Jesse Pickard

Jesse Pickard is the Founder and CEO of Elevate Labs and an Investing Partner at Volo Ventures, based in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. He previously studied visual and performing arts at Syracuse University and worked as a UX designer at Razorfish before co-founding the language-learning game platform MindSnacks in 2010. At Elevate Labs, Pickard secured $21.3 million in funding from investors including Sequoia Capital and Felicis Ventures, reaching cash flow positivity in 2018. Under his leadership, the company's flagship cognitive training application won Apple's App of the Year in 2014 and has reached over 50 million users, while its meditation app, Balance, was named Google Play's Best App of 2021. Pickard's current professional focus centers on developing design-driven consumer mobile applications that apply gamification and personalization principles to digital wellness and cognitive enhancement.