
have been in the Newton class.
They're gonna introduce themselves and give
some background on some of the new ventures
that they're working on.
They are a diverse group, not just from their
age, or what year they are, but also from
what they're working on.
With the candy, with that little bit of sugar
high that should last about 40 minutes, I
do want you all to pay attention.
I also want this to be a little bit more interactive.
As soon as everybody here has introduced themselves,
I will talk to them a little bit, asking some
follow up questions, but I would like and
would greatly appreciate follow up questions
from you all, not at the end but as we're
talking.
And so there'll be one mic to pass around,
so if you have a question, please raise your
hand, and we'll take it while we're going
through.
And we will try to basically end, I would
say, around 10 after six, because I know that
you all would probably like to speak to some
of what I consider your colleagues.
I think that was all I wanted to mention.
And so actually, with that, I've asked everybody
to introduce themselves, but I'll quickly
introduce Sahar, Nathan, Divy, who I, yes,
Divy, Travis.
And just out of curiosity when looking at
everybody, who might the PhD student be?
See?
That just goes to show, you never know who's
sitting next to you.
Sahar, would you start us off and tell us
a little bit about what you're working on
and your background in terms of what you've
been studying, what year you are, and a little
bit about your idea and where you all are?
- Sure.
For those of you that said Sahar, I try to
take good care of my skin.
Sunscreen, it's important, I'm just saying.
But I am actually the fifth year PhD, so I'm
a quite a bit, I'm sure, older than most of
you.
All right, so I went to Cal as an undergrad.
I studied cognitive science here, specializing
in neuroscience and philosophy, which was
awesome.
Anyone doing cog sci?
Yes.
All right, I know.
We're all very proud of ourselves.
I was always exceedingly interested in the
brain and how to improve cognitive function.
It's a little sci fi, but I used to work in
rehabilitative work and pharmacology, so my
background is in giving drugs to people and
essentially improving cognitive performance,
which works and is great and lots of fun in
terms of a research field, but for my PhD
work, I was always fascinated by the very
sci fi concept of taking someone's brain that's
high performing, exceedingly intelligent,
young, and healthy, essentially all of your
brains, and saying, how can we actually make
this brain more neurally efficient?
How can we actually improve the cognitive
capacity of this individual?
Improve attention span, improve memory span,
all of these different things that seem very
static.
And so most of my work for my PhD has been
surrounding that topic, measuring cognitive
capacity and improving it through different
types of techniques that are non-invasive
and non-pharmacological.
Now, we're now reverse engineering those scientific
innovations from the lab that I've been spending
about five and a half years working on into
a company, and we're focusing on enterprise,
so focusing on companies that have a huge
subset of high performing individuals that
really care about their performance and want
to perform just one percent better.
They really care about improving their performance
as much as humanly possible.
And we're interested in working with them
to deliver to them not only the diagnostics,
so to actually give somebody a readout of
how they're doing cognitively.
I'm sure most of you can guess what your attention
span is or your memory span, but the only
way to actually know that is to go into a
research facility and actually get it tested,
but nobody ever does that.
You go in for a physical once a year to the
doctor.
They check.
They give you maybe blood work, just ask you
if you're feeling all right, but nobody ever
checks the brain until it's broken, which
is, I think, one thing that definitely needs
to change in terms of the cognitive health
of our society and what we do as a medical
field.
That's the first thing we're doing, and the
second thing is delivering cognitive training
solutions that we're now translating from
those techniques that are from the lab into
virtual reality solutions and therapeutics
and enterprise software.
So yeah, that's a bit about what we're doing.
- So, what's interesting is that you have
a customer, but you're not quite sure what
it is you're going to be delivering to the
customer yet.
You all are still working on that.
Is that correct?
- We have, as of now, two different paying
pilot customers, which are companies, that
are really interested in in any way, shape,
or form what we can do for them to just come
in and try different things out, which is
a fantastic opportunity for us.
So we're gonna just be throwing things at
the well and saying, "Do this, do that.
"Here's a prototype.
"Try this," and see what's gonna be the most
impactful.
- Sahar, I am wondering if there was some
time in your career at Cal when you were an
undergrad that clicked for you that you really
enjoy looking at the brain.
Did you know that when you got here?
Did you know that when you were in high school?
Was there some moment where you were like,
"I think I wanna do this," or did you just
follow your nose and one thing led to the
next?
- Actually, it's funny that you mention that.
Okay, so I have no idea if this will resonate
with anyone else, but I actually was not a
high performer in high school.
I was actually expelled from my high school.
I had a great time in high school.
Which I think is probably a little odd to
hear from probably most of your GSIs on campus,
your other PhDs on campus.
You don't typically hear that.
- Were you expelled for something fun?
- Yeah.
There were a couple of suspensions that led
to the expulsion, but yeah, generally speaking.
My path to wanting to study the brain and
getting to Cal as an undergrad was a little
bit wayward, to say the least.
But essentially, I was always fascinated by
the concept of consciousness and studying
it.
It's a little bit Cartesian and philosophical,
but all we really know that actually exists
is within our own minds.
And I mean that even from a scientific perspective.
Your mind and your thoughts, your personal
conscious experience, is all that you can
truly rely on.
At the end of the day when you close your
eyes and you go to bed, that's all you got.
And everything from our thoughts and beliefs
to our feelings, everything we think of, even
the way that we study other aspects of nature,
all happened from the confines of our own
minds.
