Both Picard and Kaliouby had shared a vision of applying their research in medical and therapeutic settings. The challenges of autistic children seemed a perfect fit for their discoveries, so they trained a machine system called MindReader to recognize emotions using paid actors to mimic specific emotional responses and facial gestures. Early on, MIT Media Lab corporate sponsors Pepsi, Microsoft, Bank of America, Nokia, Toyota, Procter and Gamble, Gillette, Unilever, and others had overwhelmed the pair with queries about using their system to measure customers' emotional responses. Kaliouby describes the women's hesitation and their determination to focus on "do-good" applications. According to her account, the Media Lab encouraged the two women to "spin off" their work into the startup they called Affectiva, imagined as a "baby IBM for emotionally intelligent machines."

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