#StartupSpotlight: Sourabh Kothari of Mindcurrent

What’s the name of your startup? Mindcurrent Inc.

What’s your title? Co-founder and CEO

In which city (or cities) is your company located? Beaverton, OR

Describe your startup and its product/mission. Mindcurrent is "like a Fitbit for your brain," predicting your daily stress and peak performance with complete privacy. We provide short, personalized recommendations for employees created by our network of behavioral psychology experts. Our proactive approach drives employee engagement rates that are 2X higher than the industry average, saving our clients tens of thousands of dollars in absenteeism, fatigue, and stress-related healthcare costs.

What got you into launching a startup? When my daughter was born 9 years ago I realized I couldn't keep "helping people with money make money," as lucrative as that had been for me on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley. So I joined Signifyd when they were just starting, to create a billion-dollar brand for them. Which we somehow did in 2.5 years. After that, I knew it was time to chase my dream, and the CEO, Head of Marketing, and Head of Sales from Signifyd supported me as early investors in Mindcurrent.

What’s been the biggest challenge? Your proudest moment? I had to let one of our early founders go to save the product and the company culture. Fortunately, that decision and our pivot to B2B came at a time when employee stress was exploding globally.

My proudest moments as a co-founder of Mindcurrent have all been with our customers. I've heard incredible stories of how our recommendations have made them reconsider some of their choices, actions, and how they treat the ones they love. I also spent 3 hours once on the phone talking to a long-distance truck driver not knowing he wanted to invest $100 in our company. He told me at the end of the call he was going to do that because he's struggled with mental wellness his whole life and no one ever wanted to build something that would let his own data help him.

What are the short and long-term goals for your startup? Short-term we need to work with our partners to scale Mindcurrent in the US and Canada and launch with their support in India and Japan. Long-term we need to extend the daily engagement we have with employees to athletes, students, and military personnel. Everyone should be able to stress less and perform better using their own data.

What’s your favorite thing about our region’s tech ecosystem? Love. I've had an extraordinary career in Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Yet I've never met more tech professionals who worked with love than I have here in Portland. We're so glad we're raising our daughters here and creating jobs for this region.