And so I was always fascinated by how much
of me is me and how much of me is my biology,
all those limits, essentially.
So that led me to want to study philosophy,
but then I hit a limit with philosophy where
I noticed I needed to actually study biology,
so then I had to jump ship, go from there.
- It's interesting how things evolve.
So that's pretty philosophical, I suppose.
I wanna switch gears and move over to Nathan,
who I feel like is doing something that's
more of the earth, tangible.
- Sure.
So hi.
I'm Nathan.
I am a third year chemical engineering major,
and my work is in food.
So I've been involved in the food industry
for some time.
I started Food Science and Tech at Cal, which
is a student group on campus, but the company
that I founded is called Ripe.io, and we are
a software company trying to reconnect people
and the supply chain with food.
So there's this big disparity between food
and agriculture.
Agriculture is this high producing, maximum
yield machine, and food is something that
we all participate in every day, but there's
a huge disconnect.
So last week, I was at Berkeley Bowl, and
walking down the aisle, and I saw a bunch
of tomatoes that were 2.89 per pound.
And right next to it across the aisle was
a bunch of tomatoes that were 99 cents per
pound.
So if I started at the opposite end of the
aisle I probably would've picked up two dollars
more expensive tomatoes, but I have no reason
why these are two dollars more.
They're both conventional.
They're both domestically grown.
I have no knowledge as a consumer.
And what's funny is that it's not just me
who has no knowledge, but no one in the system
has.
What we've found is that along the food supply
chain, there are so many steps to go from
farm all the way down through distribution
into a retailer that no one really has a complete
picture of what's happening to food as it
moves throughout the supply chain.
As a result, we're applying blockchain and
the Internet of Things as two software concepts
to try to create this whole story of what
happens to your food over time, and we think
that there's value in that process.
- [Vicky] And so can you talk for a second...
I know Sahar talked about her customers.
So who would the customer be?
So you or I or we all would find value in
knowing that, but would we pay for it?
Who's the customer in what you are thinking
about at Ripe, R-I-P-E?
- Yeah.
So this is a little bit nebulous, because
if you're familiar with blockchain, it's not
something that one person can buy by themselves
and use on their own.
It's really a solution for an ecosystem of
people.
It requires participation from a large number
of actors, and the more actors you have, the
more power your software has.
And so it's not like we are selling to one
person.
We're really selling to the entirety of the
ecosystem.
And we think that together all ships rise
with this story and applying these concepts.
So you can't say, "Oh, this one group of actors,"
like I can't say the farmer is my buyer or
I can't say the distributor is the buyer.
Really, everyone is our customer.
- [Vicky] I am curious when you say, "Our
customer."
Who are you doing this with?
- Yeah.
So we have two pilots right now which are
contained ecosystems in which we are testing
out this concept.
Can't really say who they are, but...
- And what about, can you talk about who your
team is, who's on your team?
- Sure.
So my team is, I think, a little bit different.
They're all way older than me, and they're
all, I think, oh, if they see this, probably
50 or 60 or something.
- He really means way older.
- Anyway...
Yeah.
They all have had long careers, and here I
am working with them, but I work with four
other people.
They're all on our site.
One is a former founding member of R3CEV,
if you're familiar with the blockchain space,
one is a former manager for M and A at NASDAQ,
one is a former IT professional, and one is
a food incubator manager in the Northeast.
So big background and diversity.
- We'll go and we'll follow up on that a little,
but I think that's quite interesting.
Now, I don't know.
Something that is so fun to talk about.
Divy, you wanna talk about getting up from
the ground a little bit?
- Is that an insult?
- Not intentionally.
- My name is Divy.
I'm a first year MechE maybe switching to
EECS, don't really know yet, major.
And I'm working on my company called Paladin
Drones.
Basically, we're creating--
- [Vicky] Can you say that again?
- Yeah.
Is my mic?
- [Vicky] I just didn't hear it.
- It's called Paladin Drones.
Is this better?
- [Vicky] Paladin.
- Paladin.
Like you know knights, Paladins?
Can you guys hear me?
- [Vicky] Wait, do we all know that?
Am I the only one again who doesn't know that?
Can you explain what that is?
- So, a Paladin is--
- [Vicky] Yes, thank you, whoever that was
in the back.
- A Paladin is in like ancient times.
Basically, it's another word for a knight
or a protector who's charged with protecting
a castle orliege.
Basically, our whole entire product revolves
around protecting firefighters and protecting
citizens.
And what we're developing is a drone that
acts as a surveillance first responder.
Basically, in our research, we've found that
currently, first responders, firefighters,
policemen, even medical emergency responders,
they never really know what to expect when
they get on scene.
For example, the Berkeley church fire, which
was pretty recent and I'm sure close to all
of our hearts, when the first responders first
got to the scene, they didn't know that there
was a fire at the church.
All they knew was here's an address and here's
a fire.
They didn't know that it was gonna run totally
out of control.
They didn't realize that they would need extra
resources from all different counties to come
in.
All they sent was one unit to just talk and
try to tackle this fire.
Now, this lack of information is something
that just stood out to us all at once, because
in a day and age when we have smartphones,
laptops, information isn't something that's
limited to us, at least not in America, or
so we'd like to think.
And why isn't that same amount of information,
why isn't that available to firefighters?
