FutureFit AI

The Problem: Layoffs suck for everyone and AI will only make things worse. 

Research shows layoffs already have a negative impact those let go, families, surviving workers, the company, and the community - and AI and automation will only exasperate that impact in frequency, intensity, and complexity.

Our Solution: AI-powered Outskilling to re-imagine Layoffs for the Age of AI. 

We use an AI engine trained on one of the world's largest data sets of automation risk, job demand, skills, career pathways, and learning to help those impacted discover their talents & skills, map their career path, and get access to a personalized menu of supports (e.g. skills, coaching, interview preparation, financial planning) to pursue and secure their next opportunity.

Impact: highest for most marginalized, applicable to automation-driven transitions beyond layoffs

Increase in impacted income/future prospects/confidence, survivor engagement, business results

Decrease time to return, physical/mental health impacts, unemployment benefits, regional unemployment

Despite endless headlines about automation and jobs, the majority of solutions default to attempted skill development often through delivery of online content. What this approach misunderstands is that skills are only one piece in a much larger puzzle and the real challenge is in helping people make full and successful transitions from where they are to a better next career stage 

When it comes to layoffs specifically, the impact on people is staggering according to researchers: only 40% finding work at equal or higher pay, fully 20% still unemployed after a year, still earning 20% less than peers 20 years later, 83% higher chance of developing a new health condition, and 6x more likely to commit a violent act.

The numbers don't tell a much better story for companies either: neutral to negative impact on stock price, declines in profitability,  2x likelihood of filing for bankruptcy, 1% downsizing leading to 31% increase in voluntary turnover with survivors experiencing 41% decline in job satisfaction / 36% decline in organizational commitment / 20% decline in job performance.

In the US alone, over 1M people are laid off annually which will only grow with increasing adoption of automation.

Our long-term vision is to support every person on the planet through critical career transitions - from new grads to veterans to previously incarcerated to refugees/immigrants to returning mothers/retirees to the unemployed - with a personalized AI Career Assistant.

Our immediate laser sharp focus is on those impacted by layoffs, particularly those in careers at high risk of automation and being let go due to business transformation and technological adoption. This often means marginalized populations - those in lower income brackets, with diverse backgrounds, and more barriers to access opportunity in the marketplace.

All of our work is done with those we serve at the centre. We began with interviewing over 1,000 people going through career transitions to understand their experiences, emotions, aspirations, and challenges navigating a fast changing world of work.

Their input, insights, and feedback has helped developed both the core elements of our model as well as specific product features and functionality. Their voice continues to be central to the ongoing development and growth of our solution.

Our solution addresses 3 critical common threads in what we consistently hear from them: 1) feeling shame (removing taboo) 2) being paralyzed (intelligence) and 3) getting overwhelmed (personalization+coach)

Imagine having very own AI-powered Career Assistant that guides you through every stage of your transition all the way through you reaching your next destination just like a Google Maps for your Career:

1. 360 Profile Analysis ('Locating' You): Rooted in research and leading practice, FutureFit AI starts with understanding your demographics, personality & character traits, talents & strengths, interests and values, knowledge & abilities, human and technical skills, experiences of work & learning (formal and informal), as well as career preferences and aspirations to build a holistic profile of who you are, where you are, and your best sense of future direction (if you have any).

2. Labour Market Intelligence ('Mapping' the World of Opportunity): FutureFit AI then leverages one of the world's largest data sets on automation risk, job demand, skills, career pathways, and learning to identify most suitable potential destinations for your journey.

3. Virtual Career Coach (Human Guidance): You then schedule a video call with a Career Coach who reviews the results of your report with you and works with you to refine the AI-powered recommendations for factors that matter most to you for your success. The Coach will also be available to you throughout your journey by text/call.

4. Career Matches (Recommending 'Destinations'): The AI engine then gives you your best Career Matches to make sure you consider your options first. It is also intentionally designed to expand your horizons of what is possible for your future - both beyond employment in your current career area but also into less common but growing pathways like gig economy, entrepreneurship, and the world of impact.

5. Personalized Pathway Mapping: For any Career destination, it then dynamically maps your skill / education / experience gap and recommends steps (learning, certification, etc) you should take to achieve your goal (integration with edX, Future Learn, Credential Engine, and many more).

6. Access to Marketplace of Opportunities & Supports: The platform also connects you to a marketplace of work opportunities (full global integration with Indeed.com) as well as a marketplace of supports and services (resume review, LinkedIn profile revamp, interview simulator, financial planning, health insurance, therapy, personal branding, etc) all of which are critical to a full and successful transition.

We have built a microservices-based platform powered by various NLP and deep learning models and tools (sklearn, Keras, Spark, etc) using React, Express, Django, PostgreSQL and MongoDB.

