Jesse Pickard is the Founder and CEO of The Mind Company (formerly Elevate Labs), the studio behind Elevate (Apple's App of the Year 2014), Balance (Google's App of the Year 2021), and Spark - a portfolio of science-backed mental fitness apps with over 80 million downloads. A designer-turned-entrepreneur, Pickard co-founded language learning startup MindSnacks in 2010 before pivoting to build Elevate in 2014, pioneering the consumer mental fitness category. He is also an Investing Partner at Volo Ventures.
The Mind Company is the San Francisco-based mental fitness studio formerly known as Elevate Labs. It makes science-backed mobile apps - Elevate for cognitive training, Balance for personalized meditation, and the new Spark puzzle app - that have together crossed 80 million downloads and collected Apple's and Google's App of the Year honors.
On the milestone 1,000th episode of Modern Wisdom, host Chris Williamson sits down with actor and author Matthew McConaughey for a wide-ranging philosophical conversation filmed against the virtual backdrop of the Interstellar corn fields in Alberta, Canada. The two explore belief, faith, forgiveness, masculinity, the difference between a nice guy and a good man, the Icarus myth in reverse, and McConaughey's new book 'Points of Prayers.' McConaughey champions the idea of modeling the rise not the result, argues that peace requires rage to reach, and redefines vulnerability as saying your truth in spite of the consequences, especially when they're scary.