Alex Bishop
Hi, everyone. I'm Alex Bishop from Ufi Ventures. We are here today to discuss our latest VocTech insight piece. I'm joined by Christophe Mallet, Co-founder and CEO of Bodyswaps. Hi, Christophe. Great to speak. How are you doing today?
Christope Mallet
I'm very good what about you, Alex. Good?
Alex Bishop
Yeah. Yeah, very well, very well. Where are you based at the moment?
Christope Mallet
I'm in East London in Hackney, in my living room, obviously.
Alex Bishop
How's that? How's the weather? How's the weather at the moment? Okay?
Christope Mallet
It's absolutely horrendous. I wish I went back to France sometimes, but you know - you got to live with it.
Alex Bishop
Yeah, yeah. Hopefully we get some summer at some point. I'm really interested to find out more about the company. Obviously, it precurses my time in the fund team, but really excited about what you guys are doing at Bodyswaps. And it'd be great to just learn more about your journey so far, and what you've been up to so far today.
Christope Mallet
Yeah, sure. Um, so journey started, kind of like five years ago, at the very, very beginning of VR. I met with Julien [Denoël] my Co-founder, in a pub. And he showed me he had the first headsets. That wasn't even commercialised. And he showed me The Night Cafe where someone had recreated a van Gogh painting in 3D, so you could walk around the painting of van Gogh. That was the first time anything like this was possible. So I picked up my jaw from the floor, I left my job, and we created essentially a storytelling studio with Julien and so for three years, we did that storytelling, you know, Adidas, Canal+... kind of on the marketing side. And then one day, we had this, this lead, there was a non-marketing lead, where we had to create a training prototype for nurses in psychiatry, to practice having a difficult conversation with suicidal patients. And so we had this idea of using some, some research, around behavioural change in VR, and the idea of swapping bodies, meaning you could talk to the patient, and then find yourself in the shoes of the patient and watch yourself back giving that advice. It was that kind of like self-awareness, magic, that's only possible in VR. And so we did this, and the feedback was so great that we started scratching our head, like, do we still want to be an agency forever or not?
And then we joined Augmentor, which is an accelerator by Digital Catapult, where we learned a lot about what does it mean to create a product, to raise money, to pitch, the legalities of things... It was really eye opening. And then after that, we applied for InnovateUK grant to build an MVP, which we did. I was speaking with Ufi the whole time, more than getting some advice from Joe. And then he said, "Oh, you guys did a lot in the past year. So why don't you er want to work together?". So we did a raise, a seed raise, with Ufi Ventures last September, I believe. And here we are today with a dozen clients, we're releasing a new product, a job interview simulator in a few days, and everything's going well.
Alex Bishop
Yeah, it's great, great to hear it from yourself. And it's really exciting and great way to get to where you are today. I mean, there's a lot of noise at the moment around kind of the importance of soft skills, and we're seeing a lot of innovation in the space. What do you think the key problems and issues learners are facing toward developing those soft skills in the current market?
Christope Mallet
So when it comes to job interview, for example, which is our latest product, so we talked to universities, right, we understand we always solving challenges is doing a tech gimmick? And the challenge is the following is, how to get students to engage, and how to give them the time that they need to master those skills. And today, there's just not enough resource, it's about like about a third of students are going to have one mock interview. So that means on average, your average student is going to train for their job interview for 10 minutes, even though this is the single most important event that you can have to transition from education, which was the first part of your life, to to work. And this lack of resource is what pushed us to do to use VR and AI where you can give students a way to practice their skills, which is completely autonomous, which is completely safe, and which is also very engaging, because because such is VR.
Alex Bishop
Okay, that's really interesting. I mean, I think that the job interview kind of simulation is really interesting, because, you know, it's a, it's a very stressful scenario to be in. What do you, what do you see, in terms of validating the product the key key benefits of what you're, what you're trying to do with it, what what are you hoping those outcomes will look like?
Christope Mallet
Yeah, and the best way to present it, it's like it's like a flight simulator for job interview training. But you can go beyond just rehearsing questions. It's really about you know, managing your anxiety, understanding yourself, your strengths, what you need, learn communication techniques to answer almost any questions because there will always be question that you're not prepared for. And so then the number one benefit for the learner quite simply, is you're better prepared. And in a market that's hyper competitive, being better prepared than all your other candidates, means you get the job, and that's life changing. For our clients, who are the institution, you know, further education colleges or universities, you get your graduates faster into their jobs, and they get better jobs as well. So that improves your ranking, your, your Ofsted rating. And ultimately, you'll be able to attract more students because they want to you know they want to study something that will get them eventually, the place that they deserve in in working world.
Alex Bishop
Sounds like a great innovation. It's something I wish I'd had access to years ago; sure my interviews would have gone a lot better. And finally, just just thinking about kind of I know you alluded to that, obviously, we took part in your seed round last year, but how has it been working with Ufi Ventures over the last 12 months? Again, predominately, that was when I wasn't involved, so really interested to hear your perceptions of the fund and what we've done to help in that in that stage since.
Christope Mallet
So I think we've been chatting with Ufi for 36 months, actually. So a few minutes ago, I explained the journey of the company, we were chatting with Ufi before we even joined the accelerator. I don't remember how we had met with Joe, but we would meet regularly just to get advice. And there was no plan whatsoever from us or you to turn that into an investment or the other way around. And that advice was super helpful. And on the other side, Ufi saw that we were taking that advice on the board and moving forward. And that's what prompted the investment. And I think to an extent the relationship has not changed that much since. I mean, we have Ufi's money in the bank. So that has changed for sure. But...
Alex Bishop
...which is always useful.
Christope Mallet
...which is which kind of helps. But the relationship itself is the same in the way that we're working with John Cooke and Nick Novak from Ufi and talking regularly. And they're just giving advice, and they're quite independent from the board as well, they just really try to get deep into the challenges that we have. And I think that has been super helpful.
Alex Bishop
Great, great. Well, been great to speak Christope and really excited and best of luck with the launch of the new product.
Christope Mallet
Thanks. A lot Alex. Cool.
Alex Bishop
That's that's everything for today, guys. Please do also sign-up for more of our access to our insights. We're going to be hopefully sharing more content over the next few months. So please do sign-up for more. Thank you very much.
Find out more here: Bodyswaps Job Interview Simulator - Practice job interviews with VR & AI