He was in his twenties. He had no lab, no funding and no team. What he did have was a conviction that non-invasive brain stimulation could do what Neuralink was promising — without the surgery.
Now he’s running clinical trials, leading a team across six countries, and selling a $350 consumer device that enhances focus and cognition. No drilling required.
In this episode of The Jo Show, Mo walks through how he built U The Mind from a fast food idea into a serious neuroscience company — and what he’s learned about science, sales and running a business that operates at two levels at once.
The Neuralink comparison — without the surgery
The most common reference point people reach for when Mo describes his work is Neuralink. He doesn’t shy away from it.
The distinction is straightforward: Neuralink requires surgical implantation. U The Mind’s device sits on the outside of the head and delivers clinically validated stimulation non-invasively. No anaesthesia, no recovery, no neurosurgeon.
Mo is also direct about the science behind competing devices — he names competitors openly and explains specifically what’s wrong with their research. That kind of transparency is unusual in a consumer tech space that tends toward vague credentialing. It’s also, as he points out, just good marketing when you’re confident in what you’ve built.
A $350 device backed by clinical-grade research
The same research driving U The Mind’s clinical trials for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s underpins the consumer product available today. That’s not a common situation — most consumer wellness tech exists at a significant distance from peer-reviewed science.
The $350 price point is deliberate. Mo talks about making neurotech globally accessible rather than positioning it as a premium biohacker toy for CEOs with disposable income. His prediction: in five years, brain stimulation will be as unremarkable as other everyday wellness tools.
How a 20-something convinced world-class scientists to back him
This is one of the more useful sections of the conversation for any early-stage founder.
Mo didn’t have credentials. He had a clear problem, a testable hypothesis and an unambiguous belief in what he was building. He talks about the difference between approaching experts with deference versus approaching them as a genuine collaborator with something real to offer.
World-class scientists don’t back companies — they back problems worth solving and people serious enough to solve them.
Founder mode vs CEO mode
Mo is candid about the transition from doing everything himself to running a distributed team across six countries. The short version: founder mode is doing; CEO mode is designing the system that does it.
Most founders resist this transition longer than they should, because the doing is familiar and the system-building feels abstract until it works. Mo’s framing is useful — it’s not about doing less, it’s about changing what you do so the business can scale without you as the bottleneck.
Selling when you actually believe in the product
One of the cleaner insights in the rapid-fire section: Mo says selling is easy when you genuinely believe in what you’ve built.
That’s not a mindset trick. It’s a structural observation. When belief is authentic, the pitch isn’t a performance — it’s just an accurate description of something you’d want yourself. The persuasion happens before the conversation starts.
He also notes that the fundamentals of persuasion don’t change regardless of how novel the technology. Trust, clarity, proof. That’s still the whole game.
About Mo Abouelsoud
Mo Abouelsoud is the founder of U The Mind, a neurotechnology company developing non-invasive brain stimulation devices for both clinical and consumer applications. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
