Craig Mermel on working at Google and Apple and now at Precision Neuroscience

Craig Mermel is the President and Chief Product Officer at Precision Neuroscience which is a company looking to commercialize Brain-Computer Interfaces using a minimally implantation method and a soft electrode device.

***This podcast is sponsored by Iris Biomedical, check out their Neurotech Startup Services here***

Top 3 Takeaways

• "The combination of both the nature of our thin film and the surgical innovations that we bring enables us to bring cortical surface neurotechnology to patients in a minimally invasive fashion."
• "Having 10 times the amount of money at an early stage before you actually solve some of the key problems can be a problem because it pushes off some of the hard questions you have to ask yourself."
• "We're thinking ahead to the future where you have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of interfaces. The amount of damage you do will become a limiting factor at some point."

0:45 Do you want to introduce yourself better than I just did?

1:30 Why did you leave Apple and Google?

2:30 What is Precision and why is it special?

6:00 What's the funding look like?

8:00 "Why hasn't this been done before?"

10:00 Are you thinking about licensing out the technology?

11:15 Iris Biomedical ad sponsorship

12:00 What's your role now in Precision?"

12:45 "What are some of your biggest challenges?"

15:30 You guys raised $12M, why specifically this number?

19:00 "What are some, best practices or traps to avoid?"

21:45 Let's do a deeper dive into your work at Google and Apple

27:30 How would you compare working at Google and Apple vs being in a startup?

29:15 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?"