We recently connected with Neil Seeman and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Neil, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

For all my ventures, I’ve focused on amplifying stories untold that need to be heard. The data company I founded in 2009, now a publicly traded data firm, RIWI Corp., is a company that surveys people in places of the world rarely if ever surveyed, like Ethiopia, Yemen and war-torn Ukraine. My newest book, “Accelerated Minds: Unlocking the Fascinating, Inspiring, and Often Destructive Impulses that Drive the Entrepreneurial Brain” (Sutherland House Books) is about telling the stories of “quiet entrepreneurs,” the values-based entrepreneurs driving our collective prosperity, and the science of why these entrepreneurs take the risks they do — and sometimes suffer for doing so. What fuels me is that, like many entrepreneurs, I hate bullies. Bullies like to shut people down. I love technology and solutions that empower quiet voices. I’m inspired, too, by my late father, the famous dopamine scientist Philip Seeman, who explained to me how the chemical, dopamine, affects different people in different ways.

Neil, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

What I’m most proud in my data firm, RIWI, which I led as founder and CEO from 2009 to Sept. 2021 (at which point we’d secured a talented CEO to replace me), is how I tried my best to empower others. I am also proud of this in the nonprofit research unit I started before that, called the Health Strategy Innovation Cell, affiliated with the University of Toronto’s Massey College. I also love mentorship. I hope my message of entrepreneurial mental health — and talking about it openly — can inspire younger entrepreneurs to follow suit and take mental health seriously. I want readers to know that authenticity and integrity in business dealings are critical. Only then can you build something of lasting value for your community. I also like to celebrate the quiet entrepreneurs, the ones slugging along with small or medium-sized businesses of all types who don’t care about celebrating funding rounds or being featured in the financial media. They just do what they do with zeal and integrity and tenacity.

People can learn all about my vision and mission and background at my website, https://neilseeman.com

Thank you.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

My data firm (now a public firm) was a side hustle while I was a researcher in public health. I patented a new approach to collecting global data, since I was frustrated with traditional survey research. I did that in 2006. Then, in 2009, some well-known seed investors got wind of what I was doing. I found I enjoyed raising money for a venture I was passionate about. I also wanted to apply it commercial needs. Then I learned I enjoyed the competition of operating a business. After I stepped down as CEO in Fall 2021, I had a side hustle as a writer. I always wrote for news media. Then, I was looking, after my father died in 2021, for a publisher about entrepreneurial mental health and brain science. I reached out to one publisher who I’d known 25 years earlier when I first started writing for a newspaper. We talked for about 2 hours and hashed out a book outline and contract on the phone. I didn’t even realize he had started his own publishing imprint. It was serendipitous. There’s a scientific winding path to life.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Genuine intellectual curiosity for understanding the limits and opportunities of what was historically called “alternative data” to solve important healthcare challenges. I never mentioned valuations in public presentations. I always talked about the problems I wanted to solve. Money is a good derivative of the problem you are trying to solve. People know that I care about important problems. I also don’t care about “disrupting” industries so much as “fixing” them, even a little. I like to think long-term, and people know that about me. I’m not after making a quick dollar, though I respect making money enormously.     

Contact Info:

• Website: https://neilseeman.com
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/seeman
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/neilseeman
• Youtube: (I’m on many Youtube interviews if you Google me)

Image Credits
There is no name to credit, these are pictures taken by me/ family/ or by personal friends.