"Listen to your clients" with Jessica Maslin
A native of Armonk in Westchester County, New York, Jessica Maslin is the president and co-founder of Mieron VR, a virtual reality company that has created a unique neurotherapy tool that doctors and medical practitioners are using to help rehabilitate survivors of spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries, as well as those who suffer from cognitive diseases, like Parkinson’s. Jessica’s background is a unique blend of science, technology, and creative arts. Prior to joining Mieron, she spent more than a decade working in medical research and technologies, including extensive research in bone growth mechanisms and pain management.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
Absolutely. And first off, thank you for having me.
So, I’m originally from New York, and I have a background in chemistry and dentistry. I’d been working and doing a lot of research with bone-growth mechanisms and how you could re-grow substantial amounts of the jawbone after an injury in order to be able to get dental implants. I loved the science behind it, but I just found myself wanting to really express myself more creatively. To help offset school expenses, I was also staying up until three in the morning helping friends design restaurants and their menus and painting murals on their walls and I started to think, ‘you only have so many opportunities in life to stop one thing entirely and try something totally different,’ and I saw it as a time where being in my 20s and not having kids or a mortgage, that it was an opportunity to try something else as I knew I was ready for a change. Plus, I figured that I could always go back to the first thing if I wasn’t happy or it didn’t work out, so I moved out to Los Angeles from New York and started working with some different startups. I really enjoyed it and I really liked the startup culture.
While working with a startup in downtown LA, one of the initiatives I led was launching a new product on Kickstarter. We were in need of a videographer, and I enlisted the talents of Josh Dubon and his creative agency, DayDreamCinema. It was a fun project, and my first time really being part of a production at that level. I again took a slight pivot and started to dissect how a creative agency works in terms of what elements need to come together and how to make an excellent marketing and shopping experience.
I loved the creative elements of DayDreamCinema that Josh had built and his work was intriguing to me. He was working with different types of clients and solving problems for them creatively, and guiding them on how to interact with their consumers better. I positioned myself to eventually become a partner at his creative agency and since then we’ve really grown and worked with different technologies in the creative realm. Over the years, we dove more into virtual reality, engineering some of our own rigs on the floor of Home Depot to get shots that we envisioned, and finding ways to incorporate animations into a 360-degree film environment. In 2016, we created the first-ever VR Doorbuster for Black Friday with the retailer, Tillys, and had been using VR mostly for entertainment. One creative project included a famous street artist turned fine-artist named Greg “Craola” Simkins. The VR narrative that we created with him received great accolades and again was a great example of engineering as we created hardware to get certain walking shots in VR without showing any tracking devices. Josh and I had been talking about how we might be able to use VR in more impactful ways than just entertainment and so it was really like this serendipitous meeting with Greg and ultimately his niece, Eden Hoelscher, that transformed how we use VR. In our ‘early’ VR days, we created powerful narrative VR content, and now we’re able to harness the power of VR for a digital therapeutic application that truly benefits the end-user.
What inspired you to start your business?
So, as I got slightly above, Josh and I had recently worked with Greg Simkins, who is a very well-known graffiti artist from the LA area. We had followed him and created an interactive narrative VR experience with him as he created a mural at a local restaurant here in Long Beach (California), where Mieron is headquartered. Using VR, we gave viewers an opportunity to experience what it was like to be there with Greg as he created the mural and shared some of his artistic inspiration. It was a very moving project.
About six months after we finished that project, Greg reached out to us and shared a story about his five-year-old niece (Eden Hoelscher) who had suffered a spinal stroke while doing a backbend in her living room. She was your everyday, an average, active five-year-old little girl, and the spinal stroke left her paralyzed from the waist down. Eden had watched the VR experience with her uncle and kept referring to it in a conversation as if she had been back in LA with him painting the mural – there was no convincing her otherwise. The family had heard about VR helping people with mental health and pain management and Greg asked if we had looked into it or if we could do anything to help. When we chatted, we told Greg that we had seen a lot of great outcomes with research in the medical field, and while we didn’t have anything specifically for Eden, we would be more than happy to meet her and her family to see if there was something we could do. Josh and I flew out to Kentucky where the family had moved so Eden could participate in a rehabilitation program and we spent two weeks out there with her and her family.
During those two weeks, Josh and I got to see just about everything that spinal cord injury rehabilitation entailed, including the daily struggles that Eden was going through, both physically and mentally. We also got to see the trials and tribulations that her parents were going through as well, and I’ll always remember one thing that Eden’s mom Kylee said. She made a comment one day that ‘if life was just about Eden never walking again, it would be so easy,’ but there was so much more to it. We continued to learn that there was so much more to a spinal cord injury, because, and especially for children, you are constantly dealing with the secondary complications of growing into an adult body, maintaining bone strength, maintaining muscle mass, and managing risks of organ damage.
