Stanford Student Awarded $50,000 to Market Think Gum, a Brain-Boosting Chewing Gum

Think Gum® is proud to announce that Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) Ventures, an entrepreneurial funding source for students at Stanford University, has awarded the largest prize in its history to the 25-year-old founder of Think Gum.

SSE Ventures is investing $50,000 to help market Think Gum (www.ThinkGum.com), a chewing gum containing herbal ingredients and caffeine designed to boost cognitive performance. The creator of the gum is science whiz Matt Davidson, a Stanford graduate student working on his PhD in immunology. The announcement dovetails independent findings released just this week by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine who found that the act of chewing gum boosts academic performance.

Even before announcement of the award, Davidson had sold over a million pieces of gum since founding his company in late 2007. A large U.S. manufacturer makes the gum to his specifications, and select retailers in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and even Botswana, order the gum by the caseload. He sells the functional gum from his website and at various eateries on the Stanford campus where it sells out just before finals.

“I whipped up the first batch as an undergrad at U.C. Berkeley while taking a class called, ‘Drugs and the Brain.’” says Davidson, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with high honors as a molecular and cell biology major. Davidson started by reading how aromas of herbs like peppermint and rosemary increased focus and reduced careless errors. After studying the synergistic effects of other plant extracts, including guarana that produces its own caffeine, and ginkgo biloba which is widely regarded as a cognitive enhancer, a “light bulb” went off in his head, he says. A visit to ThinkGum.com walks the curious through the principles of the gum: ranging from antioxidants and aromatherapy to breakthroughs in memory research.

But the biggest cognitive puzzle is this: How does a kid on his own, living in a dorm room, manage to ace his research studies at Stanford while running a $100K+ business? “It has just all come together,” says Davidson, who relies on friends and family to help out, especially his parents. “They continue to fill online orders with hundreds of boxes of gum still stored in my childhood bedroom.”

Contacts

Think Gum
Matt Davidson, 510-409-5791
press {at} ThinkGum(.)com