4 factors set FutureFit AI apart from the market and the ~100 other solutions you are reviewing as part of this challenge:

1. Data-deep, AI-first: With 300M+ resumes/CVs of real people's careers as real-time labour market information based on millions of job postings being scanned, our data is one of the most comprehensive and granular sets in the space globally mapping 200+ countries and territories, 7M+ companies, 30,000+ education institutions and their programs / courses, 3,000+ occupations, 30,000+ skills, 140+ industries, and more. 

2. End-to-end Transition Support: As outlined earlier, this is the real and far more complex challenge of the automation era - not simply putting people through yet another training course. Our solution is focused in supporting the person through the entire transition, pulling in the right mix of AI-driven intelligence, human guidance, and a marketplace of supports and services.

3. Existing Budget Line, Re-purposed for Transformative Purpose: One of the best ways to have transformative impact at scale is to disrupt an existing budget line rather than trying to create a new one. We have identified just such an opportunity in the hundreds of millions of dollars companies already spend on layoffs / outplacement and are focused on transforming how they are used to improve people's lives.

4. Benefits for All Stakeholders: Our model not only delivers outcomes for the beneficiaries but improves brand and business results and reduces risks for the business while driving significant benefits and efficiencies for governments and communities.

Problem Growth Trajectory: More AI + automation --> more jobs transformed --> more layoffs (which already suck) --> more people needing to make a transition --> more of those transitions being more complex (same job being automated everywhere)

Intervention Impact Logic: 

• Activities: Workers impacted by layoffs use FutureFit AI, supported by human coaches, to discover and pursue their next career opportunity.
• Outputs: Impacted workers are provided with personalized and holistic transition services including profile analysis, pathway mapping, personalized work opportunity recommendations, as well as access to a marketplace of additional supports and services.
• Short-term Outcomes: Increase in impacted worker income/future prospects/confidence, survivor engagement, business results; Decrease in time to return, physical/mental health impacts, unemployment benefits, regional unemployment.
• Long-term Outcomes: Increase in effectiveness and efficiency of helping people through career transitions at every stage of their lives and Decrease in stress placed on public dollars and systems to support those in limbo (fundamental challenge of automation).

Evidence Supporting Links:

1. Activities-to-Outputs: We are able to track every user's journey and show their participation leads directly to them engaging with the intelligence, supports, and resources provided through our solution.
2. Outputs-to-STOutcomes: Supported by Harvard research among others
3. STOutcomes-to-LTOutcomes: While it is still to early for us to prove this at scale, our early results point to a direct linkage between the alternatives in public support systems workers would rely on as well as negative financial, physical, and mental impacts if they did not have access to the supports provided to them through FutureFit AI.

1. # of People currently served: 10,000

2. # of People serving in 1 year (estimated, higher certainty, based on planned deployments): 50,000

3. # of People serving in 5 years (estimated, lower certainty, 3x growth Yrs 2-4, 2x in Year 5): 2,500,000

In the next year, we are focused on closing 5 Fortune1000 partnerships to turbocharge our growth.

5-year Goals:

1. 2.5M Layoffs Transformed: We believe there is a significant opportunity to fundamentally transform the public and personal narrative on layoffs - from one of deep, hidden shame towards 'the best things that ever happened to me' by helping 2.5M people make proud and successful transitions and then tell their stories to the world.

2. Global Leader: We already have presence on 3 continents and have had significant demand from governments and companies globally which we aim to serve by building up the necessary infrastructure to support application of our solution across various geographies, cultures, and contexts

3. Best-in-Class Impact: We aim to be rigorous in capturing and tracking the impact of our interventions and continuously updating our model and the mix of supports provided based on those results. Following Year 2, we will be investing in an independent Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) of our solution towards achieving this goal.

4. Scaling Beyond Ourselves: We began this journey with a clear understanding that we would never achieve maximum by only trying to scale our own organization. We already have a strategy in place to scale the impact of our work by sharing our core algorithms and AI models with impact-driven organizations who would customized and localize them for their contexts and countries as well as by offering our technology platform to public employment service organization at a significant discount.

Key Barrier for Next Year: Catch-22 Market Dynamics - Just like an immigrant who arrives in a new country and is asked for local experience to get a job, large enterprises often ask for past experience before bringing new solutions onboard. Breaking through this barrier is our most significant challenge in the next year.

Key Barriers for the Next Five Years:

• Financial: Drive growth to enable Series A and Series B raises in next 5 years to provide the necessary capital to take on the challenge at global scale
• Technical: Further develop Career Match Score, Pathway Success Probability Score, and Next Step Recommendation algorithms to improve accuracy and enable dynamic contextualization to any geography, language, and occupation
• Cultural: Take on the shame-driven narrative around layoffs in the public discourse with marketing campaigns where people tell stories of their successful transitions
• Market: Build API integrations with point solution provides to allow for personalization of supports to the individual and seamless tracking of each journey across stages

Our response to the Barriers question integrates this question including the overall supporting resources that would power our efforts to overcome these barriers.

