Lumosity, a company that creates online fitness games, has raised $32.5 million in Series C financing led by Menlo Ventures, with participation by existing investors FirstMark Capital, Harrison Metal and Norwest Venture Partners. This brings the company’s total funding to nearly $40 million.
Created by neuroscientists from Stanford University, Lumosity develops games and exercises that aim to improve core cognitive abilities and enable users to remember more, think faster and perform better at work and school. → Read More
As you age your brain slows down, your memory goes, and your attention lapses. Online brain fitness games like Lumosity sell the promise of stopping that decline. But as the chart below shows, it is all downhill after 30. (The chart is based on the brain performance index scores of 40,000 Lumosity users). Lumosity lets members play games designed to improve their memory, processing speed, and attention. I’ve tried the games, and they are rather satisfying. One requires you to locate a bird that appears on the screen for a split second, while at the same time identifying a letter that flashes elsewhere on the screen. (It’s harder than it sounds). Others include a maze memory game and a symbol-matching one. Members pay $10 a month, with a free, 7-day trial. The company is announcing today that Pequot Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and earlier angel investors, including Michael Dearing, are putting $3 million into the startup. Pequot’s Amish Jani says: We’ve been doing a ton in gaming, and have looked at a lot of casual games plays, but this is one of the few with a solid business model out of the gate, a unique value proposition, and has been growing very nicely. As Boomers get older, he thinks they are going to do anything they can to stave off the inevitable. And if they can have fun trying, so much the better. Traffic to the site, while small at 330,000 unique visitors worldwide in April (comScore), is picking up. And if only ten percent of those visitors convert into paying members, that is still a tidy and growing business. CrunchBase Information Lumos Labs Vivity Labs Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
I sat down with Mike Scanlon, Co-Founder of Lumos Labs, recently and got a full demo of Lumosity. It quickly revealed how lethargic and slow I’ve become since I started working at home. I know we’ve all said we need to do brain exercises to keep our wits about us and to stay sharp, but have we really done that? I know I haven’t. It really only takes a few minutes a day to keep our brains from turning into mush. The great thing about Lumos Labs and what they’re doing with Lumosity is that they have scientific studies and proof for you to read about so you don’t feel like they’re just taking your money. The exercises are quite fun and you’ll find out within seconds just how sharp your memory is and how attentive you are. There’s a free trial and you can also test yourself against Ayumu, a 7-year-old chimp. Watch her in action here. Lumosity → Read More
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