Neurotechnology is entering a decisive phase. After years of remarkable scientific progress and a recent surge in venture funding, the field now faces its defining challenge: translating laboratory breakthroughs into solutions that scale in the real world.

Drawing on an outsider’s perspective as a healthcare entrepreneur, investor, and first-time neurotech founder, this talk examines why capital inflows and scientific excellence alone do not guarantee adoption. While billions have flowed into BCIs and neuro-platforms, most companies still struggle in the gap between proof-of-concept and sustained real-world use. The bottleneck is no longer electrodes, algorithms, or publications - it is engineering for adoption.

The presentation distills the key tensions shaping neurotech’s next phase: clinical versus consumer pathways, regulatory approval versus reimbursement reality, and scientific legitimacy versus user trust at scale. It highlights the shift from single-session lab measurements toward longitudinal, multimodal, real-world phenotyping—and explains why this evolution tightly links neurotech’s future to AI and data platforms. The central message is clear: neurotech’s next breakthroughs will be measured in deployments and durable usage, not papers.