Disco

Many believe that we're born with the skills necessary to thrive in a 21st century economy - interpersonal skills, leadership skills, and emotional intelligence are intuitive. They can't be learned.  The experience of many training participants supports this view. Most workplace training doesn't work. Where training does occur, it can be hard to measure its affects and connect learning progress to performance data, which is often rife with bias. Disco solves all of these problems by engaging learners with well-curated gamified content delivered by experts in a way which aligns with how they work, encouraging about 10 minutes of engagement per day. The platform continually collects learning data through self,  game-based, and long form assessments. By democratizing access to learning, fostering a new generation of empathetic leaders, and building better workplace cultures; Disco has the potential to increase access to opportunity for many of the world's workers.

In June, the International Labour Organization adopted a convention against violence and harassment in the workplace. The challenge of toxic workplace cultures is global. In the US, the problem of toxic workplaces is persistent. The Workplace Bullying Institute found 60.4 million American workers are affected by harassment or bullying in the workplace. Women and men of color were most affected by unfair treatment. 

Researchers at Lund University found that toxic cultures are driven by incivility and incivility is associated with poor leadership, work and information overload, and low social support-challenges that can be solved through greater access to professional development and learning. However, training interventions designed to improve culture or change behavior quite often don't work. Some studies show that employees only remember and apply one third of what they learn in training at work. That’s because these trainings often treat learning as a one time event instead of an ongoing process.

Moreover, few learning programs record and share targeted analytical data tied to learning and performance in a way that allows users to track and reward change over time. 

Disco solves the challenges associated challenges related to workplace training, by encouraging users to continually learn and measure their progress 

For the past four years, ReadySet has worked with those from underrepresented groups trying to find a job or succeed  in high opportunity fields like tech, higher education, media, and healthcare. During that time we've noticed that many share the same concerns. They want access to learning and growth opportunities, they want access to good managers, and they want their skills to be evaluated fairly. Disco levels the playing field by providing access for anyone within an organization to engage with content focused on interpersonal and leadership skill development at a pace and level that makes sense for the learner. 

Disco is a gamified, social, microlearning platform designed for the way that we work. learners begin with a quick assessment of their interpersonal and leadership skills. Based on this assessment and their stated learning needs, the platform suggests a course consisting of 15 to 20 bite-sized, high quality, engaging, multimedia learning modules which take on average 3 minutes to complete. Through videos, animation, puzzles, and games learners will learn interpersonal, people management,  and leadership skills. Throughout the course,  learners will be prompted with nudges to socialize learning and assess their skills. Individual users will be able to track their progress on key metrics. HR and LD departments will also have access to individual and aggregate learning and performance data. 

We encourage learners to spend 10 minutes a day on our platform.  We also provide users access to our team of coaches and consultants to help them implement what they have learned. 

It has to be said there are no shortage of companies in the e-learning space. Yet most e-learning solutions struggle with effectiveness. Our platform leverages several elements to  encourage skills development and sustained behavioral change. To our knowledge,  we are the only platform that combines gamification and micro-learning with robust analytics to teach users interpersonal and leadership skills in the workplace, help learners track their progress, and provide HR & LD organizations with actionable data. 

Moving forward, we plan to integrate AI into the platform. By doing so, we 'll revolutionize online learning by creating customized, responsive learning experience that will engage users over the long term and encourage behavioral change. 

Our solution is based on a gamified approach to micro-learning that leverages AI to encourage sustained behavioral change and provide robust, actionable learning data. 

Research shows that toxic cultures are driven by incivility and incivility is associated with poor leadership, work and information overload, and low social support-challenges that can be solved through greater access to professional development and learning. 

Researchers have found that to be effective workplace training must 1) include relevant content, 2) active demonstration, 3) opportunities for practice, 4) regular feedback, and 5) post training reinforcement. Our technology leverages all of these elements

Our solution is designed to reduce the prevalence of toxic workplaces and  increase access to economic opportunity, by increasing access to professional development, teaching the skills necessary to build an inclusive culture, and providing objective and actionable performance data in real-time. 

Currently ReadySet reaches  around 10,000 a year through our consulting and training work with our clients. However, we believe that Disco will be able to deliver our training at a much larger scale. 

We believe can reach 50,000 learners in our first year with our services and platform.  Over the next five years,through partnerships with large organizations and an expansion of our offerings to include compliance and function-specific training, we hope to engage 1 million users.