So what we're doing is our drone basically
goes out to the scene of a fire well before
the first responders.
As soon as they get a call, the drone gets
there and it starts surveying the area.
They give them basic thermal streams.
They give them amazing situational awareness.
And we've found in our pilots and test programs
that they can actually reduce response time
by at least two minutes.
So that's what we wanna do.
We wanna decrease the amount of time it takes
firefighters to actually get there.
Once the drone is there and the firefighters
are actively fighting the fire, the drone
takes the guesswork out of firefighting, because
if you ever talk to a firefighter, they get
the job done, but the technology that they
have right now is really, really outdated,
at least in America.
What they're doing is basically a lot of instincts
and gut and guesswork, and they don't have
any data to back them up on that.
There's a lot of dangerous situations that
arise in fires, such as hot spots, backdrafts,
explosions that they can't account for.
And it's not because they don't have the technology.
The technology exists.
It's because they don't have any application.
They don't have access to a full package that
lets them be safe.
So with our drone and our thermal camera,
we can provide them all this analysis, all
of this data, and help them be safer and do
their jobs much more efficiently.
- [Vicky] When we were talking earlier, you
had said that there was something in particular
that inspired you.
I know you talked just now about the Berkeley
fire, but was there something else also?
- Yeah.
So we basically started, me and my other co-founders,
we started this last summer.
One of our close friends, he'd lost everything
in a house fire, and we started talking to
the firefighters, and that's when we first
realized that there were a lot of issues currently
with information and firefighting.
And that's just what started us on our path.
I'm an avid drone enthusiast, so I realized
that there is a very easy way for me to help
firefighters, and that's how we started.
- And Travis, who's our student instructor,
you may not realize, but is working on some
pretty fascinating stuff in space.
- Yeah.
Hi, everyone.
So yeah, I'm Travis.
I think you guys all know me.
I'm an engineering physics major here at Berkeley.
I'm a sophomore.
And back in high school when I was a sophomore
in high school over summer, I did a research
mentorship program there called, a research
mentorship program at UCSB, which is my hometown,
Santa Barbara.
And I worked with a mechanical engineering
PhD student who didn't really want me as a
student.
It was a mentorship program, but didn't really
want me.
And I think halfway through the program, he
sat me down.
It was a really tough summer.
I can get into it if you want, but he sat
me down and told me that--
- [Vicky] Did he get you expelled?
- No.
But he told me I would never be a scientist
or never be a researcher based on my current
performance in that program.
It helped me, even though it was a really
weird thing to say to some student that was
in 10th grade, it helped me analyze what I
wanna do with my future and where I wanna
go forward.
And so I ended up finishing up the program
working really long hours and getting my project
done.
I didn't really prove him wrong.
I proved myself that I can do this.
And so the director of the program saw that,
invited me back for another year the next
summer, but under one condition, that I could
choose whichever person I want and not be
matched with someone that didn't want me.
So then I got to work with a professor, Philip
Lubin in the experimental cosmology group
at UCSB.
And he was working on something pretty novel.
It was a laser system that we would send to
space and use that mitigate asteroid threats.
At the time, the idea was right in the formation
stage and very theoretical.
And so when I came in, very hands on engineer,
started doing experiments to prove this idea
and show that it works.
And so once I proved that, we started to get
a lot of funding from NASA.
We got a NASA innovative advanced concept
grant, which really helped push us forward.
And that was 11th grade, senior year.
And then we saw that we could use this same
technology to push a spacecraft at relativistic
speeds, which in our day and age, is kinda
like, oh wow, we're talking about going to
Alpha Centauri, which is the closest star,
about four light years away and getting there
at 25% the speed of light.
That's an outrageous claim to make.
If you propose a system with current rocket
technology to do that, it would take hundreds
of thousands of years to get there.
But we're proposing a laser system that it
takes 20 to 30 years to get there.
And so that idea got a lot of funding as well.
I don't know if anyone knows Yuri Milner.
He's pretty famous here at the valley.
He ended up creating a Breakthrough Initiative
called Breakthrough Starshot, which is rooted
at our core research.
My professor is on the academic panel for
that.
And that's a hundred million dollar initiative
to pursue this laser propulsion to the closest
star.
And so basically, I was doing a lot of work
in high school with this professor, came to
Berkeley to wanna get involved in the engineering
physics program here and all the entrepreneurship
environment that's going on.
And one thing that happened was when we get
all this funding at UCSB, they would take
about 52% of all the grants that we'd get.
And I thought that was outrageous.
And so I just proposed a silly idea of starting
a company, Directed Energy, and it ended up
down the road we were like, "Wow, this actually
makes sense "for some other things we wanna
do," and so we ended up forming it.
And now we're getting a lot of the NASA NIACs
through our company, and that's really where
we're going with it right now.
- [Vicky] So is your customer...
Right now, you actually have NASA as a customer?
- So in research and development, you don't
really get customers.
You get throwed a lot of money to look at
something and analyze it.
So in the research world, I'm sure you know,
you just get money to start thinking about
things.
Most people don't think, in the research world,
don't start thinking about something unless
there's some money to it, like after you came
up with an initial idea.
- Curious, from both of you, in the research
world when you're getting money, first of
all, you have to apply for money, but what
are the expectations for the money that you're
being given, and frankly, what is it spent
on?
- Yeah.
- Can I?
- Go first, go first.
- Yeah.
