Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Zak
Hi Paul, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m very curious about humans, I find them to be a fascinating species. In my academic lab, we measure brain activity while people make decisions in order to understand the varieties of the human experience. Why people make different choices in the same circumstance is a great way to understand people and by matching choices to brain activity we document what drives these differences because people cannot explain why they do what they do. Brain activity also enables us to predict what people will do with high accuracy. My group was funded by the US Department of Defense to create a platform so that soldiers would be trained to use words rather than weapons to influence US allies and enemies to cooperate with our goals. We were funded to identify combinations of signals in the brain that would accurately and consistently predict what people would do after a message or an experience. The difficulty is that the brain is “lazy” in that it does not use all its processing power all the time and this laziness manifests as habits that can be hard to influence. After years of research we discovered how the brain values social-emotional experiences. I have named this brain network “Immersion” because people get absorbed into high Immersion experiences. For me, its a one second frequency data stream we can measure and use to predict behavior of both individuals and entire population with 90%+ accuracy very consistently. Influence follows when a message or experience generates high Immersion. I even wrote a book about this to share what my group learned by measuring Immersion in over 50,000 people (Immersion: The Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness). We then built the first neuroscience as a service (NaaS) platform that enables anyone to measure what people’s brains love in real time by applying algorithms to signals we pull from smartwatches and fitness wearables. It turns out that the brain is connected to a body and we meticulously mapped out the relationship between signals in the peripheral nervous system to Immersion in the brain and then used cloud computing to measure this in real time.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There is no smooth ride for a startup! I had a couple of advantages starting out–a great cofounder who did his PhD in my lab and was a long time collaborator. He was great with electronics. I also hired a soon to be PhD from my lab who was great at managing software development as employee #1. Seven years later both are still with my company. We had some early successes and by the end of year two, in December 2019, I hired a eight-time tech startup veteran as CEO to help me raise VC funding and to scale the company. And, three months later, the world shut down due to the COVID lockdowns. The nearly died as all our subscribers cancelled their subscriptions. We cut and deferred salaries and other expenses and since we had no customers, accelerated building and deploying V2 of our platform with our new CEO doing most of the coding. A year later we closed our seed round and started building our team with better technology. It has not been smooth sailing after that though. A few years later we had three products, one was great, two were just OK, and we spent most of our time chasing revenue rather than making a great product that people had to have (and pay for). As our coffers emptied, we got religion and got focused on doing one thing very well–enabling anyone to measure the value of an experience–and clarified our messaging. Now we are on a clear growth path. But, the challenges never end and that’s OK, it keeps everyone on their toes ensuring we truly serve our customers.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I have been privileged to on the faculty at Claremont Graduate University since 1995, earned tenure, and I run a busy and productive behavioral neuroscience lab there. Claremont has given me the freedom and time to build businesses because they understand that practical applications of science are the most valuable things to teach students. I am well known in neuroscience for first showing the powerful behavioral effects of a neurochemical called oxytocin. This involved creating a protocol to measure the very rapid release of oxytocin in human brains as well as a way to safely infuse synthetic oxytocin into human brains. This led to high impact scientific publications, a 2011 TED talk with 2 million views, media appearances and the ability to raise millions of dollars of funding to expand my research in the neurological basis for human behavior. Thirty years after earning my PhD I’m ranked in the top 0.3% of most cited scientists, I have supervised over 100 PhD students in my lab, and I have started four companies. I think I have gotten quite good at explaining neuroscience to general audiences and I travel every few weeks to speak to companies and general audiences about the brain basis for love, happiness, health, and longevity. My three jobs (academic scientist, digital health founder, and public speaker) have given me an amazing life I that is well beyond what I had imagined as a youngster. Our very innovative neurologic emotional fitness product, SIX, is the culmination of 25 years of persistent research seeking to understand happiness neurologically and then creating a technology that measures the value the brain gets from experiences and using these data to continuously guide people to be happier, and live longer and healthier. I hope that SIX is my lasting legacy. My ambitious goal is that 1 billion people use the free SIX app in the next 3 years and that this sparks a conversation about emotional fitness, the value of social connections, and how these diminish the incidence of depression and are the foundational of happiness.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
There are several traits that have made me successful. First, curiosity. I find humans really really interesting and I want to know more about them every day. Second, I love to learn. I have “trespassed” in many scientific and technical fields by being unafraid to not know something. I’m a fast learner and I put myself in situations in which I can learn quickly, often by working with those who are experts. Third, I am quite good at building teams. This means spotting talent and persuading talented people to buy into a dream that I have that can change the world. Finally, I’m only interested in hitting home runs. I would rather fail trying to do something important and valuable than to make incremental progress. I’m comfortable with uncertainty and failure because I will learn from these and get better fast.
Pricing:
- Basic SIX app is free
Contact Info:
- Website: https://your6.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesixapp
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/4w4D2diCLw1k5TPZ/?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Twitter: https://x.com/immersionneuro
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheSIXApp
- Other: https://labs.heygen.com/guest/interactive-avatar/share?share=eyJxdWFsaXR5IjoiaGlnaCIsImF2YXRhck5hbWUiOiI0MzhkMGE3Yzg2NDI0OTkwOWQ3MDdkNTcz%0D%0AZmFlMmI3OSIsInByZXZpZXdJbWciOiJodHRwczovL2ZpbGVzMi5oZXlnZW4uYWkvYXZhdGFyL3Yz%0D%0ALzQzOGQwYTdjODY0MjQ5OTA5ZDcwN2Q1NzNmYWUyYjc5L2Z1bGwvMi4yL3ByZXZpZXdfdGFyZ2V0%0D%0ALndlYnAiLCJuZWVkUmVtb3ZlQmFja2dyb3VuZCI6ZmFsc2UsImtub3dsZWRnZUJhc2VJZCI6IjBj%0D%0AYzhlOTM3YjE1YTRhMTA5YTdmOGJiZTdhOTRkMDk1Iiwic2hhcmVfY29kZSI6IjVlZDMxNzAyLTY1%0D%0AMzAtNGI0ZS04MThlLTUyMWY1YjlmMGU3NiIsInVzZXJuYW1lIjoiY2VmODFhZmVjYWRkNGMwZDli%0D%0AOWEyMWVmMDE4YWVmM2MifQ%3D%3D
