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01 / 09 — PROOF OF POSSIBILITY

TRACTION

The platform is built.
The market is understood.
The experience to deliver it has been earned.

BUILTPlatform
SCOPEDMarket size
DEMONSTRATEDMarket fit
OBSERVEDInitial stress signal
See the journey

02 / 09 — THE JOURNEY

EVERY PART
LEADS HERE.

Select a milestone.

MINISTRY OF SOUND / EMI / VIRGIN

MUSIC
INDUSTRY

Digital marketing inside a global record-label ecosystem—while becoming Australia’s No. 1 DJ.
Ben Korbel, founder and CEO of Universal Mind BEN KORBEL
FOUNDER + CEO

03 / 09 — FOUNDER TRACTION

HE HAS
DONE IT
BEFORE.

Universal Mind brings together the worlds Ben Korbel has spent his career building: electronic music, live events, fashion, technology and pathways for young people.

Resident Advisor biography
01

Audience at scale

Co-founder and managing director of a decade-long events and festival company in Australasia.

02

Curatorial range

Co-owner and electronic-music programmer of the multi-genre Playground Weekender.

03

Record-label experience

Digital marketing at Ministry of Sound within the EMI/Virgin music ecosystem.

04

Music authority

Australia’s No. 1 DJ and an internationally experienced selector and performer.

05

Youth pathways

Co-founder of i-Manifest, connecting at-risk young people with creative careers.

06

Global culture

Australasian brand partner, resident DJ and event manager for We Love Sundays at Space in Ibiza.

04 / 09 — CULTURE + SCALE

BUILT FOR
THE DANCEFLOOR.

PEAK FESTIVAL NETWORK60K

tickets across two weekends

SYDNEY / 200924K

Hordern Pavilion · Royal Hall of Industries · Entertainment Quarter

AUSTRALASIA06

Sydney · Auckland · Perth · Canberra · with Future Music in Brisbane and Melbourne

AUSTRALIA’S NO. 1 AVANT-GARDE MUSIC FESTIVAL12K

Playground Weekender boutique camping-festival capacity

WE LOVE SOUNDS WINTER FESTIVAL

Ten years of events became a festival network.

At its peak, Ben’s company delivered 60,000 electronic-music tickets across two winter weekends. Sydney’s 2009 edition—headlined by Armin van Buuren—brought 24,000 people across the Entertainment Quarter precinct.

2009 event record

PLAYGROUND WEEKENDER / WISEMANS FERRY

A programme that refused to be defined by genre.

As co-owner and electronic-music programmer, Ben helped shape an iconic Sydney camping festival spanning indie, hip-hop, reggae, Balearic, ambient, house, techno and electro—from Primal Scream, The Streets and Lupe Fiasco to Soul II Soul, LTJ Bukem, James Lavelle, Prins Thomas and The Gaslamp Killer.

Explore Playground Weekender

WE LOVE SUNDAYS AT SPACE / IBIZA

Ibiza to Australasia—and back again.

Ben was We Love Space’s Australasian brand partner, as well as a resident DJ and event manager at We Love Sundays at Space. We Love invested in the Australian company behind We Love Sounds, which returned to host one Australian event at Space each season.

16 weeks / season10K people / week160K peak seasonal audience
Resident Advisor archive

05 / 09 — YOUTH IMPACT

CREATIVE
PATHWAYS
AT SCALE.

As co-founder of i-Manifest, Ben helped connect young people—including at-risk and rural communities—to real creative careers through direct collaboration with culture, education, government and industry.

I WANT IN / WHAT SO NOT — JAGUAR NEARLY
10 MILLION

views for an interactive music and career experience created with the NSW Government, What So Not and Flume.

Explore the project
MOBILE MUSIC SCHOOL / A SOUND LIFE MUSIC AS
MINDFULNESS

Delivered at a Salvation Army inner-city youth crisis centre for homeless young people—combining brain entrainment, dance-music videos and electronic music-making.

NSW GOVERNMENTVIVID SYDNEYTEDxMERCEDES-BENZ FASHION WEEKBIENNALE OF SYDNEYVOGUECOUNTRY ROAD

06 / 09 — WHAT IS ALREADY TRUE

MARKET.
FIT.
PLATFORM.

MARKET SIZE

The audience is known.

Vogue. Boiler Room. Resident Advisor. Tomorrowland. Coachella. Circoloco. Cercle. The global audience for fashion and electronic music is already visible.

See the audience model
MARKET FIT

The community voted.

modul8 infinity—the precursor to Universal Mind I AM—received the second-highest public vote in The 73 Percent international music mental-health competition.