So for us, the money is just used to pay for
us to think about these things and move the
idea forward and experiment and prove it's
working.
I would say that's mainly for us.
I don't know.
- Do you have checkpoints?
Do you have to go in and do presentations?
- No.
It's really laid back.
I think in research, you're pretty much motivated
by your inside and your own thoughts, and
so most of the people that are funding you
know that.
- Interesting.
So we've heard from venture capitalists and
how they do funding.
This is also an interesting avenue.
Sahar, I'd be interesting in hearing what
you have to say.
- Yeah, sure.
I probably can provide a more traditional
academic research viewpoint.
It's very similar to what Travis was describing.
You get money from large national institutions.
They give exceedingly large sums of money
typically to labs or faculty that can then
hire post docs, folks who are already done
with their PhDs, graduate students.
You pay, essentially, for very a cheap labor
force to follow their dreams, follow their
passion.
And there are no real checkpoints.
It's just maybe at the end if you've said
that, "I wanna solve X," tell us how far you
got in solving X.
What's the end result?
Maybe you published a couple papers.
That's kind of the expectation.
- [Vicky] For both of you, how did you find
out?
Did you actually work on applying for the
grants that you all are working under?
Is that how you say it?
- [Travis] I know I did.
- [Vicky] So how did you know that there was
even a grant?
I'm curious.
How do you find out where to look for money/
- Yeah.
I think that it's important if you're doing
research with a professor or with a graduate
student is that you're diving into this world
and looking at the funding sources, because
I started to just look online, NASA grants
and that kind of thing, and my professor didn't
even know about some of them, and I would
send them his way.
He was like, "Oh, this sounds like a good
idea.
"Let's apply to it."
And just try to get yourself involved in that
world, and you'll find all those funding sources.
- [Vicky] Divy, question for you.
What have you all done to take the idea from
idea a little bit further?
- So there's actually, I think Cal is probably
one of the best places to do a startup.
And just a bit of background on my team.
Half of, basically me, I work out of Berkeley,
and the other two cofounders, they work out
of UPenn.
And UPenn also has a really nice startup ecosystem.
So once we had our idea fleshed out, we applied
to something over here called Big Ideas.
And if you guys have any type of social related
challenges that you guys wanna pursue, if
you have any ideas or you're working in that,
I highly, highly recommend applying to their
next batch.
Basically, Big Ideas is a competition for
you to present a business plan, a pitch, and
just an idea of statistics, how you wanna
get this thing up and started, a basic overview
of your project.
And it really helps you nail down each and
every single aspect of it.
So we applied to Big Ideas last semester,
and we were selected as a finalist, and through
Big Ideas, we were given a mentor.
And our mentor has been helping us, is very,
very well versed in legal side, so we started
getting knowledge on the legal side of things.
Then, through Big Ideas, we learned about
all these other incubators on campus, most
notably Free Ventures, which I know you are
pretty familiar with as well.
Free Ventures is, in my opinion, one of the
best places to go for startups.
Are any of you guys familiar with The House
off of Bancroft?
Yeah.
So Free Ventures is basically another accelerator
program that runs out of The House.
They give you access to a bunch of mentors
who basically, every single Monday, a lot
of mentors come in and they just look over
your pitch.
Beforehand, you give them issues that you're
facing, and whether it be, if you're a web-based
company, if you wanna work on design, if you
are looking for VC, if you're looking for
angels, if you wanna have them look over your
business plan.
Literally, every single aspect of anything
that you wanna do, they look at it and they
come, basically, tear it down and help you
build it back up.
And Free Ventures has been an amazing resource.
Plus, they also give you a little bit of funding.
- [Vicky] Little bit of money?
- Yeah, a little bit money.
- [Vicky] How much?
- Like $2,000, I think, to start you off.
Plus, also if you're into web services, they
also give you $10,000 off of Amazon Web Services,
which is quite a lot if you're going to that
space.
- So I am curious.
You said that the other half of your team,
the two guys who are, I don't know if it's
two guys, I'm sorry, two students at UPenn,
when you all were, first of all, with Big
Ideas, did you gather the whole team together
to pitch, or how did you do that?
- So, basically, I am CEO of the company,
so most of the pitching, most of applying
for grants, all that falls under me.
And they're more concerned about just getting
the pure technical aspects.
I'm working on the technical aspects, too,
but most of the grant stuff falls on me.
- And what are you getting from UPenn?
- So from UPenn, there's a lot of just smaller
advance that are just available.
For example, the Penn Innovation Grant gave
us, I think, $1500 initially to start off.
And then there was another pitching competition,
which gave us a little bit more money.
Specifically for Penn Innovation, they also
gave us a mentor to work with and more connections
and their whole entire circle.
And if we show progress in the next year,
we get even more money.
- Nathan, I'm coming to you in a second.
I've got one other follow up question.
Divy, you're first year.
From my perspective, I think all of you are
so amazingly articulate about what you all
are doing, but I'm wondering, and you're CEO
of the company, and I don't know how many
credits you came into Cal with, but besides
the fact that you fell off your skateboard,
how are you balancing stuff?
What courses are you taking?
Mechanical engineering isn't that easy.
- Yeah.
I started off this semester with 20 units
of all technicals, 'cause I was like, "You
know what?
"Maybe I'll be able to do it."
And then midterm season came.
I'm like,"That's not happening."
So I dropped a class.