Within the next year we hope to 

• Integrate AI-powered features 
• Engage 40,000 users
• Add content across levels and in the areas of compliance and function-specific learning 
• Create content partnerships with three different distribution channels

Within the next 5 years we hope to add:

• Create localized content tailored for international audiences
• Customized learning support for users
• Engage 1 million users
• Pilot a B2C product, reaching an additional 10,000 users
• Continue to grow content partnerships 

We anticipate that our biggest hurdles will be 

• Financial
  • The operational cost of further building out and scaling our platform to meet customer demand and provide expert support
  • The costs associated with high quality content production 
• Cultural - the difficulty of developing content that aligns with  working cultures and best practices outside of the US. 

We believe that we have the resources to address these challenges. For the financial challenges of scale, ReadySet is already profitable. We've used these profits to build our MVP and we believe that the revenue generated by our services can be leveraged to support and scale the product. We're also pursuing funding from additional resources, including grant competitions and a small seed round. We will address the cultural challenges by licensing content from international providers, partner with local experts, and leverage the international expertise of our consultants, who have worked in Canada, Europe, and Latin America. 

Our team is made up of 9 contractors.

8 are consultants with subject matter expertise related to leadership, people management, employee engagement, organizational change, diversity, and inclusion

ReadySet has been working with organization to build better more inclusive cultures, products, and practices for more than 4 years. We use evidenced-based research to develop targeted solutions for our clients. We're well respected experts, widely considered to be one of the best organizations in our field. We've helped turn around organizations large and small.  In support of this work,  we've conducted hundreds of learning sessions aimed at building interpersonal and leadership skills. We' know how to help people build the skills they need to work better together. 

Periodically, ReadySet partners with values aligned institutions passionate about increasing access to opportunity for those from marginalized backgrounds. 

In the past we've partnered with Tech Intersections, Tech Inclusion, Culture Amp, Culture Conference and others to provide more accessible educational content to a broader spectrum of individuals. 

We currently operate under a consulting business model. Fees are charged on an hourly, project, and retainer basis. With the launch of Disco, we're adding a SAAS pillar to our company. Disco has been built leveraging our existing revenue and will be offered on a subscription basis to organizations, charging them a per user monthly fee. 

Disco sits at the intersection of two rapidly growing markets. The global e-learning market is expected to reach $325 billion by 2025 and the global HR analytics market is expected to reach $3.6 billion by 2024. 

We're running a pilot with a select group of ReadySet's existing customers before publicly launching. Disco's target customers are medium and large sized organizations willing to invest in learning and collecting better data on the "soft skills" necessary to build a healthy successful organization. 

ReadySet is already a profitable company. We've leveraged this profitability to build Disco. Though we do not require additional capital to pilot we will need capital to scale. We anticipate that this initial capital will come from a combination of subscription sales, grants, and raising a small seed round. 

We believe that Disco has the power to revolutionize workplace learning while creating healthier more inclusive organizations. We would like to be part of the Solve for the following reasons:

• We believe that your network can help us scale globally beyond Silicon Valley 
• We're interested in connecting to a values-aligned community of investors with a global vision 
• We'd love to be part of a community of peers building companies committed solving the world's most challenging problems.

We're interested in partnering with 

• Production companies
• Content providers 
• Experts and academics in areas related organizational behavior, psychology, sociology, and history. 
• AI developers 

We would like to integrate AI into the next version of our product. We believe that AI is essential to creating the type of customized, responsive learning experience that will engage users over the long term and encourage behavioral change. 

Specifically, our AI powered technology will:

• Continually assess learning 
• Recommend and personalize content 
• Reinforce training with periodic nudges and prompts to socialize learning 

The problem of toxic workplaces, unequal access to learning and professional development, and lack of objective performance data disproportionately impacts women and workers from religious and ethnic minority groups globally. By democratizing access to learning, building interpersonal and leadership skills, and providing access to more robust hr performance analytics we believe that Disco will create healthier, more inclusive working environments, that increase access to opportunity for workers. 

The problem of toxic workplaces, unequal access to learning and professional development, and lack of objective performance data disproportionately impacts women and workers from religious and ethnic minority groups globally. Women are paid less, promoted less often, and face more aggression than men at work. By democratizing access to learning, building interpersonal and leadership skills, and providing access to more robust hr performance analytics we believe that Disco will create healthier, more inclusive working environments, that increase access to opportunity for female workers. 

We would like to integrate AI into the next version of our product. We believe that AI is essential to creating the type of customized, responsive learning experience that will engage users over the long term and encourage behavioral change. 

Specifically, our AI powered technology will:

• Continually assess learning 
• Recommend and personalize content 
• Reinforce training with periodic nudges and prompts to socialize learning 

The problem of toxic workplaces, unequal access to learning and professional development, and lack of objective performance data disproportionately impacts women and workers from religious and ethnic minority groups globally. By democratizing access to learning, building interpersonal and leadership skills, and providing access to more robust hr performance analytics we believe that Disco will create healthier, more inclusive working environments, that increase access to opportunity for workers.