It has been a few years since I’ve announced publicly what I’ve been working on. Ever since helping to transform the website globalization firm, MotionPoint, back in 2011, I’ve intentionally laid low. I’ve kept my head down and innovated.
I guess personal recognition lost its appeal along the way. Instead, I took solace in the impact of my work. Having a purpose to work toward every day has fueled me.
To serve as a quick summary below is a rundown of everything I’ve launched, and sold, between 2010 and today.
- Built Benny
- Sold NICG
- Built Orbiter
- Sold Order Media
- Convey Health Solutions (IPO)
- Launched Stacks
- Built CityCoins
- Built and sold Shuttle
- Launched MiamiCoin
- Lanched NewYorkCityCoin
The Venn Diagram
If you were to zoom out and view the venn diagram, you would immediately notice that 100% of my attention has been shared between health and blockchain technologies.
Then I found myself looking ahead. Whenever I asked myself what’s next, I had more visions of building a startup from scratch or advising others toward either side of these categories. I just couldn’t see it without blockchain technologies accelerating adoption 100x from where they already have been or without a massive amount of capital.
But then I learned about the power of psychedelic medicines. I went down a rabbit hole and read every book I could find. I subscribed to as many psychedelic data platforms as I could.
As the pandemic raged on, I realized that everything I knew best had merged into one single crisis; well-being. Most call it the mental health crisis, but I noticed it as a massive opportunity to help as many people as possible.
Then the planets aligned.
My work on my own self-awareness, combined with my recent fascination with transformative treatments, aligned perfectly with my experience and skillset in health and blockchain technologies. That’s when serendipity took hold and I stumbled upon an opportunity that I couldn’t simply ignore.
Psychedelic Invest and Neuly were two rapidly growing websites in the industry and I seized an opportunity to help build upon the growth trajectory. But before I could do that, a much larger mental health ecosystem needed to be established. That’s when my mind couldn’t stop ideating around all of the potential.
Introducing Nucleus
The definition of a nucleus is “the central most important part of an object, movement, or group, forming the basis for its activity and growth.”
“Wow,” I thought. “That’s it. A movement. Maybe I can build a technology that sits at the center of it!”
But then as I kept reading…
“the positively charged central core of an atom, consisting of protons and neutrons and containing nearly all its mass.”
“Ah, yes! Bring in Physics. And align my values with overall existence. That’s even more powerful!”
For the next two months, I kept my head down, just like I’ve done over the past decade, and built something much more than a startup. Much more than a company.
The result is a movement toward the future of healthcare.
The Future of Healthcare
We launched Nucleus, and all of its assets, on Wednesday. While that’s exciting on its own, it’s still only the first inning. In fact, it’s only the first pitch.
The goal for the launch was to establish the brand and offer a clear representation of an entity that serves as a multi-faceted owner of technologies and offerings that can have a personal and professional impact on so many lives.
Sure, Nucleus offers an impressive marketplace of practitioners. And Neuly is the most robust data platform in the psychedelics industry. And Psychedelic Invest has quite an extensive audience. But the ecosystem has so much more room for improvement. So much room to grow.
The largest opportunity we are looking toward as a company is getting ahead of what’s to come within the greater healthcare industry. It’s bold, sure, but we’d like to think that by combining the elements mentioned above into a venn diagram, we can help society build more efficient systems that provide meaningful care to everyone.
That’s because we believe mental health starts and ends with the self. By empowering individuals with the right resources, information, tools, and technologies, we’re laying the pavement for a long and peaceful stroll back to the self.
Decentralizing Care
We built the first version of Nucleus on top of a robust and diverse technology that begs for collaborations and integrations. Through questionnaires, journaling, and by logging treatments within the marketplace, the technology is able to capture all activity along the journey in one central location. This empowers the participant to take ownership of not just the data, but the deeper understanding of the actions behind them.
At Nucleus, we believe this structure can lead us to a new variety of health records. It’s a stepping stone toward separating the mind and body and allocating differentiated treatments to each as needed.
Having the ability to maintain this personal data on-chain allows for greater security and mobility. Never again would a participant be required to answer dozens of questions when seeing a new doctor. Instead, they can just share access accordingly.
The First Inning
As I mentioned, we’re a long way from decentralized healthcare and user-owned mental health records. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t already be walking down that path.
As transformative medicines and blockchain technologies become more ubiquitous, we’ll inevitably start to see the walls that were built around healthcare start to shake. Trillion-dollar industries like pharma and insurance will be forced to innovate or crumble.
This user-mandated transformation will be good for everyone involved. After all, decentralized healthcare would automatically optimize for realigned incentives. Not to mention the many opportunities that will come with the redistribution of capital toward self-governed wellness.
Start Your Journey
As you can tell from this rant, I am neither a doctor nor a therapist… I’m admittedly not even fully equipped to pretend to know enough about this new world. But that’s what makes this so exciting. We can learn together. We can join hands and broadcast this opportunity together.
Nucleus doesn’t seek supremacy. Instead, we seek outcomes. We aspire to improve the lives of billions. If our brand, our messaging, our technologies, or are growing community (that’s you!) can play some role in better outcomes for society, this will prove to be my life’s work.
I look forward to the next inning. In the meantime, you can start your own journey at www.withnucleus.com.