INTERVIEW
: BEN BAUERT
CEO OF UNLEASHED VR
What is your startup business?
Unleashed VR specialises in developing highly immersive virtual reality training programs for businesses. Our focus is on training people to overcome critical soft skills-based challenges faced within their roles. Some of these soft skills issues include: persuasion training for sales staff; giving critical feedback for managers; empathy training for healthcare workers; and handling aggressive individuals for security and law enforcement personnel.
How did you came up with your business idea, inspiration?
I’ve always had an interest in soft skills and personal development but this became a passion when I lived in Beijing in 2007-2008. After completing my MBA in 2014, I spent a lot of time thinking about ways in which new technologies could be applied to soft skills training. I began learning about VR’s potential as a new training medium in late 2015 and decided to build the business throughout the 2016 Founder Institute accelerator program.
What problem are you solving?
Soft skills are crucial to the success of many companies, yet they are very difficult to train, assess or quantify.
These skills have traditionally been difficult to train as they often require us to deepen our understanding from someone else’s perspective. Unleashed VR’s training methodology uses the unique nature of immersive training to simulate empathy-building scenarios that overcome the perspective limitation of other training methods.
Further, we are able to capture data from simulations to quantify these skills that have previously been unquantifiable. This gives trainees and their employers actionable data that stems directly from our programs.
Where do you see the business in 5 years?
Based in Perth, hopefully occupying the entire Studio Startup building!
Our goal is to help people improve these elusive but critical skills and we plan to be serving as many individuals and businesses as possible in this regard.
Who is your key audience or users?
Our programs are best suited to sizable organisations whose reputation and success is largely determined by being the best in their business at person-to-person interactions.
What stage are you at now?
We have completed our demo program focusing on dealing with aggravated customers in the retail sector. We are actively integrating new technologies into our work to improve the effectiveness of our programs for our clients.
What is your working day like?
We hold a daily team meeting first thing to review where we’re at and what we’ll work on for the day. Sometimes I’m out of the office meeting people but can usually be found beavering away at my desk. We often have people come in to see what we’re working on and provide us with feedback.
Are you seeking support to move your business forward?
Our current focus is to show our demo module to parties with an active interest in the forefront of training technologies. If you know of interested organisations, please don’t hesitate to forward them our contact details.
What do you like about working at Studio StartUp?
It’s in an extremely convenient area of the city, right across Wellington St from the train station. The building itself has a unique feeling to it and is completely different to the large corporate firm environment that I used to work in. My team enjoys the creative environment of Studio Startup and I’d recommend it to those looking for a relaxed yet serious entrepreneur hub.
How did you find your team? Who are they?
Our core development team are all based in Perth and have backgrounds in software development, engineering, graphic design and game design. I was extremely fortunate to be introduced to them via a contact.
We also have highly experienced advisors in the areas of software engineering, VR (based in Silicon Valley) and executive education (based in London)
How can people to contact you?
Enquiries about Unleashed VR, contact CEO Ben Bauert by phone on +61488667378 or via email: Ben.bauert@unleashed-vr.com
Website: www.unleashed-vr.com
