By Lee GeorgeJames J. Hill Center
About 10 million students and 60 percent of adults are struggling with attention challenges, according to Rod Greder, founder of Awear Technologies. Greder believes he has a product that reduces the cost of dealing with diagnosed attention deficit disorder and without the side effects of the drugs commonly used to treat it.
Awear Technologies' initial product is the ConfiBoost Trainer. This is a set of glasses which are a neurosensing device that detects when one's mind wanders. The glasses darken to get the "attention" of the wearer. Awear claims that repeated use of the device strengthens neural pathways controlling attention.
Entrepreneur Snapshot
Founder: Rod Greder
Age: 56
City you live in: Pine City, Minn.
City of birth: Denison, Iowa
High school attended: Dow City-Arion, Iowa
Colleges attended: Iowa State, University of Minnesota, University of Illinois.
Rod Greder, a Ph.D. and certified new product development professional, has been teaching young adults for the past decade. He has experienced firsthand the inability of some students to pay attention when they don't want to or when there is no "high stimulus" to engage them. Rod has observed that there now appears to be an attention deficit epidemic manifesting itself in the classroom and workplace. Rod, who has a doctorate in genetics, has been involved in discovering, developing and launching new products most of his career.
Rod has teamed up with Gary Jader, an experienced product tinkerer and clinician who is passionate about making a difference in the lives of young people. Gary also has experienced the struggles of poor attentiveness with his two sons being diagnosed with ADHD -- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Company Snapshot: Awear Technologies
Business Start Date: 2011
Number of Employees: 2
Number of Customers: 1
Website: www.aweartechnologies.net
Twitter: @aweartech
The Origin
The students' faces gave it away. As a teacher, I'd say three straight sentences and all I got were blank looks. After 10 years in education, I'd been told that children learn differently now. They say we must hook the video game generation with high stimulus -- "shiny stuff" -- to keep them engaged.
Yet I resisted. I understand the benefits of videos and games. But, I also know that while "the world is a stage" it is not a video game.
Improving attention skills in low-stimulus environments has become my passion.
Awear Technologies wants to help students rewire neural pathways to strengthen focus skills and improve distraction control. If we can create awareness about mind-wandering and distraction in the moment, we can begin to resist these debilitating impulses -- without drugs.
Q & A
Rod, in your opinion, what does it take to be a great entrepreneur?
RG: Persistence! You will be tempted to toss in the towel dozens and dozens of times but you need to resist and try to get one more yard and one more first down, get past mid-field and then get into scoring range.
What problems does your business solve?
RG: About 10 million students struggle with attention challenges that affect learning outcomes but are not clinically ADD/ADHD. Eleven percent of K-12 students have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. Dealing with an ADHD student costs as much as $5,000 per student.
About 60 percent of adults have been estimated to be dealing with ADT -- attention deficit trait -- that impacts their productivity.
Our wearable ConfiBoost Trainer (similar to Google Glass) is designed to naturally assist the wearer to be cognizant of when their mind wanders off-task and to nudge them to refocus.
Where did you pivot?
RG: We have had to overcome the skepticism of over-hyped and misused neurocognitive training with credible data, unbiased experts on the team, and endorsements by the clinical mental health establishment. I didn't totally foresee this at the beginning but our pivot to focus on the science and credible data has set us apart.
What obstacles must you overcome to be wildly successful?
RG: Two major obstacles exist. We must convince educators, parents, administrators and other decision-makers that focusing on the brain from the inside-out is an enormous multiplier that improves learning outcomes, makes education more efficient and cost-effective and creates young adults who can succeed in class, at work and in life. The second is obtaining the capital we need to build out our vision and reach a tipping point where all stakeholders are convinced and trial and adoption occurs.
What personal strengths do you bring to your business?
RG: My doggedness, creativity and passion. I don't accept "no" very easily and I wear my convictions on my sleeve. I also have extensive experience developing and launching new products.
How are you funding your business -- organically, angel or VC investments?
RG: I have bootstrapped the company from the beginning with some limited angel investment. We also have aggressively pursued non-dilutive grant funding and successfully convinced four different granting agencies we have a sound idea, there is a market need and we have the team to make it happen. We've received over $500,000 in the last three years and anticipate obtaining significantly more as we continue to achieve milestones.
What is your business model and how do you make money?
RG: We will sell/license our wearable to schools, learning centers, tutors and counselors to use with multiple students. We will provide training protocols (software) to be used with the wearable for training under a subscription model per user. We will directly sell to school systems and learning companies to ensure effectiveness of usage of the intervention. Product price for a school would be $1,500 and one wearable can be used by up to 10 students during the week.
Where do you go for help when you need it?
RG: Informally I network heavily to find subject matter experts wherever they exist including 1 Million Cups St. Paul and the James J. Hill Center. I've attended many dozens of meetings over the last 4-5 years to learn. I believe that great ideas can come from unexpected people at unexpected times but you have to be there and awake and aware to hear them and appreciate them.
What are you most proud of?
RG: Awear Technologies has been extremely creative in forming virtual teams of experts to collaborate on our projects. We have National Institute of Mental Health and National Science Foundation projects. We also have been recognized with the following awards: 2014 Tekne winner, MNCup finalist, 2014 Intel Wearable Visionary Finalist, 2014 Penn-Milken EdTech semifinalist and other awards.
We've come a long way with perseverance, creativity, flexibility and the willingness to partner and share the credit.
How did 1 Million Cups St. Paul help you? Did you get valuable feedback? Did you get connected to resources? Did you pivot because of the experience?
RG: Immediately after the presentation I had several people who advised me we should add adults to our target market for many reasons: major need, speed and ease of adoption etc. We are doing market research to confirm whether that suggestion should lead to a pivot. It may be a great way to utilize adults who have had success with the wearable to promote it into their kid's schools. Also we made contact with a thoughtful articulate teacher who has appeared in a video we are doing to promote Awear Technologies.
You can hear from startups like this one each Wednesday, 9 AM -- 10 AM at the James J. Hill Center during 1 Million Cups St. Paul. The James J. Hill Center is a nonprofit in downtown St. Paul that provides access to business research, educational programming and a place to work. The Hill is open to the public, Monday -- Thursday, 10 AM -- 5 PM. To keep updated on what startup is presenting next or to apply to present visit www.JJHill.org/go/1MCSPL.
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