Now I'm in 16 units.
But it's really a matter of finding out what
it is that you wanna do.
For me, my priority is the company.
I wanna see this expand.
I know where it can take me and I know that
I wanna put the majority of my time and effort
into it.
But aside from that, I think it's really important
to find an outlet for yourself.
Meditation actually helps me quite a lot,
'cause a lot of times when you're starting
a company or especially when you're in early
stages, a lot of just things happen.
You don't expect 'em to happen.
A lot of problems come up, whether it be with
other people who are working with you, life
problems, skateboarding killing your feet,
whatever that may be, sometimes you need an
outlet.
For me, I do acapella, which is really, six
hours a week.
It's awesome.
- It's a good thing you didn't tell me that
before, 'cause I would have you singing in
front of us.
- Yeah, yeah.
Oh god.
- Interesting.
And so Nathan, coming to you, you have a little
bit of different experience.
And I do think it's fascinating who you've
started the team with, but I'm wondering if
you could tell us what has or hasn't worked
for you in terms of Cal and your third year
now.
- Yeah.
So this is kind weird, because my team is
all over, as well.
We have one in San Francisco, I'm here, New
York, Boston, and North Carolina.
So I spend around 10 hours minimum a week
on the phone every week.
So if you hate phone calls, that's a huge
problem.
I used to hate phone calls, but now I'm just
like, whatever.
I'll just sit here.
So that's a big amount of time, because when
everyone is in a different location, I spend
a lot of time sitting there.
In terms of how I balance with my course load,
I'm a little bit different of a situation.
Relative to my past coursework, this semester
is relatively light for me, so I'm able to
spend a lot more time on my work, and also
skip class.
Like after this, I'm leaving to go back to
Boston for the remainder of the week.
It's a lot of spending my weekend sitting,
teaching myself the material before the professor
gets to it, 'cause I'm not gonna be there
during lecture anyway, and then turning it
in ahead of time and crying as to why I had
to force myself through this.
- [Vicky] Going back to Ripe and founding
Ripe, actually, I am kind if curious, how
did you found it, and what came first, the
founders or the idea?
- So the idea came first.
So this is was actually my idea through the
blockchain collider competition held by the
Sutardja Center last spring.
And funny enough,if he watches this, we didn't
win, because they thought our idea was too
difficult to implement and not realistic.
- [Vicky] Luckily you're not bitter about
it.
-Yeah.
It would've been a nice amount of money to
start with, but that was kinda interesting.
But what happened was one of the judges thought
our idea was good and introduced me to some
of his friends, who are now my partners.
- [Vicky] That's why they're a bunch of old
men?
- Yeah.
So that's why they're much older, 'cause it
was his friends.
And that's how our team formed.
- [Vicky] That's interesting.
And are these people that are on the team
with you, are they also working on other businesses
at the same time?
- Two of them have quit their jobs for this
and two have not.
- [Vicky] How does that make you feel?
I'm sorry.
I got goosebumps that two people have actually
quit their jobs.
- Yeah.
I contemplated, would I drop out of school
for this?
I'm sure you probably thought about the same
idea.
And I think where I am already, I've taken
the majority of what I need to get my degree.
I only have, after this semester, three courses
left, so if I were to take time off now, everyone
will always be like, "Oh, school is something
"that you can come back to in the future.
"It's something like a stable reset button
"that you can press."
But I think that if I left school, I would
go, I would never wanna come back here.
And I would not wanna finish, because you're
doing this stuff--
- [Vicky] But you might come back to Newton,
right?
-You're doing this stuff in the real world,
and then you're sitting there, and then in
this classroom, and you're like, "I don't
understand how thermodynamics "is relevant
to my life."
Yeah, so I'm just going to manage this balance
for now and finish my degree, and then go
do things.
- I apologize.
I've been so enthralled listening to you all
that I have not looked in the audience, and
there is a question way in the back.
- [Man In Audience] This is for Sahar.
Two parts--
- Can I ask you just to wait until the microphone
comes back?
Because we'd like to get it on the video.
That's why.
Thank you for being patient.
It's coming, coming.
Sahar can prepare.
I think later we'll ask each of you if you
would basically leave for--
- [Man In Audience] This is for Sahar.
This is about cognitive function.
So in your research or in your knowledge,
what types of compounds currently do you believe,
they could be synthetic or natural, enhance
cognitive function?
And also, what kind of activities are the
most high value activities to enhance cognitive
function?
- Cool.
Both great questions.
I'm not gonna endorse any drugs on camera,
but--
- [Vicky] I don't know.
Who is it?
Is it Michael Chabon's wife who is talking
about how LSD has been so helpful for her?
- Oh, oh, yes.
- [Vicky] Just, you know.
- LSD, totally different avenue that can be
exceedingly useful for therapeutics for posttraumatic
stress and anxiety disorders, which is not,
I think, where we're focusing the conversation.
Acetylcholine, exceedingly useful.
So the number one FDA approved drug on the
market for Alzheimer's, donepezil, or Aricept
is the trade name for it, is exceedingly useful
for memory and information processing speeds.
So anything that you can eat, whatever it
may be in jest, that can increase levels of
acetylcholine in the synapse.
- [Vicky] Any homeopathic stuff, any fruits,
any Tootsie Rolls, anything that would be
helpful that we get normally?
- Nope.
- [Vicky] It's something that you have to
actually have a pill that is focused on that
or something?
