At 16, I was performing at Bootshaus, one of the world's top clubs, surrounded by the energy of thousands, building momentum in the music industry. At 19, I’m working on something entirely different but equally transformative: building Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) to redefine how humans interact with technology.
This shift might seem unexpected, but for me, it’s a natural evolution. Here’s why.
The Music to Tech Journey
When I started as a DJ, I always dreamed (like every other DJ) of playing big stages like Tomorrowland or ULTRA Miami. One thing I didn’t recognize at this time was that as a DJ, your impact on humanity is about 0.0001% (if you’re Calvin Harris, maybe a bit more). Of course, there are people recognizing the music that you produce or at least play, but are there really people that get impacted by it?
I think one major advantage in the music industry is the fact that music can live longer than 100 years (and most people don’t). That’s also one reason why I will always stick to creating music. It has a long-term positive side effect on people’s minds even when it hasn’t any large impact on humanity.
With that said, you could now eventually guess my mission and why I’ve decided to not actively work in the music industry for now. In fact, after 6 years of producing music and playing it to people on stages, I’ve realized that there is more to achieve in a human’s lifetime than just recognition. This something is called “impact”. Impact is defined for me as the most relevant thing to bring our species and overall intelligence forward. After speaking for over 1.5 years with experts in different areas through the podcast I made (HUGE Conversations), the one area with the highest possible impact was BCIs (Brain-Computer Interfaces). So I quit everything I’ve done before, fully focusing on the one biggest problem I’ve seen: why no one knows about this industry and how it can help me achieve a part of the impact I want to create.
Why BCIs Matter
Like any other industry, neuroscience has its advantages and disadvantages. The potential of BCIs is high, but there are many problems to solve. One of the biggest is that customers see no need to invest in buying one. Clearly understandable when you look at the search results when you Google “BCI”. But for every problem, there are solutions, and sometimes the solutions don’t even have to do with the niche itself.
The reason I see that much potential in it is the same reason why Steve Jobs thought that the Macintosh would change the world. I just know it. Of course, I could tell you that there are many advantages to controlling your devices with thoughts or even communicating by thinking, but the real reason why I think it will change the world is because it just feels natural to me. I think BCIs should become as intuitive as using smartphones today (they’ve been around for just a few decades, and everyone on this planet who has the opportunity is using them every day). So why shouldn’t something that’s even more intuitive be adopted as fast as a smartphone or even faster?
My 20's
For a long time, I thought that my 20s would be about touring the world, playing festivals, getting drunk, and producing great music. But sometimes, when things change, your whole identity as a person changes and for me, this is a point of change. By publishing this letter, I’ve already made about 20,805 mistakes, and only the best of them brought me to the point of writing this.
What I want to say with that is, it’s irrelevant what you’re thinking now. But if you actually start making decisions and bringing them to life, it could become your key to understanding what your mission in life is and how to achieve it.
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