THE BRAINTRACER STORY

Hi – my name is Andre and I am the CEO & Founder of BrainTracer, a NYC based 4-months old company dedicated to helping people with depression feel better.

Originally from Germany I came to the USA 11 years ago for school, to get an education and a degree that I could hardly get at home. And since then America has kept giving to me… a great career in consulting and Private Equity, many friends and adventures, and a new home in NYC.

Now it is time for me to give back!

Not only did I want my personal and professional independence. I also wanted to create something. Do something meaningful. That is why I started BrainTracer together with my scientific partner.

BrainTracer, and our first app MoodTune, is a cutting edge new product that we built from scratch. And it has the potential to literally help millions and millions of people in the USA, save billions of dollars (treatment costs and lost workplace productivity) and make a significant impact in the life of our customers.

I think that’s pretty awesome. But I need your help!

We have a prototype, a team, a marketing and business plan, we have gotten articles in the media and we are talking to prospective customers every day. What we need to achieve above vision is funding to create a beautifully designed, easy to use, and fully functional commercial product.

There are 20,000,000 people living in the USA diagnosed with depression. About another 40,000,000 are depressed but not diagnosed. Often that includes our soldiers and veterans who cannot take medication due to side effects or don’t have access to therapy, which, btw, is only helps about 20% of patients who obtain these treatments.

Imaging BrainTracer is able to help 1% of these people to feel better! Or 5%! To me that’s pretty meaningful and real!

What We Need & What You Get

We are asking to raise a total of $152,000. This will allow us to survive for another 3 months, which is enough time for our team of developers and designers to deliver the final product. Here is the breakdown of what we will spend the money on every months for 3 months:

• The bulk goes into the development of our app, we have a team of 3 developers and a couple designers ready to get coding. To make them do that it will cost $5,000 a head a month (total of $75,000)
• They need some software tools and programs to do their work, which runs at $3,000 a month (total of $9,000)
• And if you’ve ever worked with developers then you know that they are great people and you know that they need some friendly supervision to get stuff done – project management runs at $5,000 a month (total of $15,000)

That’s a total of $99,000 for the development of our final MoodTune app with a set of 6 different games, a front-end (user authentication, user assessment, payment function, etc) and a back-end (user dashboard).

The rest of the money goes towards running the business during those 3 months:

• We need lawyers to draft contracts, review regulations and make sure we are operating within what’s medically and ethically correct - $6,000 a month (total of $18,000)
• BrainTracer has about $2,000 a month in T&E and another $2,000 in SG&A (total of $12,000)
• We need $3,000 a month to keep the lights on, meaning rent, utilities, Internet, phone for the whole team, etc (total of $9,000)
• The feed Andre fund – I eat, I drink (sometimes water) and try to get by on a basic bologna and spray cheese diet. Cost is $2,300 a month (total of $6,900 – the spray cheese in NYC doesn’t come cheap)
• And the same for CRP, $2,300 a month (total of $6,900)

That’s $52,800 we spent on the business, legal fees and surviving skills while our developers/designers are at work.

If we do not reach out goal of raising the full $152,000 we will still be super happy and grateful. And we will spend whatever we get on the developers first to get the product done ASAP.

So let’s talk about you! What do you get for helping us?

Well, the feeling of having done something good :) But you will also get free access to our MoodTune app for a specific period of time (see the perks). You can use it yourself or just pass it on to someone you love – and want to be a little happier.

The app will be ready in June/July and you’ll be the first to know. We are going to offer it mostly to institutional clients (corporations, federal agencies, etc) but also to end-users and expect to retail for somewhere around $40/month, which is a pretty good deal compared to medication and therapy.

The Impact

The impact is tremendous and hopefully we got that point across above. But we would like to tell you a little more about us and why we believe we will pull this off!

My co-founder is a Professor at one of the East Coast Ivy League universities and he has been doing research on neurobehavioral science and depression for 15 years. He pioneered several new technologies that we are leveraging in our app (the behind the scenes stuff we can’t talk about here). The effects we are relying on are all published, peer reviewed and tested in the lab. More importantly, he is my partner in this and will continue to refine the technology, fix any issues, run trials to prove results and contribute new ideas as we grow. We are in this for the long haul. We want to help people with depression feel better and he knows how.

Myself I am the business guy. I have worked in industry, Lucent Technologies where I did some product marketing and Allianz Insurance where I did project management. From there I moved into consulting, Andersen Consulting and Accenture, where I worked on testing, implementation, design and assessment projects of large scale IT efforts. After my MBA at the University of Chicago I returned into consulting at RCBG, a technology advisory boutique, and then with SSA & Co in NYC, which is the leading operations consulting firm in the world. There I helped our President put in place our initial marketing strategy and brand identity, moved on to some project and account management and ended up helping to build our European market presence for 3 years. My last year before leaving I spent in our Private Equity practice, advising clients on strategy and co-investments.

It was a great experience, and it has taught me the fundamentals of how to run and build a business, and how to complete IT project successfully.

Lastly, we have a great partner in the folks at Canterbury Road Partners – they are our incubator (fancy word for early stage advisor and IP firm), they are awesome, and they help us with strategy, network, marketing and legal.

Other Ways You Can Help

That’s our story. Our dream. Thank you so much for reading.

If you are able to support us in our vision then there is nothing else to say but YOU ROCK and WE LOVE YOU.

If you can’t help us with funding at this point then we still love you. Maybe you can take a minute to share our story (Indiegogo has some cool share tools), tell your friends, go to our website and sign up for the beta release, or come back later for another visit.