Savonix, a new startup working on creating a neurocognitive assessment app, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. RoundGlass Partners led the round with additional participation from Kickstart Seed Fund, BMNT Capital, and strategic angel investors including Bandel Carano and Ed Glassmeyer.
The San Francisco-based company is focused on creating a brain training and brain testing app that's based on existing clinical guidelines and procedures. The company's offering, which it plans to launch in 2016, will deliver, in less than 30 minutes, "what currently takes a trained clinician armed with pen, paper and a stop watch multiple days and many hours to complete," according to the company's website.
"Savonix is founded on the knowledge that evidence-based digital neuro-assessment positively impacts the lives and health of individuals and organizations," Dr. Mylea Charvat, CEO and Founder of Savonix, said in a statement. "We know these cognitive assessments work, they've simply been unavailable behind the walls of academia or trapped within decades old structures that are expensive, cumbersome and inaccessible. Savonix is going to liberate these tools and make evidence-based cognitive testing available and affordable to anyone."
Members of the Savonix team have strong backgrounds in neuroscience and gaming. Charvat is a translational neuroscientist who completed her Ph.D. fellowship in clinical neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine, while VP of Product Devin Seto is a former executive at Zynga and Lucas Arts.
"It is our mission to catalyze innovation and deliver breakthrough tools to positively impact lives. We've just scratched the surface of digitally delivered neuro-cognitive testing and health," Sunny Singh, founder of RoundGlass Partners, said in a statement. "Savonix is a holistic, evidence-based brain evaluation and total brain health fitness platform with the promise of providing valuable insights into Alzheimer's disease and dementia, ADHD, anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress, among countless other applications."
