Dopamine Labs commercializes years of USC research by Ramsay Brown and T. Dalton Combs into code that makes apps more habit-forming using neuroscience and machine learning. Its core product includes an AI called Skinner that tests and optimizes prompts and notifications to improve usage and retention, and a consumer-facing tool called Space that lets users limit notifications. The company reports pilot data showing the system can increase interactions variably—some customers saw more than 100% increases while others saw boosts around 8%—and it projects it can add roughly 10% to a company’s revenues. Dopamine Labs says Skinner updates probabilistic models over 30-day experiments to learn what drives behavior and then tweaks parameters to improve outcomes. The startup has been profiled on 60 Minutes and is using initial results to expand staff and sales and marketing efforts. Financially, the company has $1 million in seed funding and is positioning to sign more app customers based on its early data.

Total raised

$1M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Sep 2017