Hi All,
In this week’s discussion, I would like to introduce you Jesse Pickard, an entrepreneur who created a popular brain training app, Elevate.
Graduated from Syracuse University, Jesse began his career as a User Experience intern (A designer who designs the interaction experience on Websites, apps and other interfaces) in 2002, and established himself as an expert in the field over the next decade. In 2012, he launched his first business adventure, Mindsnack, a company focus on developing mind challenging games. The company was a success, and thus made Pickard’s well-known in the Bay Area.
In 2014, Jesse Pickard launched Elevate, a mind-training app, and it made to the “App of the Year 2014” in education category. To fully focus on Elevate, the entrepreneur transitioned Mindsnack to Elevate, and assume the position of CEO upon establishing the new company. The mind-training app aims to build analytical and communication skills by providing customized training sessions.
As of today, although successfully achieved 11 million downloads, Elevate still remains a small 21-person team based in San Fransisco. It is a top-tier start up in the Bay Area, with a 6.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital, a top-notch Tech Venture Capital firm In California.
According to the firm’s profile on Angel list, most of the company’s employees have a strong background on game design or User experience design (very similar to game design). As the CEO himself is a User experience designer, it is assumed that the quality of the team is very high. (You can’t fool the CEO with a very poor tech skill if he knows all about designing and programming.)
Lastly, I have been a user of Elevate. It is very helpful to train my analytical skills. In addition, I am also appealed to the company’s focus on customized mind-training. (I believe that customization will be the key to success to almost every product in the 21st century.) Therefore, I am definitely sold on Elevate’s concept, a personalized brain training to make people smarter!
How it relates to education? I think education is all about communication skills and analytical skills. So train them and learn better!
