Jim Hanekamp of Glenview creates health-based gaming site
By: Jessica Cantarelli/Triblocal.com staff reporter

For Glenview resident Jim Hanekamp, a sharp memory is priceless. However, with his newest endeavor, he hopes to help people improve brain function at no cost to them at all.

Jim Hanekamp Founder of Myfitbrain

Hanekamp is the founder and CEO of MyFitBrain.com, a newly-launched Web site that uses cognitive games to improve brain function and memory.

Hanekamp grew up in Northbrook, and graduated from Glenbrook North High School. He attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1977 with a Bachelor’s Degree in biology.  He started out working with his father, who owned Hanekamp Funeral Home in Northbrook, and also as a paramedic, before moving into the technology-world.

He began working for companies like Montgomery Ward, Kraft Foods and Allstate Insurance. While CIO at Schawk Incorporated in Des Plaines, he also served as president of a small software division. The father of five lives in Glenview with his new wife Pat.

“My jobs have always been tech-related, I’ve always thought of myself as an entrepreneur,” he said. “I’ve always changed what I’ve done. To me, this is the ultimate change—this is my first time running and starting up a company to make a difference in people’s lives.”

The idea for MyFitBrain.com came to Hanekamp when one of his close family members began showing signs of Alzheimer’s. After researching, the idea for Web-based cognitive games sparked his interest.

But, it wasn’t until last summer when he was watching a television special about similar games that cost users up to $400, that he figured out what he was going to do.  Hanekamp said he thought that was too much money to pay and a lot of people wouldn’t be able to afford it.

“I wanted to be able to offer a free way for people to play cognitive games and improve their brains and push out the natural effects of aging,” he said. “MyFitBrain.com is a game portal that has challenging games in seven categories. Players can push their brains in different directions and build new neurons and receptors so it uses a bigger mass of the brain cells and the effects of aging are delayed.”

Hanekamp began outsourcing the development to different countries like India. Robin Alter, CTO and CoFounder of Kreeda Games India served as the Web developer for the site. Alter said the games have been intentionally simplified to be more accessible to an older audience.

“The real magic in the MyFitBrain.com solution is in the ability to dynamically adjust the difficulty levels of the games as they adapt to each individual’s abilities and to track their progress,” Alter said. “During development, we focused more on the learning qualities of the games and the positive effects they can have.”

The site launched on April 1, and featured four of the eventual seven games. Each of the current six games have general rules of play. There are time limits for each game because this is dependent on the complexity of the level and the game. There are up to 30 levels of difficulty for each game.

Each of the games serves a different purpose to challenge a player’s brain. Pair ‘Em Up is a traditional memory game; Spot ‘N Shop is a visualization game; Matching Chirps is an audible game; Calorie Challenge is a mathematical game; Code Breaker is a logic game; and Beat the Gates is a reflex game.

“As people go through life they fall into habits, like doing Sudoku or crossword puzzles every day, or going to work the same way every day,” Hanekamp said. “Your brain becomes trained to these things and stops maximizing its growth.  It is important to continuously push your brain in new ways.  When you do this, your brain will actually build up a cognitive reserve of more brain cells.  Then, if something negatively impacts your brain, like an injury or simple effects of aging, you are less likely to show the effects.  For a normal person, the goal is to improve all of their cognitive skills and delay the natural effects of aging.”

Though MyFitBrain.com has been up and running since April 1, Hanekamp said that is half the battle. He still has much work to do. He hopes to expand the site’s use and gear it toward school children as well as incorporate advertiser’s products into the games.

“In order to make sure the site is free to use, I have put my advertising infrastructure into the interactive part of the game play,” he said. “It’s a very unique ad model and what it does is incorporates products from companies into the game. By integrating products it’s gets away from normal banner ads, which are becoming less effective over time. What I really want to do is integrate the products so players will be saying the product names — that’s better for the advertisers.”

As far as challenges from starting up a Web company, he said the hard part hasn’t been developing and funding his start-up site, it’s been getting the word out.

“It’s a unique time in history to start a company and draw resources from around the world,” he said. “There are financial and economic struggles I’m dealing with. But this has helped me to do a lot of networking and find out there are people willing to help. Everything always takes longer than you hoped and planned.”

Hanekamp said he hopes the site will speak for itself to potential users and advertisers.

“Cognitive health or natural effects of aging can degrade slowly and you can come to accept it as just part of one’s personality,” he said. “If we wait too long before we begin working our brains in many areas, it can be too late and drugs are then required. If you begin building your cognitive reserve early, then you can push out when these effects become noticeable.”

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