Hi,
A Think Gum fan just sent me this photo and I have to share it with you. It brings up the point that Think Gum is a great Halloween candy to give to kids. You won’t feel like you are rotting the next generation’s teeth and brains as Think Gum is sugar-free and, as you all know, helps with concentration and memory. If anyone else carves a Think Gumkin send me the photo and I will send you a free box of gum!
A Think Gum Pumpkin!
Think Gum Featured in Chapter Three!
In the Third Edition of Entrepreneurship Successfully Launching New Ventures textbook by Bruce Barringer and R. Duane Ireland, Think Gum is featured as an example of successful feasibility analysis.
As you may or may not know, when I started Think Gum, I started small. I initially did a 100,000 piece sample run to see if people would actually want to be the gum. By testing the market first, before jumping in, I was able to limit my risk and determine that, in fact, people really do want, and like, Think Gum!
You can read all about the Think Gum feasibility analysis, and the Think Gum story, in Chapter 3 of this great textbook! I recommend it to anyone who is interested in entrepreneurship…I’m even reading it myself!
You can buy the textbook on Amazon.
Think Gum now at the Stanford Bookstore
Think Gum is now carried at the Stanford University Bookstore! This store is the flagship store of the Follett Higher Education group and is a great place to buy books, computers, clothes and your favorite brain-boosting chewing gum®.
To kick things off, Think Gum will be set up in front of the bookstore from 12-2pm this Thursday Sept 24th giving out free samples and playing a fun trivia game. Come by to try the gum for free and learn more about making the most of your Stanford education.
See you there!
New Study Shows Caffeinated Gum Improves Performance
In the study, 120 college-aged volunteers were were given either normal chewing gum, caffeinated chewing gum (40mg caffeine in total) or no gum at all. They were then given a variety of standardized tests to measure attention, mood and information encoding. Interestingly, both the regular gum and caffeinated gum significantly improved mood compared the the no gum group. Most importantly, the caffeinated gum group had improved performance efficiency. Smith concludes by noting that chewing caffeinated gum, such as Think Gum, “may be extremely beneficial in real-life situations.”
College students need to be aware of this finding! The take away message is that chewing caffeinated gum such as Think Gum improves both mood and test performance. With the school year approaching, all students who want to improve mood and performance should be chewing Think Gum.
This weekend Think Gum had its first official photo shoot for an upcoming marketing campaign. The concept is
Stop Cheating, Start Chewing.™
To get this concept across, our marketing team thought it would be best to shoot on location so we headed to Stanford University campus to take some photos in one of the bigger lectures halls on campus. With the help of some eager undergrads and the Think Gum summer interns, we were able to get some really great shots. Let me know which images you like the best or if you have any bright marketing ideas.
A group of Students at Temple University did a marketing project about Think Gum. They went over all aspects about how to position the product, how to price it, advertising ect. They did a really good job. The best part of the project in my mind was a YouTube video they made. Check it out here or on YouTube.
If anyone out there wants to do a project on Think Gum, just let me know. In addition to this marketing project, I have had a few elementary school kids approach me about doing a science project on Think Gum. One girl even won her school competition and went on the the regionals where she came in second. She showed that Think Gum improved scores on a math test even more than Bazooka or a no gum control group.
-Matt
I am happy to announce that Think Gum LLC is closing a financing round with Stanford Student Enterprises Ventures. There was a recent article in the Stanford Daily paper about it. The highlights are below.
“Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) Ventures, an entrepreneurial funding source for students on campus, has just made its biggest investment in history — five times its previous record — despite the poor economic climate.
The venture fund invested $50,000 into Think Gum, which produces a mint-flavored chewing gum that combines various nutrients with caffeine. The gum is meant to enhance cognitive abilities and academic performance.
Matt Davidson, a first-year student in the School of Medicine, has 2.5 million pieces of chewing gum stacked along the walls of his parents’ 20-foot-by-20-foot basement in Los Angeles and explained that he came up with the concept of Think Gum as an undergraduate at UC-Berkeley.
Think Gum combines herbal stimulates including rosemary and gingko biloba with aromatherapy and antioxidants to increase energy and mental power. It also contains the equivalent of half a can of soda’s worth of caffeine.
This money is a starting point that will be used to attract other investors and will assist in the marketing and manufacturing of the gum. SSE Ventures will also own a share of the company after legal documents have been signed.”
A recent study presented at the Experimental Biology 2009 meeting demonstrated that students who chewed sugar-free gum had improved test scores and grades.
The study done by Baylor college of medicine “took 108 eighth-grade math students from a Houston, Texas, charter school and divided them into two groups, following them for 14 weeks. One group chewed gum while doing homework and during test-taking situations. The other group did not chew gum at all.
The results were surprising. The gum-chewing students had a 3 percent increase in their standardized math test scores compared with those who did not chew gum. Also, the students who chewed gum had better final grades compared with the non-chompers. “
The lead researcher on the study suggested that chewing gum could be used as an edge by students to perform better academically. Unfortunately, the researchers didn’t have access to Think Gum for this study, but we can assume the results would have been even more dramatic!
You can read the full story at CNN.
The Think Gum Logo
I thought I would start the first entry in the Think Gum Blog by talking about who I am, what Think Gum is and what the Think Gum Blog is all about.
Let me introduce myself. My name is Matt Davidson, I am a 25 year old scientist and entrepreneur. I founded Think Gum LLC in 2007 after learning about how chewing gum could improve memory and how different aromas could positively impact memory and cognition. At the time I was a senior at UC Berkeley and was chewing my own blend of peppermint chewing gum and freshly picked rosemary. I found that the gum helped me focus while studying and recall more of what I was trying to learn. Soon after graduating, I looked into bringing a “Brain-Boosting Chewing Gum” to market. My friends and family thought it was a great idea and nothing like it existed, so I went for it. Now, two years later over a million pieces of gum have been chewed and I have numerous e-mails from people telling me that Think Gum has helped them out.
I should mention that in addition to running Think Gum LLC, I am also a PhD student in the Biosceinces at Stanford. I am doing my thesis research on cancer immunotherapy which is basically how your own immune system can be tweaked to fight cancer. I love science, and my scientific approach is one of the key reasons why Think Gum has been successful. While formulating Think Gum, I made sure that there was adequate evidence to support the use of all of the ingredients in Think Gum and that these ingredients would be in a bioavailable form and that each piece of gum would have enough of each of these ingredients so that they would have a beneficial effect.
If you somehow stumbled onto the blog without hearing about Think Gum, I will give you a brief description. Think Gum is sugar-free caffeinated gum that contains a proprietary blend of herbal ingredients designed to improve memory and concentration. The gum tastes like peppermint gum with a green-tea/herbal kick. You can read all about how and why Think Gum works here.
I started this blog as a place to talk about interesting news, findings and ideas as they relate to memory, concentration and general cognitive improvement. My plan is to post things like brain-teasers, new research and findings and tips and tricks that can be used to get most out of your education and brighten your mind!
