Dmitry Selitskiy, founder and CEO of Thought-Wired.
Can you tell me a bit about Thought-Wired?
Thought-Wired is a consumer brain-sensing technology startup with a strong focus on social impact. We create software that uses brain-sensing devices, and assist other businesses and organisations to acquire, learn, and use brain-sensing technology and devices through our distribution and services operations.
Consumer brain-sensing technology is an umbrella term for sensing devices and associated processing software designed to acquire, process and interpret the signals produced by the human brain. It constitutes a subset of neurotechnology, and is often referred to as brain-computer interfacing or direct brain interfacing.
Our primary focus is commercialisation of our first product: NOUS - an assistive solution for people with severe physical disabilities. NOUS enables an entirely 'physical-free' access method for communication and other computer applications. It uses the natural power of thought, via a brain-computer interface, to navigate, control and access applications. This offers users with physical impairments greater opportunities for communication, education and social participation. NOUS consists of the software components that we have developed and an accompanying brain-sensing hardware device of a user's choice from a third-party vendor.
What stage are you at in terms of commercialising your innovation?
We built the proof of concept for NOUS in 2011, and since then we have been improving our technology through an iterative prototyping process. In late 2013 we conducted a user trial of NOUS at the MacLean Centre for students with special needs, at Mt Roskill Grammar School in Auckland. Using two distinct thoughts captured with a brain-sensing device, a person with a severe physical disability used the NOUS prototype to learn a touch-free method of communicating via a speech-generating device. The details of these trials are documented in a case study: http://case.thought-wired.com.
Since those trials we have been working through the feedback we received, developing the pre-market prototype of NOUS, and are now planning the final commercialisation push for fourth quarter of this year.
Commercialising innovation can be a long and expensive process. How has your venture been funded?
Thought-Wired was born out of two student competitions: the University of Auckland's Spark Entrepreneurship Challenge - a business planning competition - and Microsoft's Imagine Cup - a worldwide technology and software design challenge. We were runners-up in both of those contests in 2011/12 and that put the initial 'gas in the tank' for us.
Since then we have been walking the treacherous path of bootstrapping. As of this year, we have established ourselves as local distributors of brain-sensing hardware from leading manufacturers Neurosky and Emotiv, which opened a revenue stream for us ahead of commercialisation of our first product. It has to be mentioned that we also received an introductory R&D grant from Callaghan Innovation and are hoping to work with them further to achieve our R&D goals.
We are now planning to raise external funds to bring NOUS to market. This is likely to be achieved through a combination of private angel investment and partnerships with organisations that will benefit from the use of NOUS.
Finally, we are evaluating the potential for publicly launching NOUS through a crowdfunding campaign.
What is your vision for the future of the company?
The first step is commercialisation of NOUS. Apart from having commercial importance to our business, bringing our solution to market has the potential to be life changing for the tens of thousands of people with profound disabilities and their families in New Zealand and around the world. Once we have kickstarted this change we will be able to look more broadly.
Our long-term vision is to enhance interaction between people and the increasingly technological world that now surrounds us. We aim to achieve this through a variety of natural interfaces, such as brain-sensing devices and other sensor and wearable technology, which cater to specific individual needs. The path that we envision will offer tools that can enable companies, organisations and individuals to create products, services and experiences that have natural interfacing at their core.
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