Experience the original project
PLATFORM

The technology is built.

An enterprise-ready live beta bringing music television, adaptive check-ins, optional Heart Rate, Sound and EMDR research modes, privacy-safe inference and human support into one experience.

Enter Universal Mind

07 / 09 — INITIAL PSYCHOLOGY + PHYSIOLOGY SIGNAL

A SIGNAL
WORTH
TESTING.

The initial n=1 observation showed a short-term signal across recorded physiology and self-reported psychological stress.

HEART RATE / SESSION 01 33.7%

recorded reduction

98 → 65 bpm · stationary · nine minutes
SYSTOLIC BP / SESSION 02 32.4%

recorded reduction

185 → 125 mmHg · stationary · nine minutes
FIXED EXPERIENCE 03

biometrically recorded exposures

the same audiovisual intervention each time
SELF-REPORTED PSYCHOLOGY LESS
STRESS

with calm, focus, clarity, agency and personal strength

The experience was deliberately stimulating—not a calming meditation—with energetic progressive house, isochronic modulation, a separate 528-Hz layer, mantra and rapidly moving geometry. There was no breathing or relaxation guidance.

This is the signal the next ten-person psychology and physiology study is designed to test.

Read the complete n=1 research record

08 / 09 — CLINICAL + GENOMICS TRACTION

THE RCT
WAS ALREADY
IN MOTION.

Six months of groundwork in 2019 moved the research from a proposal into institutional planning.

GARVAN INSTITUTE / KINGHORN AGREED
TO PARTICIPATE

Following a stakeholder meeting with the head of the Kinghorn sequencing laboratory, Garvan supplied a technical-services quote for mRNA sequencing and offered to manage the full randomized controlled trial.

GARVAN + FISHER BIOTECH BUCCAL
SWAB PATH

Ben project-managed the sourcing of buccal-swab technology for a more humane sampling pathway, bringing Fisher Biotech from Perth to Sydney for a technical meeting with Garvan that concluded with agreement to proceed.

PROFESSOR PATRICK McGORRY DIRECT
RESPONSE

After receiving the RCT proposal, Orygen and headspace founder Professor Patrick McGorry responded personally that he understood the power of music and would be happy to help.

BINAH.AI / BIOMETRICS EXECUTED
AGREEMENT

A legal stakeholder agreement with early rPPG biometrics platform Binah.ai established the technical pathway that preceded today’s optional video-selfie Heart Rate experience. The live beta uses Shen.AI’s free development plan; Binah.ai remains part of the original partnership groundwork.

The programme paused for health reasons. The groundwork now provides a clear starting point for re-engagement.

TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIP GROUNDWORK / 2019

THE SYSTEMS
WERE SCOPED TOO.

Rewards, professional broadcast and global delivery had each moved into contracted partner discussions.

HAPPINESS REWARDS / DRAGONCHAIN PARTNERSHIP
AGREEMENT

A quote, contract and partnership agreement directly with founder and CEO Joe Roets scoped a mental-health reward system with immutable records on Dragonchain and Ethereum. Dragonchain’s technology originated inside The Walt Disney Company before being open-sourced. A public strategy conversation published by Dragonchain sets out the biometrics-led adaptive-television and HAPPINESS vision.

Watch the Dragonchain conversation
BROADCAST INFRASTRUCTURE / SWITCH MEDIA CONTRACTED
SCOPE

A quote and contract scoped professional online-broadcast infrastructure from the technology company behind Foxtel Now and major live events including the Olympic Games. It remains a scale-up pathway beyond the independently built beta.

Switch Media
GLOBAL DELIVERY / CLOUDFLARE CDN
CONTRACT

A direct 2019 CDN contract established the global-delivery path. Universal Mind now uses Cloudflare as its primary streaming infrastructure, with deeper direct engagement remaining a future scale pathway.

Cloudflare Stream

The live beta has since been built internally with AI-assisted development and minimal external build cost. Re-engagement can now begin from a working product—not a proposal.

09 / 09 — WHAT COMES NEXT

VALIDATION

The next three priorities connect in one continuous programme.

01

Psychology
+ physiology

Expand the initial n=1 into a ten-person study using surveys, HR, HRV, blood pressure and SpO₂.

02

Referral pathways
+ triage

Validate a human-in-the-loop pathway with Orygen, headspace and national mental-health partners.

03

Randomized
controlled trial

Reconnect with Orygen, Garvan, UNSW FabiLab and Phoenix Australia around surveys, biometrics and mRNA sequencing.

Built from culture.
Designed for impact.
Ready for validation.

Join the validation journey