Featured Founder: Cognixion’s Andreas Forsland

This month, we sat down with Cognixion Founder & CEO Andreas Forsland to discuss everything from the future of AR/VR to the secrets of recruiting great talent.

What made you decide now was the time to pursue AR/VR for people with communication disabilities? What inspired you to start Cognixion?

I started Cognixion in 2014, after my mom was intubated and put on life support as a result of a common situation, pneumonia, that aggressively escalated into septic shock. Very similar situation to what thousands of people have gone through with COVID-19, but this was in 2012. I had tremendous responsibilities with my work and was thrown into a primary caregiver role that lasted for weeks. By her side, I became her communication tool, translating her body language and intent and advocating for her care. I realized, after some research, how many people in the world are rendered speechless for simple situations like this, and hundreds of millions are without verbal speech or physical mobility for their entire life.

Computers have become our gateway for interacting with the world. In her compromised state, we imagined the benefits of having a simple to use input method for controlling a computer with minimal inputs and physical effort. When someone is in a locked-in state, the ultimate interface for communication and environmental control became obvious — bring the computer to the body and support a variety of input methods. In our case, we brought a non-invasive brain-computer that can act like eye tracking even when the person cannot move their eyes and a visual interface in a heads-up display. Because it’s vitally important to make eye contact with each other, it’s imperative to support an open interface with a clear lens that affords both people the ability to see each other during communication and augmented conversation.

We have been focused on the problem, the whole person and their context, the market, and understanding what augmented independence could look like. Our solution, the Cognixion ONE “Assisted Reality” headset became the obvious solution. We didn’t start with technology; we started with a global human experiential problem.

Why have people with communication disabilities been neglected by the tech industry for so long?

When someone has a disability, most people become very private about it. It’s only since the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), and IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) passed, that growing movements within respective disabilities communities started to rise up and raise public awareness of how prolific disabilities are. Further, when you recognize that over 15% of the world's population has a diagnosed disability, and a larger percentage of society have undiagnosed disabilities — or conditions that impact their lives that are outside the current system, plus others who go undiagnosed — a massive part of our society is starting to be recognized.

You are also starting to see more representation in mass media including casting leading actors for films and streaming series (as recently as Bruce Willis’ recent Aphasia diagnosis impacting his ability to speak, Val Kilmer developing a convincing synthetic voice for his own inability to speak, and Oscars going to disabled actors). Disabilities do not discriminate by age, income, or geography. And, like my personal story, the family circle is paramount — quite seriously the unsung heroes that make the ultimate sacrifices — for the well-being and sustainability of their family and communities.

To answer your question directly, I believe the tech industry has neglected the communication disabled for so long because it isn’t a sexy job. It’s hard work. It’s a very hard problem to provide deeply personalized technology for so many variables. Further, most of the tech industry has looked at accessibility or tech for disabilities as either charity, or as a compliance issue. Very few have historically embraced the community with love and compassion, or committed to investigating how truly remarkable the community is. In fact, people with disabilities are THE LARGEST minority group in the world. And by designing first for disabilities, we’re actually designing and making things easier and better for everyone.

We are seeing many more companies start to not only pay attention to the disabilities market — primarily led by the longevity and senior care demands looming on the horizon but are starting to embed accessibility objectives and key results into the strategic imperatives and leadership performance measurement and compensation. There is now even an association of leading, illuminated companies called the Valuable 500, which are all making measurable commitments towards more accessible and socially sustainable products and initiatives. Cognixion is on the tip of the spear leading the way of what’s possible and opening up global possibilities through strategic partnerships to scale our potential impact.

We envision that Cognixion is not only a way for individuals with disabilities to access and interact with the world in new ways, but also a way for organizations to enable their services to be consumed and utilized by individuals with disabilities. Essentially, to open up the market that otherwise couldn’t be addressed well without tremendous internal change at the largest of organizations.

Tell me a bit about your background?

My professional background is design, specifically customer experience design, branding, and innovation strategy. Prior to starting Cognixion, I led the Brand Experience and Design group at Citrix’s SaaS division, and before that, design strategy and direction at Philips Design — the innovation division within Philips Electronics — responsible for numerous disruptive innovations across their healthcare, consumer electronics, lighting, and semi-conductors businesses. I also helped transform the annual reporting and messaging for Philips towards that of person-centric storytelling and CX design for analysts, which caused the street to shift its opinion and ratings of the company at that time. I started my design career at IBM, during the e-Business years, working on many 1.0 initiatives — including their intranet (IBM), the first ever online bill pay system (Bank of America), and the first interactive television systems (Apple), among other innovations.

