Nootroo - Brain enhancing nootropics (pills) company based in SF

Welcome to the most extreme hunt i have ever made. :) I met the founder this week in SF. His product is essentially brain-enhancing pills. And honestly it rang every BS bell i have hearing it at first. And trust me - being a few years in startups i have several BS bells ready ;) But apparently their product is basically a cocktail of things used in diverse medical treatments plus comes with a catalog of studies confirming each of them. It's just almost no company has been using those things yet for people without medicial problems in first place. Their claim: "Man will not wait passively for millions of years for evolution to offer him a better brain..." Btw the topic of nootropics (somewhere between nutrition supplement and medicine) has a huge following on reddit. Do i endorse them - i have no medicial competence to do so. Do i take them - so far i am scared - but i have taken worse pills so let's see Do i think brain pills from an SF startup is an amazing hunt - hell yea. I will see if i can get the founder on board of this thread to answer every "wtf" question we might have :)

Hi, founder of Nootroo here, very exciting to wake up this morning to see us on PH! I am excited to answer any questions you guys may have and am happy to discuss nootropics in general and not just my product. The goal in creating Nootroo was to help smart people reach their optimal performance levels. We aren’t just about pills, but about getting the body and mind running at full speed through our protocol of meditation, exercise, diet, and sleep (as well as nootropics). For those who think we’re snake oil salesmen, please note that we come from a transhumanist perspective of using technology to enhance our biology. These chemicals were not invented by me, but selected as being in the quadrant of most effective and extremely safe and then combined in a well-tested proprietary blend to maximize the effects. This Nick Bostrom quote sums up what we are working towards: "Imagine a researcher invented an inexpensive drug which was completely safe and which improved all‐round cognitive performance by just 1%. The gain would hardly be noticeable in a single individual. But if the 10 million scientists in the world all benefited from the drug the inventor would increase the rate of scientific progress by roughly the same amount as adding 100,000 new scientists. Each year the invention would amount to an indirect contribution equal to 100,000 times what the average scientist contributes. " Source: http://www.nickbostrom.com/views... edit: I have added a $10 off code "producthunt"

This disclaimer is somewhat alarming: "Nootroo contains high purity research chemicals intended for use in neuroscience research only."

I've taken Alpha Brain occasionally and notice a subtle positive effect. A little more focus... but it could just be the placebo effect. I don't know.

Fascinating. Real? Who is going to be the guinea pig for this one?

Worked in this industry for a year. I assume it's a mix of Noopept and a handful of racetams?

this is why i love product hunt. I have a 30-day supply in my cart... but i still don't know. but that pretty much means i'm going to do it. hope to be leaving much smarter comments soon.

I met this amazing team at YC Hacks. They seemed to really care about people, as well as care about futuristic digital and analog products, and then got to try a NooTroo sample. I took the "silver" the first day, then the "gold" the second day as recommended. By the second day, my mind was so focused and accurate. I'd say MUCH better than drinking coffee, a little stronger than fish oil, and not edgy like prescription pharmaceuticals. If I could purchase for 2-weeks, I think I may be more swayed to onboarding for longer. (On a startup budget right now! And startup life, used to increasing samples in small increments... Heh!) It did help me with my workday, but I did notice I had a little harder time feeling empathy. ( More work, less play!) That's good though. :-) There's certainly something to this mixture. P.S. I like your overall design work too! Great job.

This is the kind of thing that's very dangerous to post to the Product Hunt community, who's probably more susceptible than most to believe health claims. @rrhoover @eriktor @andreasklinger 1) There's limited scientific (if sketchy) evidence on the long term effectiveness in healthy people. There's a reason the disclaimer (which the founder repeats) says: "for research only" + "phenylpiracetam and noopept are not vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbs or other botanical, or dietary substances for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total dietary intake." Read that again: "for use by man" as in humans at all The Gold Ingredient has not been tested in humans at all. The difference between a disease or even animal model and humans can't be overstated. 2) Subject to the Placebo effect and the Dr. Oz phenomenon There's a reason we have an entire system in place to screen drugs and nutritional claims. If entrepreneurs really believed there were measurable benefits to this, they would fund double blind studies to show the effects. The reason they don't? Most people know (or at least suspect) it's the placebo effect. Most importantly, because there are no safeguards in place, people can sell basically anything as an herbal supplement with little to no regulation, and no one really cares unless people start dying (which is unlikely) I don't think @matznerd is doing anything wrong per se, and I'm sure he's used the best available research and products. But the claims he's making are at best irresponsible and most likely both misleading and unverifiable except by anecdote.

Ummm... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219... ?