No-code app development startup Cogniss banks $1.1M from crowdfunding, plans fast follow-on investment round in Q1 2022

SYDNEY, 3 December 2021: Australian tech startup Cogniss closed its successful equity crowd-sourced funding (CSF) campaign on Thursday 2nd December 2021, raising almost four times its initial target, securing $1,121,893 million from 302 individual investors. The success of the CSF will enable the bootstrapped startup to activate its ambitious plans for growth, both in Australia and globally, with CEO and Founder Leon Young now planning to launch a private investment round in early Q1 2022.

“We are thrilled with the results of this campaign and are so excited to welcome our 302 new shareholders to the Cogniss family,” said Young.  “This funding injection means we can press ‘go’ on our scale up plans immediately - expanding our team of talented developers, sharing the Cogniss story far and wide, and significantly growing our customer base, while also continuing to support our existing clients. Plus we’ve had such strong interest from a range of VC firms and other strategic investors that we’re now planning to run a fast follow-on investment round early in the new year to capitalise on the momentum.”

The Cogniss platform is the world’s first cloud-based platform to put powerful and highly technical capabilities - incorporating UX design, behavioural science, artificial intelligence and technical app building skills - into the hands of people with no coding or technical expertise, at a fraction of the cost of custom app development. Apps built on Cogniss typically cost up to 90 percent less than custom-built apps, and can be launched in weeks rather than the months or even years custom app development can take.

“In 2020 there were over 80,000 new apps published in the app store that were transformational in nature, helping to transform lives in terms of lifestyle, health, fitness, wellbeing and education,” explained Young. “The most effective apps in these categories are what we call Human Transformation apps, which use evidence-based neuropsychology and neuroscience principles to positively impact human cognition, health and wellbeing. What we’re aiming to do with Cogniss is democratise the development of these Human Transformation apps, making the process more affordable and achievable for individuals and organisations who want to help people make positive changes to their lives.” 

Cogniss will now stake a claim on the multi-billion dollar global transformational app development industry, which spans the No-Code development market, projected to be valued at US$45B by 2025, Digital Health, projected to reach US$457B by 2026, and EdTech, projected to reach US$404B by 2025. 

“What’s been especially rewarding to see from the crowdfunding campaign is the different types of people and organisations that have come on board. We’ve had investments from an incredibly diverse range of individuals… one investor plans to create an app to support survivors of domestic abuse, another is designing an app that combines speech therapy and mindfulness, and another has an idea for an app to engage students in Humanities class discussions. It’s been really inspiring to hear all of these innovative ideas, and to know that Cogniss can provide the opportunity to bring their ideas to life.

“Thousands of people have already had their lives changed for the better by a Human Transformation app built on Cogniss, a fact we’re very proud of. Now, with this new funding behind us, we have the opportunity to positively impact millions of lives,” finished Young.

Concurrent to the CSF campaign, Cogniss has signed a number of strategic commercial partnerships in the past few weeks with global organisations that will act as Cogniss resellers in global markets outside of the organisation’s 2022 Go-To-Market strategy, including international communications network M&C Saatchi, strategic design consultancy ThinkPlace, nutraceutical consulting service Metavate, and pharmaceutical innovation consultancy Rhythm Design.
 

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Distributed on behalf of Cogniss Holdings Pty Ltd by Crystal Clear Communications
Media contact: Rachel McDougall rachel@crystalclearcommunications.com.au
 

BACKGROUND INFORMATION FOR EDITORS

About Cogniss

Cogniss is the world’s first no-code app building platform making it possible for anyone to build apps that can transform lives. No coding or design skills required. Cogniss combines proven neuropsychological techniques, best practice user experience design and artificial intelligence algorithms into an intuitive tool that can be configured to create sophisticated apps that drive health and learning outcomes.

The Cogniss platform is the product of continuous technological and scientific R&D commenced in 2016 by 2and2, an internationally acclaimed educational games company that has been developing complex health and educational applications since 2004. The innovative team behind 2and2 and Cogniss has won 60+ awards across USA, UK and Australia for their groundbreaking and innovative work. Cogniss customers range from blue-chip enterprises to startups, government departments and major not-for-profits.

Backgrounder - The Cogniss Story

Led by CEO and Founder Leon Young, Cogniss enables the creation of what has been termed ‘Human Transformation Technology’ solutions – that is, apps that drive a positive life outcome for users, particularly in the health, lifestyle and education space. Designed with input from neuroscientists and neuropsychologists, and offered on a subscription basis, the Cogniss platform offers a low cost and scalable way for non-technical individuals and organisations to build powerful and sophisticated apps that have the potential to make a tangible, positive difference to people’s lives.

With highly sophisticated pre-built features, advanced user experience elements and artificial intelligence engines specifically designed for high complexity, the Cogniss platform enables the development of hyper-personalised, commercial-grade Human Transformation apps.

“While it’s a massive oversimplification, in the same way that Canva enables anyone to produce amazing designs, Cogniss enables anyone to create powerful, transformational apps that drive meaningful behavioural change,” explains Young. “Organisations looking to launch a transformational app by conventional methods, say by using a specialist agency or in-house development team, would be looking at months and months to launch, and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars. What we’re aiming to do is democratise the development of transformational apps, making the process more affordable and achievable for individuals and organisations who want to help people make positive changes to their lives.”

The current iteration of the Cogniss platform has more than a decade of research and development behind it, some of it gleaned through Young’s award-winning company 2and2, a specialist agency focused on building custom, sophisticated digital solutions to drive health, lifestyle and education outcomes for large organisations. The Cogniss platform consolidates this research, technical capability and knowledge base and puts it into the hands of people who have the expertise to help people make positive changes to their lives, but don’t necessarily have the digital skills to build an app.

Apps built on Cogniss

In the five years since it was launched, Cogniss has empowered academic and medical researchers, educators, health care workers and other subject matter experts – most who don’t have any coding or technical skills to speak of - to design, build and launch their own innovative apps, all created with the ambitious goal of positively transforming the lives of users.

Some of the ground-breaking apps powered by Cogniss include the recently launched Raising Healthy Minds app, developed by Raising Children Network, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the Department of Health; the TEN digital health solution from Black Dog Institute and the Department of Health, launched to support the mental health of frontline workers during COVID; and 100 Day Challenge, an app created by the Victorian Responsible Gambling Federation and Victorian Department of Justice, which supports people wanting to reduce gambling.

To date, 70 percent of the apps built on Cogniss have had a strong human research component, with the majority of existing customers being academic researchers connected to universities, including the University of Sydney, University of New South Wales and Deakin University, and research institutes including the Black Dog Institute and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. The Australian Department of Health, the Victorian Department of Justice, and NSW Liquor and Gaming have also been involved in the development of apps built on Cogniss.

About Leon Young, CEO and Founder, Cogniss

For Leon, Cogniss represents the culmination of a creative digital career that spans education, advertising and marketing, behavior change and games. Starting as a professional games developer at age 14, Leon's cross-disciplinary career has allowed him to develop the skills required to synthesize complex theory and technology into simple, practical solutions. 

Leon started working in online learning in 1999 and has since developed a deep interest in the intersection of technology, psychology and neuroscience. He has dedicated himself to the practical application of these fields of endeavor to inform the design of technology-based solutions that aim to improve quality of life.