Before everyone was working from home, most workers were in open-office environments, and there were no shortage of headphones available to help people block out the noise from co-workers.
A local neurotechnology startup is on the verge of releasing a set of headphones it says can help make you more productive a whole different way: by plugging directly into your brain.
Nuerable is set to release headphones in 2022 that are built like any other traditional style, but the speakers on the user's ears have electrodes on the ear cup that record brain activity to understand when the user is entering, or exiting, a state of focus.
The company's Enten “smart headphones" use AI analytics to maximize user productivity, according to the company, which was founded in 2015.
The headphones are designed to detect when a user is entering a state of focus. It then turns off your computer's notifications and activates the headphones' noise-cancellation technology to keep the user focused.
Officials say the headphones can also monitor when users are in a state of distraction from too many notifications or calls coming in. Once the headphones realize the user is out of focus, it will encourage them to step away from the task at hand to take a breather, ultimately optimizing later productivity.
“Your brain can't focus on multiple tasks as much as we believe that we can. Once we detect that you're really entering focus on a task, our main goal is, how do we create the right environment to keep you there as long as possible,” CEO Ramses Alcaide said.
The 20 person company has raised nearly $16M in funding since its inception. Its latest funding round of $6M in 2019 was led by M Ventures. Neurable is looking to continue raising funding soon.
The company was originally headquartered in Michigan, but moved to Boston to leverage the growing innovation ecosystem here.
“We had been fundraising in Michigan for about nine months and got zero dollars. We came to Boston for two days, and we got $2 million, with term sheets. It was huge,” Alcaide said.
While there are a lot of companies out there that do neurotech, the biggest issue Alcaide found is that when users take their neurotech home, they put it on and it disappoints them because it doesn't deliver what it promised.
“We really have worked hard to try to buck that trend,” Alcaide said.
The headphones sell on Indiegogo for about $200. Upon its official release, they’ll retail for $400. Present sales are essentially pre-orders.