Instantly, Josh and I were taken by the family, inspired by their resilience, and so we decided that we would do anything we could to help. One of the first things we did was to delve into some preliminary testing after sitting in on some of Eden’s rehabilitation and locomotive-training sessions to better understand what the doctors were trying to accomplish and how they were going about it. One such exercise that they had Eden doing was an assisted crawling exercise where a nurse held her hips while she tried to engage her core and draw her knees forward. Eden clearly didn’t enjoy doing the exercise as it appeared both painful and frustrating, and furthermore, she didn’t want to feel like a baby crawling around. We decided to take a chance and put a VR headset on her just to see if she would wear it and if it would make her dizzy, or uncomfortable, or even nauseous. The headset we chose had a pre-programmed VR experience that we had created of professional skateboarding legend, Christian Hosoi, skateboarding in the famous Vans shoe skate pool in Huntington Beach. We had Eden watch Christian skate through the headset while she was doing her assisted crawling exercise and almost instantly she started smiling while creating her own game of trying to hit his skateboard away from him each time he skated by her in the experience. We were blown away because not only was she doing great in her exercise, but we could also see in her face that she was having fun doing it.
After she finished and we took the headset off, Eden’s parents pulled us aside and showed us the analytical results they were seeing what had just happened. With the VR headset on, Eden’s perception of pain almost completely dissipated and she was able to exert herself with increased intensity for a longer period of time, and her overall state-of-mind and level of perceived happiness went through the roof as she smiled from ear-to-ear. Without a doubt, that right there was our ‘aha’ moment. We knew right then and there that there was definitely something we could do that could help her out.
Josh and I returned to California and almost immediately we started creating experiences that could help Eden and others like her to get through arduous rehabilitation sessions. We used the knowledge we gained of the principles of recovery, the desired outcomes of the therapy exercises, and the secondary outcomes, and we created gamified experiences based on those theories. That’s ultimately what led us to launch Mieron. Since then, we’ve collaborated with dozens of healthcare facilities around the world to create a comprehensive library of virtual reality NeuroTherapy exercises based on the same principles of locomotive training, physical therapy, and occupational therapy that doctors and nurses use with their patients on a daily basis.
Where is your business based?
We are based in Long Beach, California.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
Having already known what we wanted to do based on our experience with Eden and her family, we got to work on Mieron right away and Josh and I self-funded the company.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
We have been very active in building awareness for Mieron.
Trade shows have been a major driver for us, especially those geared toward the disabled community. We’ve attended some global shows like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, and earlier this year, Mieron was named a winner of the Consumer Technology Association Foundation’s Eureka Park Accessibility Program, which is a competition among startup companies that design technology that benefits older adults and people with disabilities. As a result of Mieron being one of five selected companies, we received a booth in Eureka Park at CES 2020, which is the global stage for startups at the show.
In addition to trade shows, we’ve attended conferences and symposiums around the country. In the last year alone, I was invited to present at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Silicon Valley, Games for Change in New York City, the International VR Healthcare Association Symposium in Denver, and at the VR Global Symposium in Nashville.
Beyond that, we regularly engage with our clients and customers via newsletter and social and digital media, and we work with a public relations agency that has been able to secure some great news stories for us across all the earned-media platforms of print, digital, television, and radio.
But by far, the biggest driver for raising awareness has been word of mouth. If a patient tries Mieron at a trade show or even in a medical facility, they talk about their experience with their community. Being a new technology, there’s a curiosity factor and people are actively seeking new and fun ways to make their treatment more engaging.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Some of our biggest challenges have been building the right team. Not only is the VR community relatively small in comparison to some other industries that we’re involved in, but you’re putting trust in the talent to not just create games, but to also think from an accessibility standpoint. For instance, how can a quadriplegic successfully use the VR experience and even the hardware with limited dexterity?
The biggest element that has worked in our favor is that Josh and I each have a diverse set of talents and we’re not afraid to wear a lot of hats. We’ve put trust in the people in our ecosystem and have built an incredible team. We often joke that it is rare that you’ll ever hear a developer talk about “PNF Patterns” when brainstorming over a new game or experience, and we’re proud that our team is really devoted to our cause.
How do you stay focused?
This may sound silly, but I love to use Post-it notes as my go-to to stay focused, and for immediate productivity guidance – ticking them off the do-to list. There is so much satisfaction in the pen striking out a bullet note and finally being able to crumple up the whole post-it as the tasks are done. There are a lot of different software applications that we utilize as well to do things like track production and interact with our clients as these software solutions are really great for long-term productivity and turning work into systems.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
Mieron is different from the competition because of its versatility and the way that we create our experiences. There are a number of health-based VR companies that all license the same pool of content and those have their purpose. Some kids need to be distracted while a cast is getting removed, or during a shot, but Mieron is far more than just a distraction.
The most unique factor about Mieron is the principle in its design: that each experience should serve to help improve functional movement. We study neuroplasticity and this is even rooted in the name “Mieron,” which is our combination of the words mirror and neurons. Essentially, we want to help the brain create new connections so that users can ultimately live more independently.
