n of 1: The Neurotech Consumer Era

Who is Neurotech For? Neurotech is for Humans.

I’m excited to announce n of 1, a new narrative publication exploring the evolving relationship between neurotech and society through a human lens.

That lens being my own personal perspective. You know, as a human being.

Over the last three years I’ve painstakingly researched, drafted, edited, and published over 80 articles about the neurotech industry. I say painstakingly because it’s been heavy lifting for me, skewed heavily towards medical device startups and investors building implanted brain-computer interfaces, non-invasive neuromodulation, or clinical research platforms.

Mostly I wrote those from inside my professional parameters as a career-long healthcare analyst, oriented to strategy, policy, advocacy issues.

But for most of this chapter, I’ve pushed my personal life to the margins of my work. This separation has been both a craft choice and a professional necessity in many ways, as I’m sure it is for you, too.

But every strategy has its limits.

What got me here won’t get me where I’m going next.

Why Are You Doing This?

A central question has emerged in my work:

Who is neurotech for? All or just some?

I am coming to believe that neurotech needs to be for everybody. Or, it won’t work at all! *scowls at the sky*

In neurotech, healthcare, clinical research, and other social institutions, “End-Users” - human beings - are divvied up as markets. In practice, end users are numerators and denominators for management under various fiefs and local authorities of academia, industry, public programs. This is at once necessary, and also introduces deep limitations to human innovation.

Meanwhile: In my professional circles, “consumer neurotech” is more often than not dismissed as a separate and apparently inferior category compared to medical devices, biotech, tech bio, life sciences, deep tech, etc.

But these domains have a lot in common. In today’s smart-dumb AI frontier, they’ve become more interrelated and interdependent than we admit.

It’s my growing conviction that the axis between consumer and med device IS the future of neurotechnology. I believe that the shift to generational neurotech innovation will tilt as more product applications and business models are driven by the consumer experience.

Not by consumer neurotech. By Neurotech Consumers!

So: This project is an explicit attempt to gently wrench the neurotech narrative away from the paternalistic authority of neuroscientists and neuroengineers and neuroethicists and neurotechnologists and neuroregulators and neuroexperts, to make it more accessible to anyone else who might be interested in it.

Which is you, dear reader, and me.
You know, like, Real People?

Us, humans. Longevity-chasing mortals. Young and old and middle-aged. Parents and Children. Exceptional, mediocre, subpar, all before lunch. Self-medicating, self-modulating, self-absorbed. Breaking down over time our own special and predictable ways.

You and Me?
We are the target market.
We’re the damn TAM.
We will disrupt markets.
We will build bridges.
We are neurotech futures.

But Really, Why Are You Doing This?

It’s a side quest: I’ve decided to try and make it easier on myself to write more.

Looking back: Over the last two years I’ve produced twice as many unfinished drafts as published articles, including company profiles, market overviews, and embarrassing handfuls of shelved collaborations with several really smart and inspiring people (I see some heavy nodding out there.)

Looking ahead: I am being steadily called into projects involving greater degrees of leadership and influence. In the background, I am preparing this platform to enter the next era of growth, impact, value, and purpose.

Looking around: The quest to get out of my own way now becomes a neurotech one. Can new wearables help me help my brain help me do my job better?

It’s also a writing one: Will using a new canvas and bloggy un-format trigger a re-organization that evolves my perspective, assumptions, and craft choices?

I’m betting on it. I discover my authentic voice and retrain my brain for its near future responsibilities, here are some squishy categories of stuff I’m excited to write more about here:

• Product Reviews: Personal essays about using neurotech products, broadly defined. I’ve begun experimenting with neurotech on myself and will be writing about some of it. I expect most of these writeups will not be sponsored or paid for but all such disclosures will be explicit. This decision is driven by curiosity, to close gaps, stretch and refine my broader professional commercial perspective on product-market fit, value creation, strategies, etc. Also to appease the semi-latent psychonaut tendencies that, in part, originally drew me to this field.

• Consumerizing Neurotech: There are many things that medical device and clinical researchers could learn from the last decade of consumer innovations, across product, brand, public messaging, commercial operations. What SHOULD they learn? I want to explore overlaps from companies, builders, designers, and users across the gamut.

• Reframing Unmet Needs: I am bullish on New Market Creation in neurotech. So buckle up for explorations of under or unserved markets where product market fit might already exist in ADHD, mild cognitive impairment, brain fog, memory loss, executive function, anxiety, mild depression, substance use disorder, cannabis use disorder, chronic pain, sleep, pregnancy, postpartum, menopause, men’s health, women’s health, mental health, behavioral health, cognitive health, neurological health, longevity, brain-gut health, brain-immune system health, digital health, digital therapeutics, preventive medicine, and….maybe you get the point.

🗣️HIT REPLY - What do you believe is a viable, underdiscussed near-future neurotech market and why?

• Personal reflections, experiments, other assorted ramblings may also trickle through! I hope to share some fun and not-so-fun tidbits from my ongoing journey from total outsider to increasing insider. Maybe there will be Guests and Jokes. Certainly, Vibes. I will try to containerize all this for for digestible consumption but not without the occasional chewy bit.

Hope you like it! It’s not meant for everyone, so I’ve set this up as a separate publication within the Neurotech Futures ecosystem, from which you can unsubscribe and still receive all other newsletters.

Stay tuned for a deeply personal reflection that doubles as my first product review. That and a lot more is coming soon. I’m so excited (and nervous, centrally and peripherally) to embark on this new adventure with you.

Thanks for reading. Stay Human 🫶🏽

Cheers

Naveen

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👋🏽 Hi, I’m Naveen. I believe brain health is human health.
n of 1 is a publication in the Neurotech Futures Ecosystem.
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