Conscious Founders

RelaxVR, www.RelaxVR.co, has the largest user-base of all the Virtual Reality Meditation Applications. They have almost half-a-million downloads and quite an active user-base. 

Sourabh started his company while an MBA student, and quickly decided to dedicate full-time to his application. 

RelaxVR application enables users to enter a virtual environment of their choosing. Mostly beautiful landscapes with guided audio meditations. 

Our conversation ranged from what it means to run a scrappy startup company, an early-stage app in this emerging ecosystem of Virtual Reality to what the user-interface design challenges might be, and what the opportunities are in VR for this kind of application. I also really like that he uses his product almost every day. I like when entrepreneurs stay close to their products. 

Getting some quiet time in the workplace can be challenging. Even on a bus, or on a plane, Interruptions from others can be reduced by wearing a head-set.  In addition, the visual and auditory environment is totally closed and controlled, which can help reduce other environmental distractions. 

RelaxVR’s application is dominant on the Phone-Based VR setup, where one snaps a phone into a headset compared to the higher-tech HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. To me it seems there are two business models for VR software. There’s the ‘google model’ where one sees the max they can do  in limited processing power system with larger adoption, largely due to price-barrier, and then there’s the higher-end lower install-base systems where one can get super rich environments, but maybe loose out on scale. 

It will be interesting to watch the whole ecosystem evolve and see how these technologies converge. Similar to what happened as the power of a PC fits in your pocket, or on your wrist, or in your glasses. 

Enjoy the conversation and stay healthy!

Nikita and Maryna are pioneers in the field of Lucid Dreaming. Lucid Dreaming is a way to cultivate what your dreams are intentionally, and remember them in the morning. There are many varied perspectives about what happens when we dream, where our mind/spirits go and do, and what the impact is in the waking days of dreams. In the western scientific community we are fact-based. As such we tend to look at what signals are measurable in the brain, like Delta waves, with Theta Spikes. One western cognitive science hypothesis is that dreaming, especially Rapid Eye Movement (REM), is a time the brain integrates its input from the previous day into deeper memory and connections, filtering out what it believes is relevant and what goes out the door. 

Nikita is an engineer and mathematician by trade. He won a trip to the US from Russia for a Google Hackathon, and then decided to focus his efforts on building this product. The product looks like a fancy headband (not the 70’s hoops headband with rainbow colors, but a little fatter and with electronics stuffed in there).  The hardware device uses Trans Cranial Stimulation, TCS in the biz, to stimulate the brain during sleep for deeper more vivid dreams. The current isn’t super strong, but just strong enough to entrain parts of the brain to the spectrum known for dream-state. 

The hardware device is interesting in and of itself. Nikita built it from  scratch, chipset up to program. He measures skin conductance to determine the correct timing and frequency to emit. 

I admire anyone who comes to a foreign country to live. Then, add on the capacity to do business in another country at the same time. They are an impressive team, full of passion about their product and the market. 

I enjoyed our conversation, the education they gave me, and am excited to see how TCS and TCMS (Trans Cranial Magnetic Stimulation) integrates with Virtual Reality as these peripherals become more common in the Mental Health Market. 

Nichol is the co-founder of Trans Tech Conference (www.ttconf.org), Transformational Technology Labs, Willow Group, and Finder’s Course. 

She’s batting 1000 in the Transformational Technology world. First off, I’d like to get pedantic for a moment: There are many words for Mind (Brain, Consciousness, Intelligence, etc… ). Similarly, there are many evolving words to represent what’s happening with the emergent field of mind-altering technologies. Transformational Tech is an expanding field bridging psychology, healthcare, sensing and computing technology, and wellness. 

Nichol sits right at the pinnacle of this mountain. She has such a unique perch, interfaces with so many incredible Entrepreneurs, Creators, Business People, and Thought Leaders. Her Market landscape graphs, research on Trans-Tech financing, and her ability to peer into the future of wearable computing, distributed knowledge, and healthcare’s rapid transformation is so welcomed and needed. 

Hope you enjoy the conversation. Nichol is a prolific publisher, and impeccable researcher, and a very sharp thinker. I am honored to have hosted her for the show. 

Definitely check out the videos on the TT-Conf website, they’re free!