And while other companies tend to focus on pain or distraction, we’re really focused on those physical therapy elements. There’s quite a bit of published science that shows that VR can lower pain perception, so we have a very robust product that fits many patient types and goals for improving mobility while also managing pain.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Our marketing strategy really has been geared toward organic growth.
For the first two years of having a product, we offered it exclusively to healthcare providers so that there could be a quality of intervention with the patient. Our thought wasn’t to just blast ads all over the place and create hype, we wanted to make sure that what we set out to create was actually performing well, so we’ve been extremely organic with our marketing and have spent quite a bit of time communicating directly with the disabled community and healthcare providers as we continue to grow the business.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Listen to your clients. That has been one of our best strategies for growing our business. Mieron entered an arena that we helped to pioneer, which is basically bringing VR onto the floor of hospitals and healthcare facilities for use with their patients. Because it’s not just a training tool, but rather a tool that doctors and rehab specialists use with clients in healthcare settings, the best thing for us has been the direct communication that we have with the practitioners that use Mieron. That’s helped us with everything from the best way to implement our programs to pricing.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
I really don’t consider myself having a favorite app. I spend a lot of ‘screen time’ while I’m at work so I try to get off the screens when it comes to personal time. That being said, I do very much enjoy Instagram. I use Insta a lot for work and it’s inspiring to see what people share, not to mention the ingenuity that the disabled community has and the solutions that exist for people. On Mieron’s Instagram, I see things like adaptive fashion, adaptive art, and adaptive tech, and it’s very inspiring.
Again, it’s hard for me to pin a favorite blog, but it would probably be a cooking blog. I have a few bookmarked and cooking is one of my favorite ways to decompress and end the day, especially on days that I work from home.
And for books, well a 2020 goal of mine has been to read more books. Being in VR, one of my favorites is Ready Player One, and the movie skips half the book, so it’s definitely worth reading. It’s based on a dystopian future, but the way that VR is incorporated into everyday life and the supporting tech and haptics is very interesting. I also recently read The Count of Monte Cristo, and although it took me almost a year to finish, I absolutely loved the story and the patience that the protagonist, Edmond Dantes, exhibited in order to carefully bring his decades-long plan to fruition.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
My favorite business resources are professional networking groups. I belong to the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and suggest it to all of my local business colleagues. It’s a great way to help grow your business, support other business owners, and it’s an open Rolodex to connections through that network. As an example, you can get business cards printed online by one of the giants or you can get the same pricing from a local family-owned business. I trust the connections I make through the Chamber and I love being able to refer friends to use a trusted local business for whatever they need.
Who is your business role model? Why?
I’d have to say that my business role model would be Mike Jones, who is the former CEO of MySpace and an early investor in the Dollar Shave Club. He’s the current CEO of the tech incubator, Science, Inc. Mike is a Mieron co-founder and a member of our advisory board, and having him on our team has been an incredible learning experience.
I majored in Chemistry in college and didn’t really see myself as an entrepreneur at that time, but Mike has such an extensive background in entrepreneurship that I’ve learned a ton from him. He’s led mergers and acquisitions, and he’s also taken companies from startup to sale in the billion-dollar range. Those aren’t necessarily things you can learn in school and those aren’t things that everyone has access to, so having Mike on our team has been extremely valuable at this stage in life and at this stage of our company with his insight and expertise, and I really look up to him.
How do you balance work and life?
It’s definitely a balancing act but there are a couple of things that I do to help keep that balance. Before coronavirus hit when we were still working in our office, I would walk my dog to work. It was about a two-mile walk, and I’d use that time to catch up with my family and friends who live on the East Coast so I could stay connected with them.
And then I also make sure to build in some personal time for myself. When you depend on yourself for getting paid and you don’t know if there’s a paycheck coming in every week like someone who may have a regular office job, sometimes it’s hard to shut off from work or leave the computer, but I make a conscious effort to go out to exercise or go for a bike ride, some sort of outdoor cardio activity. And there’s been some periods where I’ve been extra thankful that I have a dog because otherwise I probably would have just stayed in front of my computer for days on end, but you really have to practice making time for yourself, even if it’s just in the evening when clients aren’t likely to pick up the phone.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
My favorite way to decompress is with a lot of physical activity. As I said, it’s hard to balance work and personal life, and I often work through the weekends. On my Saturdays, I like to take my dog for a long early-morning exploring walk and then hop on my bike and explore new areas of the beach and city.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
The next six months has a lot of unknowns. COVID has really turned our world upside down, but it also presented an opportunity to pivot with Mieron and offer a new telehealth solution. So, the next six months may not involve the typical travel or family visits that I’m used to, but it’s exciting that we have another service we’re able to offer our community to help them cope and live healthier during these trying times.
How can our readers connect with you?
We can be reached by email at hello@mieronvr.com, or they can connect with us on social media at any of the following links below:
https://www.facebook.com/MieronVR/
https://www.instagram.com/mieronvr/