- We all have it naturally in our bodies and
in our brains.
And actually one of the projects I'm working
on now in the lab, I'm just advising on the
project 'cause I'm stepping away from the
pharmacology side of things, but we are hypothesizing
that probably most, you call them compounds,
but neurotransmitters in the brain have an
inverted U-shaped curve to them, it literally
just looks like this, which means that if
your baseline state is already at the top
of that curve, so it's optimal in terms of
performance on the y-axis, that if you increase
the amount of that neurochemical that you're
actually gonna be pushed off of that optimal
state and your performance is actually gonna
drop.
So people who are already pretty smart and
if you already feel pretty alert, like you
can do all of the things that you wanna do,
you're probably in a pretty good place and
if you add more drugs to it, even good ones,
then it's gonna push you, potentially, in
the negative.
But of course, if you're deficient in something,
then adding something could get you to that
optimal performance state.
So dopamine, absolutely fantastic for learning.
Acetylcholine.
And in terms of things you can do, meditation
is probably the most scalable, free, easy
to do.
You can do it anywhere.
You do not have to shave your head and move
to a mountainside and become a monk to utilize
the cognitive and physical benefits of meditation.
I'm a huge proponent of integrated meditation.
Literally, standing in line for your cup of
coffee in the morning, you can take a few
deep breaths.
I could be meditating while I'm sitting here
talking to you now, which I kinda am.
You can relax anytime, anywhere, and using
different cognitive techniques to try and
focus in the mind to extend the amount of
time that you can keep alert and attending
to what's goal relevant and completely ignore
all goal irrelevant pieces of information.
So this is something called selective attention.
- So, curious.
The three of you, probably even the four of
you, have businesses where you constantly
need to be in touch with people who are all
different places and different time zones,
which means that you have your computer on
and you have your phone on.
But that seems like opposite of what you're
saying, that you need to take some time and
not do that.
Is that true?
- You should endorse your cofounder's book
right now.
-I should, yeah.
All right.
Well, before we get to that piece, I do a
lot of executive coaching, so I work with
a couple of different CEOs as clients, and
we do a lot of coaching for them.
And I'm actually a huge proponent of turning
your phone off.
I am not available 24/7.
And my cofounder, Lucas Miller, who's written
a book called Beyond Brilliance, if you guys
go to BeyondBrilliance.org it's available
on Amazon, it's a book on cognitive plasticity
and accelerated learning geared towards students
and studying.
We are all really good about not being available
all of the time.
There is a time and a place to become available
and to check your email and to check your
phone, but that is a minimum amount of the
time, and I don't think that it's in direct
opposition to starting a company.
I've had a company in the past that I sold.
You can do that.
And I turn my phone off when I'm sleeping,
and I only look at it a few times a day.
If somebody wants to get in touch with me,
they'll have to be patient.
- Interesting.
There's a question right in the middle here.
Do you wanna pass the...
Yes.
- I'm gonna present an opposing view to that.
- Sorry.
Where's the microphone?
I just wanna make sure.
Okay, and then I'll go over there, but before,
let's have Nathan add.
- And it does...
I don't advocate for it, but I do it.
So I am practically always accessible except
when I'm sleeping, or I also do dance, so
accept when I'm at dance, sleeping, or doing
calligraphy, that is my mind clearing hobby,
those are the only times when I'm really not
accessible.
And I think this comes from, over the last
two years I've run a lot of organizations
on campus, and some of our timelines and turnarounds
are really quick, and last minute, I can be
asked, like last week, I was asked to put
together a grant proposal, due in two days.
And so I need to be aware of that.
But I don't recommend it.
I've just learned to accept it.
And it is a strain, I would say, on your health
if you are always accessible.
- I would like to add to the non-not being
accessible factor, 'cause I stay up 'till
five in the morning most days.
I actually just founded a club, Space Technologies
at Cal, and all my people in the club, they'll
be getting emails for me at like five o'clock
in the morning.
So I think it's important to always be awake,
so I don't really like to sleep--
- That would explain a lot, then.
- Yeah.
Because being available, not being online,
but always working excites me, and I find
a lot of value in always working, which is
inherently being connected, I guess.
They're one and the same to me.
So yeah.
I think I can get a lot more done if I'm always
working, so actually connected.
Yes.
- I guess in the middle over there, where
I love my sleep.
I can't be like.
I wish I could.
I can't.
While I recognize that it is important to
take a break, like you said for you, you have
your calligraphy, you have your dance.
For me, acapella and sleep, those are the
only two times where I don't want to be connected.
Otherwise, at least for me, it's difficult
not to be connected, 'cause if I'm getting
a call from someone across the state or if
all of a sudden people are saying, "Hey, there's
an opportunity.
"In two hours, you need to run and get it."
It's a fear of missing that.
So always being alert is, again, wouldn't
recommend it, it's not healthy at all, but
I'm not sure how to avoid it.
- I think partly it's like this mild neuroticism
that you're gonna miss something, but I think
a lot of you--
- I know we have a question, but really quickly,
have you all ever missed something and been
upset, and then it turned out to be okay?
- No.
- Okay.
- I don't think I missed anything.
- All right, let's quickly go to questions,
yes.
- [Woman In Audience] So...
Do I need to?
- You have to look if it's on and then put
it up to your mouth.
- [Woman In Audience] Hello.
- There you go.