Some great links to her content:

Trans-Tech Market Landscape Map
Discourse on Future of Human Wellbeing
Wiring Humanity for the Future
Linkedin Feed:
Transformational Technology Conference 
The Willow Group
Finders Course

Lisa is the CEO of New Path, an immersive VR meditation platform. She is an entrepreneur with a varied background, and interest in online marketplaces. She's been crafting online content for over a decade, and has her own cultivated blog http://www.lisacast.com. Lisa is passionate about identifying tools that help people thru emotional challenges. She sees VR as a powerful platform to enable this. 

NewPath VR is, to my knowledge, the only VR marketplace for Health/Wellness Related applications. The San Francisco based startup has over 300 applications in its marketplace. Their company has built a library of VR assets, in a ‘Best-Practices’ sort of way. She is helping developers make applications that work within the framework of a healthy VR therapeutic environment. 

In our conversation we covered all the bases of VR in wellness, how an Ad Exec found her way into VR Healing, then on into what the future of VR looks like when we can upload directly from the matrix. 

NewPath regularly hosts meet ups about the implications of VR in healthcare and wellness. 

You can check them out at www.newpathvr.com. 

Matt and Sarah are a dynamic duo. They stated Virtual Bytes in San Francisco and are rapid prototyping two Virtual Reality Programs per month. Their aim is to illustrate and better understand how thought/mind impacts movement using the Virtual Environment as a playground to explore this connection. You can check them out @ www.Virtual-Bytes.com

Sarah grew up in Israel, practicing martial arts, dancing, and thru a highly diverse and interesting path, found her way to a PhD in Neuroscience . 

Matt grew up in Hawaii, playing with computers, aka ‘Magic' in Highschool, building virtual worlds as a way to express his genuine gifts and interests.. He found his way to SF, where he and Sarah have teamed up to launch Virtual Bytes…

They both share a similar passion about cultivating new and interesting ways to affect Mind. Learning about how the mind works, what are the controlling mechanisms and how do they interact to produce a model of reality? If the mind were purely programatic, analogous to a computer, can we hack it? They think so. 

Not surprisingly, Many futurists find their way into these technologies early on. We’re starting to see more and more movies with ‘secret spy glasses’ and augmented reality, where dynamic images are being displayed, overlaid ontop of our ‘real’ reality. From a neuroscience perspective, and an experiential perspective… these experiences are becoming more and more ‘real’ to the mind. People experiencing these worlds can recall them as they recall a real experience in this world. 

Just as the mobile phone explosion went from super expensive hardware you had to drive around in your car with (remember the early 90s, like with Miami Vice driving in that white Ferrari Convertible.. OK I digress..)… But, Now, cell phones are being deployed on the order of Billions across the globe, penetrating even the most remote villages of Africa used by people who can’t read, but are using their phones for banking, business and value exchange. We have dick-Tracy style waterproof watches with full cell and data capacity like the latest Apple Watch. 

This mobile phone revolution happened in the last 25 years. 

Well, VR is at the driving around in your car stage of the early 90s cellular phones. You have these big headsets, tethered to a computer to get a decent experience….  And yet, hardware is still doubling its speed and halving in size exponentially every year. If you’re a techie, you’ve probably heard about Moore’s law where the founder of Intel predicted semiconductors would double in speed and reduce in size every year at an exponential compounding rate. If you’re not a techie geek, welcome to my techie geekdom realm.

Anyhow, guess is we’ll have the first ‘iPhone’ version of this technology where you have a real computer in your eyeglasses in the next 5 years. It will replace the cell-phone. (Can you Imagine?!) Life without a cell phone? What does that mean to the future of our culture? What does that do to the future of our children’s brains, their minds, their perspective on what’s real? 

And what would this podcast be without the Good/Evil question… what happens as Societies evolve? What are the driving forces that shape a society? How do technological breakthrus impact the society, and vice-versa? Does Society ‘feed the machine’ that it created to be better, stronger, more purposeful, and directed to their very human desires?

Hope you enjoy this talk as much as I did!

Wow, my meeting with Chris spanned so much. From Spirituality, to the path of a millennial finding his way in the current American cultural dogma, programming and on into integration of spiritual purpose with business.

Chris's software has been successfully launched at Stanford Children's hospital. The program has had tremendous results reducing pain and anxiety in children. For more information, check out his website JunoVR.com

Chris is a super clear-eyed thinker, with short curly brown hair, a general air of positivity and presence. Definitely someone I plan to hang out with more.  

