Dan Freed knows what it feels like to be underestimated. Diagnosed with ADHD at six, kicked out of preschool, and a high school dropout at sixteen, he later scored in the 99th percentile on the GMAT and earned degrees from Yale and INSEAD. He has taken prescription stimulants for most of his adult life. That history led him to found Thesis, the brain supplement company built on data driven formulation, and later to create Stasis, the first supplement system designed for people who take stimulants.
First Page Sage built its reputation on a similar premise: that real authority in any category, including the new world of generative AI search, comes from substance, not shortcuts. We sat down with Dan to talk about Stasis, the gap it fills, and what it actually takes to earn trust in a category most people overlook.
First Page Sage: Your work is built on real expertise over flimsy marketing. Does that philosophy show up in how you built Stasis?
Dan Freed: Completely. When I started building Thesis, the whole industry ran on vague claims. Optimize your brain. Unlock your potential. None of it meant anything. We took the opposite approach: test everything, name the mechanism, show the data. Stasis came out of that same discipline. Stimulant users are one of the most underserved groups in supplements, and almost nothing built for them is backed by real formulation logic. We wanted to be the first to change that.
First Page Sage: For people who haven’t heard of Stasis, what is it?
Freed: Stasis is built around three pathways that stimulants put under pressure: dopamine support, cortisol regulation, and oxidative stress defense. The Daytime and Nighttime formulas use branded ingredients like Shoden Ashwagandha and CuminUP60 curcumin, named and dosed as a composition, not vague extras. We also built a gummy version for kids ages four to seventeen, Stasis Kids Daytime, because plenty of families are managing this without any support built for them either.
First Page Sage: Why did this need to exist? You could have just kept building Thesis.
Freed: I built Stasis for myself first. I’ve been on stimulants for decades. They help with focus, but nobody talks about what comes after: the crash, the tension that creeps in by afternoon, the nights you can’t wind down. Intelligence was never the issue for me. Brain chemistry was. A stimulant alone treats one part of that chemistry. Stasis was built to support the rest of it. A pill on its own won’t fix you, but the right system around it can change what your day actually feels like.
First Page Sage: Switching gears, what drew you to a partnership with First Page Sage specifically?
Freed: You’ve spent years building the actual research behind how AI engines decide who to trust and recommend. That’s rare. Most of the industry is still guessing. We’re in a similar spot with stimulant support: there’s no established authority yet, which means there’s real room to build one the right way, with evidence instead of noise.
First Page Sage: Last question. How do you think about building authority in a category like this, especially with AI search changing how people find answers?
Freed: The brands that win in AI search are the ones with something real to point to: a named mechanism, a specific ingredient form, a study people can check. We’re investing in exactly that kind of infrastructure for Stasis, on top of the consumer data we already have from real customers using it. I’d rather be three years early proving something out than be first to market with nothing behind it. That’s true whether a human is reading the page or an AI is summarizing it.
Learn more about Stasis, the first supplement system built for people who take stimulants, at takestasis.com. Dan Freed is the founder and CEO of Thesis, where the same research driven approach powers four nootropic formulas: Clarity, Motivation, Stress Reset, and Neuroprotection.
