From Idea to Funding Pitch

On Monday March 23rd 2026, Cambridge NeuroWorks held a workshop entitled "NeuroSparks: Developing Problem-Solving Neurotech Ideas" in Scotland

Christof Gaunt, Innovation Pathway Manager at Cambridge NeuroWorks, led a session entitled "Identifying untapped opportunities, exploring early business ideas and refining your concept". 

The aim of this session is to compress the 12-week process of finding a "Need" into a single hour of structured thinking. The first two stages of this six stage process pertains to identifying "why" where the goal is to find and screen a need. Next two "what" stages pertain to concept generation and screening it. Final two "How" stages pertain to strategy development and business planning.

The road map is to first start with an initial idea based on a raw scientific concept. For instance hyper-mirroring causes distress in Misophonia from my own 2021 Journal of Neuroscience study.#

 

Secondly focussing on forming a "what if" statement - like What if Misophonia sufferers could socialize at work and home enabling integration into economic workforce.

Next mapping the opportunity on where best to play which has two dimensions market pull (clinical need) vs regulatory complexity (time and cost). In my example, since the prevalence of extreme misophonia needing intervention is just 1% of the world's population and a non-invasive intervention with low regulatory, low cost and less time will place such a proposal around quick win quadrant. 

Then mapping the stakeholders in terms of ecosystem and constraints. In my case, if I propose a TMS based treatment for reducing distress in misophonia, the influencer is Psychiatrist or Clinical Psychologist; while NHS trust or insurance would pay for it, and MHRA or NICE would be the regulator.

Finally pitching the de-risked hypothesis in 2 minutes. This requires quantifying the unmet need, how current solutions fail, presenting refined what if statement, answering why now, and proposing a validation step.

Here is my pitch

• Misophonia is a condition experienced by some people wherein everyday bodily sounds like eating, chewing, and breathing, trigger extreme emotional response in them. 
• One percent of the general population meet the clinical threshold for extreme misophonia resulting in social isolation and unable to earn a living. 
• Current solutions using CBT via exposure therapy fails to account for extreme distress induced by trigger sounds. 
• My recent 2021 work shows misophonia is a state of aberrant hyper mirroring. Turrini et al PNAS 2024 shows evidence for reduction of mirroring using cortico-cortico paired associative stimulation (ccPAS). 
• What if people with extreme misophonia could be treated using ccPAS at TMS clinics enabling them to integrate into economic workforce and earn a living? 
• We want to run a 20 patient pilot to validate ccPAS based treatment compared against rTMS on DLPFC for effectiveness in reducing distress in misophonia.