- [Woman In Audience] I have a question for
you, Sahar, about what you're talking about,
not using your phone as much.
So have you done any studies or do you know
of any studies that have to do with plasticity
in terms of the amount you're using your phone?
Are we becoming physically addicted like it's
a drug?
- No.
There are no studies currently.
There are longitudinal studies that have started
to happen.
I believe the first one was three years ago,
and I think it's at, I'm gonna say BU in Boston.
But no, there are no studies that show that
we become addicted to our phones.
However, every single time you do receive
a text message or you get a notification or
some sort of alert, it does take your attention
away.
It might be against some beliefs that a lot
of people have, but it's physically impossible
for the human brain to multitask.
There's no such thing.
So if you're multitasking or you pride yourself
on being a great multitasker, you're doing
yourself a disservice cognitively.
It's literally physically impossible.
You can be an amazing single tasker and be
very, very good at moving from doing one task
to another at very, very quick speed, but
doing two things quite literally at the same
time, it's just not the way that our ancient
human brain has evolved.
It might continue to evolve, though, to accommodate
for things like having a phone, being online,
talking to somebody, and studying, reading,
doing a bunch of things at the same time.
You can try to train yourself at getting much
better at it, which is something that our
lab has been doing, as well, but it's not
actually getting better at multitasking.
It's about reducing switch cost, which is
the amount of time and the amount of degradation
in your performance in performing all of your
different tasks if you're switching from one
task to another at different speeds.
So the idea here is not necessarily to rest,
that's actually not what I meant by turning
your phone off.
It's stop answering text messages and checking
Facebook and Netflixing your life away and
get your shit done.
Focus, that's the idea.
It's not about resting.
- [Vicky] How do you take this idea and all
the stuff that you're studying, how do you
monetize it?
How do you find a business for it?
You said that you're working with one or two
companies, and how would they find value that
they pay for in what you're doing?
- So, essentially everyone that we've been
chatting with so far feels the pain and the
struggle of what they consider to be information
overload in our current society.
And I'm sure, we, as students, feel that at
the same time.
There's a balance of all of the different
coursework we have to do, a social life, emails
that just keep piling on top of one another,
and it's just a constant stream of information
and tasks that need to get done all of the
time.
And everyone is feeling this pain currently.
One of our collaborators, Adam Gazzaley, actually
also came out with a book about the ancient
brain.
So the brain is actually quite old.
It's evolved over a very, very long time.
But it has not yet accommodated for some of
our new technology, for switching at the rate
that we're switching and trying to do so many
different things at once.
So the idea is that, well, it's not really
an idea.
Everyone feels this pain.
Vicky, do you feel information overload?
- [Vicky] Yes, I do.
- Yes you do.
So I think that answers your question.
I have not yet met one person--
- I think the problem is out there, but I
don't know, is it training that you give to
a company and they pay for that training?
I just don't understand how you create something?
And I think the research is interesting, but
I know you all are trying to work on something
that you can create and possibly sell, a package,
I think.
- Absolutely.
So the things that we're already selling are
the diagnostics, so for people to get a sense
of where they're at in terms of their cognitive
health and wellness, and then the second piece
is the training, which currently comes in
the form of, essentially, training courses
and bootcamps, workshops, and one on one coaching,
but we're trying to make that into essentially
a tech product, so virtual reality and enterprise
software that can actually scale.
- Interesting.
There was another, there are two questions
up there.
- [Man In Audience] Hi.
I have a question for all of you.
How long have you been in business, and are
you profitable today?
- I guess I could answer that one.
Yeah.
We don't have much costs, and it's just research.
And we've been in business since, let's see,
like late 2015.
So, yeah.
- I guess I'll go next.
We're very early stage right now, but we haven't
used up all the money that we've gotten, so
I don't know where that puts us.
We're pursuing to be profitable by the end
of the summer.
- [Vicky] So, curious.
Does that mean that you're still bootstrapped?
Would you consider yourself bootstrapped still?
No.
Why?
- Because, initially, because we are hardware
based, generally there are a lot more costs
related with hardware.
But once you start talking to enough people,
once you've been just at the game long enough
about just being good about getting your connections
and getting the money, once you have that
base, and you have a product that works, it's
much easier to go.
So we've gone through those initial growing
pains.
-Sorry.
So I think we started...
I've been working on this idea, I guess, formulated
it around March, more actively working on
it through the summer, and then more officially
in October, November, and no.
- Officially, we're not yet in business, but
we're in business.
This is really difficult for us to answer,
because we're also in a research lab, so technically,
it's been in business for a few years, but
not actually in business.
We have zero cost, and we're currently in
negotiations with the two companies that we're
working with, so.
- [Vicky] You have zero costs because--
- We're all students.
- They're researchers and students, yeah.
- We're the same.
Our costs, well I guess we have some amount
of cost in traveling around, but that's our
only cost, but we also don't have revenue.
- [Vicky] I pushed myself out here 'cause
I think there are questions.
- [Woman In Audience] Hi.
This question is for Sahar.
What are you studying for your PhD?
I know you did cog sci as an undergrad.
What did you go into?
And do you think that you would be able, as
just a cog sci background without having your
PhD, would you have been able to possibly
work on the project that you're working now?
- So my department is vision science, formally.
So I did gain some background that was generally
not all that useful to me about the eye and
how vision happens in the brain, some stuff
about virtual reality and things like that.