The common thread has been to understand the person, their intents and motivations, and desired outcomes. My whole career has been about embracing complexity and making things simple to understand and use. Cognixion is doing just that, in using data and sensors to better interpret users' intent and desired outcomes and using AI-powered software to reduce the time latency and caloric energy required to go from “intent” to “outcome.” Essentially reframing the I/O from Input/Output to Intention/Outcomes. Our unique way of designing Assisted Reality, and integrating neuroscience, is a fundamental differentiator, unlike most other companies whose founders are not designers.

What was the least expected challenge you’ve overcome to reach this point?

It sounds simple in retrospect, but simply that I didn’t quit. I learned the importance of perseverance, grit, creativity, and resourcefulness. Upon closing our last round with Prime Movers leading it, the most common disbelief from other VCs was that they couldn’t get their head around how we’ve been able to accomplish so much, in so little time, with such minimal funding. And my answer is simply, “our mission matters” and having a team with great conviction can achieve just about anything.

Who inspires you?

There are celebrity entrepreneurs that are obvious, but our team of “brainiacs” inspires me the most. We have a large and growing advisory council that includes people with disabilities, caregivers, and clinical professionals. With this group of 150+ (which is growing to about 300 by end of year), we easily have over 4,500 years of lived experiences with disabilities — each with their own stories and triumphs and failures. We get the benefit of this collective perspective and I’m immensely grateful. We’re designing a future for all of humanity and enabling the voices of our disabled community to inform this future as power users who have extreme edge case usability needs.

I guess my epitaph might say something like, “He did things that mattered.”

What makes Cognixion unique in a world full of AR/VR headsets?

In addition to designing Cognixoin ONE to be the world's most accessible solution featuring apps that enable conversational augmentation and enhancement and smart home environmental controls, it is also a 5G cellular device that supports WiFi and Bluetooth-connected devices. It’s completely wireless and mobile and designed for long-duration usage — in any environment, indoors and outdoors. It’s the ONLY augmented reality headset with an integrated EEG-based brain computer that can process biosignals on the device with no other computer or cloud dependencies. It will also soon be the only FDA-cleared, insurance-fundable neural prosthetic for augmentative communication and environmental controls — which will be covered in every US state and territory.

Lastly, for the techies reading this, it’s also the only AR system that has deeply integrated Amazon Alexa into our application stack, which enables Cognixion ONE to provide Alexa as a completely mobile companion to answer any question, facilitate memory aids like reminders and alerts, stream mobile content, and control IoT devices from anywhere in the world.

Have you read anything lately that inspired you?

Well, the book that’s on my nightstand at the moment is Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan and John King. There are some small but very useful gem insights in there that I have put to work.

You’ve recruited a great team, what are your secrets?

While all the big companies are moving into our home towns (Santa Barbara California and Toronto Canada), they’re coming in recruiting insane numbers of new hires — in the thousands per location. The funny thing is we’re not (YET) hiring thousands. We simply need to find the right people (dozens not thousands) that are looking for something different. Specifically, our company has a very clear mission, and we live with integrity. At a time when people — both young and old — are looking for “purpose, not just a paycheck”, we have been able to find people that are mind and heart aligned.

We also go to great lengths internally to connect the dots between employee tasks and work with the impacts being made in the world as a result. We also hire for (1) Empathy — put a 2x factor on this one, (2) Skills — of course, but also a hunger to learn and grow, (3) Integrity — a 5x factor, which translates to OKRs, and (4) Lived Experience (a 2x factor) — having lived through hardship and ideally either has had a disability, has a disability or have played a role in caregiving in some capacity. These are very unique, and everyone who works at Cognixion can “relate” to the mission and is passionate about applying their skills to transform lives — including each others in the company.

Where do you see the metaverse heading in the next 5 years? 10 years?

In five years, consumers will likely be recovering from some disillusionment, but we’ll see an emergence of a more democratic “metaverse of metaverses”. These metaverses will initially be limited by the respective platforms, but hopefully, alignment of more open standards will enable transience and interoperability. Likely in the tens of millions of users.

In ten years, there will be critical mass in certain industries (healthcare, sports, gaming, hospitality, public services like the police and firemen, and localized educational zones and smart campuses and smart cities within cities). There will be numerous deca-corns in the industry that have the scope and scale to create amazingly augmented features to the world. And of course, we will see hundreds of millions of people with disabilities going to work and finding employment for the first time (for people born with a disability) or reframing reality with new kinds of employment and vocations (for people with acquired disabilities). We’ll also see much more diversity in media arts, music, film, science, math, engineering, and anything requiring self-expression with millions of new ideas and voices that were previously unspoken.

Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture.

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