Michael Brandt has all the resume highlights that tech entrepreneurs dream of: Stanford grad, ex-Google employee and an Andreessen Horowitz backing for his startup.

He's the co-founder of HVMN (allegedly pronounced "human") — formerly Nootrobox — which sells subscriptions for monthly boxes of cognitive supplements. The company is also behind Go Cubes, "chewable coffee" bites sold at convenience stores to compete with products like 5-hour energy.

"We want to make better humans. We want to take technology and use it to help you as a system," Brandt, the company's co-founder and COO, told CNBC at his San Francisco office. "You have inputs. You have outputs like your productivity, your reaction time, your happiness even."