His unique background in sensors, robotics, and software integration place him in a fantastic position to really make the move into this realm of integrated hardware/software for bio-feedback in the early stages of VR. 

Chris started his company about 2 years ago with the intention of doing good in the world. As he says, "Helping people have more of a direct experience of their body thru their own breath." Thus, causing a shift in society, and the positivity in consciousness. 

Demoing the software, I experienced two modes. One was a 'breath of sparkles' in a super relaxing scene, and another was pushing a ball away and back to me by breathing in and out. Both games made me want to 'play' with my breath. Play, being one of the key cofactors for initiating neural plasticity... this application could really do wonders. 

I really enjoyed learning from Chris. His business is a wonderful example of using the community of value exchange (Business World), for creative expression. Within Chris's passion pursuit, he has manifested amazing user adoption. Having the Children’s Hospital at Stanford using the app and creating use-case data is an exceptional win for this kind of healing technology. It is yet another example of the move towards programs, instead of pills. 

Our conversation spanned a range of topics. Just a few are:

• What motivates a tech entrepreneur to move from making money, to building a business with a cause? 
• What was initial path to meditation and conscious experience?
• Did you build this because you wanted more efficient ways of achieving your own meditative states?
• How does Breath interface with the Subconscious and Conscious Mind? 
• What is truly important in the realm of creating a VR relaxation app?
• How have you marketed your product? 

In summary, Chris has done amazing things in this emerging field, and he's just getting started. He's definitely one of the pioneers in what I anticipate will be a multi-billion, if not multi-hundred billion dollar healthcare industry revolution. 

Robin is the founder of SoundSelf. A Virtual Reality game that takes players on a self-discovery trance experience using their own voice as a driver for visual and sonic exploration. 

Robin began building SoundSelf 6 years ago while still working as a Sound Designer for Video Games such as The Stanley Parable and Antichamber. About 4 years ago he dedicated full-time to SoundSelf. 

I really enjoyed our conversation, and learned a WHOLE lot. 

If our society had a digital Shaman distributing experiential wisdom thru computers and programs, Robin would be it. 

He is an articulate experienced explorer of Consciousness. Robin's fascination with consciousness, exploration, art, and tools clearly has benefited his life and his expression of self thru art. 

Robin is a self defined Sound Designer. Not a musician per-se, rather a creator of 'Sound Systems.' Systems which interact with their consumers and environment… e.g. video-games. 

Robin's desire to create SoundSelf was initially motivated in part by his first “oneness” experience at Burning Man while on Psychedelics. The pivotal insight occurred when he looked at his unique set of skills, background, and thought… Hey, I think I can do this, I think I can generate similar states of oneness with computer/game technology and an Artificial Intelligence conceptual framework. 

Our conversation spanned so many intellectually and personally fascinating topics. Topics I intend to explore further in future episodes.

Robin is an ardent consumer of information, a reflector of social change, social media, and a Burner. His Video Reflections on Facebook are a wonderful point of perspective on the State of VR, Tech, and their projection/direction. 

Topics in this episode:

• How can we apply frameworks of Gamification to consciousness healing? 
• What motivates a pioneering entrepreneur in this space to build, to create? 
• How could this technology be applied to healthcare?
• What are the moral questions surrounding intentional altering states of consciousness in a programatic way?
• How does someone get people to use and interact with their software creation? 
• What is the future of healing, computer-aided, or otherwise? 
• How does the efficiency and individual efficacy of healing change as ancient technologies like meditation, acupuncture, herbs, are mixed with newer technologies like, medication, Virtual Reality, Virtual Communities, programatic computerized prescription, and mass-distribution? 
• Does fullness and range of experience define life enjoyment? 
• Is future technology there and just awaiting discovery, is it created, or a combination? 
• What’s the future hardware landscape look like for these kinds of programs? 
• When will peripherals be integrated as a whole aspect of Virtual Reality hardware, for example, EEG, EKG? What will be the motivating forces for those integrations?
• What makes for a good consumer product in this space? 
• How does one choose creative constraints in their initial product development? 
• What is AI in the realm of consciousness programming? 
• What is Normal culture, Normal Human? 
• Is the 'Now' the science fiction of yesterday? The weird history of tomorrow? 

I leave you with this quote Robin shared from Terence McKenna: 

"The drugs of the future will be computers. The computers of the future will be drugs."