But my project is cognitive neuroscience,
essentially.
Would I be able to have done this project?
No.
It's not a best guess.
In our case, we've already tested out our
solution in like 200 plus people here in the
Bay Area and I already know something works.
And it's coming from that place of stability
and scientific knowledge that we're then trying
to create a business, not the other way around.
- [Man In Audience] Yeah, Divy, I had a question
for you.
So for drone-based autonomy, do you envision
partnering?
That in and of itself is like multiple companies'
worth of problem to solve.
Do you envision partnering with someone else,
or how do you plan on compartmentalizing that
thermal imaging, which is usually expensive,
durability of drones, how do you plan on--
- So we are partnering with a few companies,
especially for the thermal camera, 'cause
we're not a thermal camera company.
We are a drone solution company.
So thermal camera, for sure, we're partnering
with, not partnering, but we're using FLIR's
products.
FLIR is the company that makes the thermal
cameras.
In terms of the actual AI, that's what we
want to really push and that's what a lot
of our research, not research, but a lot of
our work has been.
That's where we wanna keep things in house.
In terms of durability, we have our pilot
program with our first customer over the summer,
and based on the reviews we get on that, because
we're gonna be working with them every single
day, constantly setting out upgrades over
the night, constantly doing that, based on
what they think of the current design of the
drone, which we've built in house, we might
look into partnerships.
But right now, all we care about is proving
that it works, proving that this is something
that can save lives by saving time.
- [Akaj] So, I'm Akaj.
So my question is, realistically, where do
you see your ventures being in the next year?
- Next few years or next year?
- [Akaj] Next one year.
- Next one year.
- [Vicky] Nathan, you look so optimistic.
Come on.
- So my situation is a little bit, well I
guess kinda the same, but food is grown, so
it's not something that I can do continuously.
There are growing cycles for food, and so
our development, our product development cycle,
follows that.
So over this next five month span, we're gonna
get a lot of data and then we're gonna get
nothing for a little bit, and that's gonna
be either a time in which we're looking at
different partnerships, different areas to
expand, but it's not a lot of active moving
forward.
I think in the next year, we'll validate whether
this really works I think, yeah.
- [Vicky] What would make you feel validated
as a company, Nathan?
- Yeah, that's nice.
Finding, yeah, probably.
I don't know.
So here's something.
Before, I would try to plan out every single,
have a clear path for my future, and I realized
that that's not really possible anymore in
the world that I live in now.
I can predict maybe one to two months of the
future, but maybe.
Two months is iffy.
One month, I probably know what I'm doing,
but I'm any longer there's some kind of vague
idea, but there's no clarity as to what could
possibly happen, because there's so much that's
coming at you when you're in this kind of
stage that anything could change.
- [Vicky] Travis, one year.
- We have a 50 year program of putting a kilometer
class laser array into space.
This is not easy.
There's a lot of research and development,
and this is happening no matter what.
And I think of it that way.
So in one year, we'll be along this path to
interstellar flight.
We'll be along this path to protecting the
Earth from an asteroid threat.
Whether we're pursuing it for research or
for an entrepreneurial venture doesn't really
matter to me.
I'm more of an entrepreneurial side, and so
I really wanna push forward this case of using
the same laser system for asteroid mining,
but that's gonna take some work, and that's
more of a 10 year goal.
Whereas the propelling of a spacecraft to
go to our interstellar neighbors, that's gonna
be a 50 year effort.
That's something that, just like going to
the Moon, it's more of a aesthetic slash beautiful
thing than it is an entrepreneurial thing.
But we can use that same laser system for
so many entrepreneurial feats that would help
reap rewards across so many things, like on
Earth and in space.
So I think in a year, we'll just keep moving
along this road map.
- [Vicky] Divy?
- So what we wanna have by one year, and I'm
glad you asked this because Big Ideas, which
I mentioned earlier, as part of your final
proposal, you basically fill out a one year
timeline.
It really helps you see, here's where problems
are gonna occur, here's where I wanna change
things, here's what I expect to happen.
So I guess our one year goal is to have raised
the seed of funding, have multiple pilot programs
going, and have started gathering a lot of
pre-orders from fire departments and police
departments all across the US.
- [Vicky] Sahar, you wanna finish?
- Sure.
In a year's time, we will hopefully have a
few pilots done inside of a few different
companies in different fields and sectors,
and through iterating from inside of the beast,
we want to be able to create the best possible
scalable solutions, either be it software,
web apps, or VR therapeutics, from inside
of the company and using that data to just
get better and better.
- I think I'm gonna invite people to come
up on the stage if they have questions, but
I just wanted to really thank our panelists,
because they had no way of knowing that I
was gonna ask them to be in the panel.
In fact, Nathan told me he couldn't come to
class.
I said, "That's fine.
"Then you'll be on a panel."
I just wanna thank you all and just say how
much I appreciate how articulate you all have
been, and when I have your attention now,
I just want you to know I was supposed to
announce Summer Abroad at the Sutardja Center
is doing another study abroad, this time in
Turin, Italy.
It's a beautiful place.
It goes July 2nd to July 30th.
So if you're starting to think about entrepreneurship,
you don't have these incredible ideas or this
passion for something from space to the mind
to the ground to drones, think about a summer
abroad and see if that can light your fire
in doing that.
Thank you all, and thank you, especially,
panelists.