Canada - Chosen by top 2 banks in the country as their go-to solution in this space including one replacing a solution they developed internally and invested significant marketing dollars into with FutureFit AI, leveraged by network of employment service providers in largest province to support candidates going through transition

United States - Selected by Fortune 100 company as Outskilling partner, chosen by US Government as a top innovation, partnered with leading university on implementing a research-backed project focused on workers impacted by automation

United Arab Emirates - Selected by the National Government following a global RFP as their platform partner for to prepare their citizens for the future of work

United Kingdom - Invited by one of the largest companies in the country, the national government's retraining scheme focused on those impacted by automation, and the country's leading innovation organization to bring FutureFit AI to the UK in support of helping people impacted by or at risk of layoffs

Germany - Invited by one of the country's largest auto manufacturers as well as the EU to use FutureFit AI with a focus again on those people at highest risk of automation

Australia - Invited by a provincial government to use FutureFit AI in helping them assess the impact on workers across industries and deliver funds and supports directly to those most impacted

All of the above direct and unsolicited invitations are supported by targeted market strategies where we have identified key private and public sector actors invested in addressing this challenge.

Full-time: 10

Part-time: 10

The FutureFit AI team includes three co-founders working alongside a broader team. Our co-founding team comes from a diverse set of backgrounds and expertise, covering corporate strategy, finance, talent / workforce development, data science and technology. Our co-founders have worked together since 2015 with leading organizations on issues of future of work and learning most recently bringing their combined assets to FutureFit AI.

Our team unique combines a deep understanding of the enterprise and government contexts in this space (use cases, tech stack, spend, decision makers, etc) with both technology and data expertise - each a necessary but alone insufficient piece of the triangular puzzle to solve this complex challenge at scale.

Furthermore, our advisors include a CHRO of a Fortune 100 company, a 3-time Premier, and a leading AI NLP researcher.  

Finally, our work has been recognized by a U.S. Government Award, a North American Future of Work Prize, and a Google AI Top 1% Selection and has been featured in/at of World Government Summit, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and World Economic Forum. 

1. World Economic Forum - FutureFit AI is a partner of the WEF's Future of Work & Learning Cluster and selected as leading 
2. OECD - Our partnership with OECD produced a global publication looking at young people's career aspirations and impacts of automation on those dreams which was released at Davos 2020 and received significant global media coverage
3. JFF (Jobs for the Future) - JFF and FutureFit AI partnered to win a North American Future of Work Challenge and are well positioned to grow the platform in the US market together
4. ATD (Association of Talent Development) - The world's largest network of Chief Talent and Chief Learning Officers at global companies providing FutureFit AI with a significant channel to bring its solution to market
5. Other partnerships include McKinsey, Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank, Deloitte, Allstate, National Government of UAE, and one of Hong Kong's largest philanthropy organizations among others

FutureFit Ai has a B2B2C business model selling to large companies and governments through SaaS licensing tiered based on volume of users and mix of modules used. 

Average deal size is between $100K-$300K / year with significant opportunity to grow each account over time across user segments and use cases.

We began generating direct revenues early in journey and have already been able to achieve positive cash flows allowing us not to worry about a finite run rate and to focus on accelerating our growth and impact.

Our goal is to continue to be self-sustaining while turbocharging our growth and impact through raising investment capital (venture and impact) along the way.

From a market opportunity perspective, Transition / Outplacement Services alone is estimated at $2.37B with an expected 6%+ CAGR. The broader Employment Services market is estimated at $913B with a 4%+ CAGR.

Looking at it another way, between  880K-1.5M people are laid off annually in the US alone (outside recession years) and companies spend an average of $3,000 / employee on outplacement services.

Beginning in the very well-defined Transition Services market, there is significant opportunity to grow the potential market size for our company by moving into natural adjacent transition markets and use cases.

We believe ServiceNow would be the perfect partner to help us grow and scale our impact:

1. Deep Mission Alignment: We are both directly and exclusively focused on making the world of work work better for workers
2. Talent & Skill Match: Given we are building FutureFit AI as an Enterprise SaaS solution, there is a perfect between the talent and skills we need to grow our work and the type of opportunities ServiceNow's team members would be interested in and capable of engaging with through a skills-based mentorship and advice model
3. Shared Stakeholder Value Proposition: The very CTOs, CHROs, CCOs ServiceNow sells to are often responsible for the enterprise automation / transformation agenda who value being exposed to a new solution to address the human impacts of those strategies. Not only would this partnership align to ServiceNow's mission, it would directly deliver value to its key customer executives while helping us get exposure to senior leaders at global companies
4. Geographic Crossover: Both our existing markets as well as growth markets in the next few years have significant crossover with ServiceNow's priority markets which would also help us leverage the company's strengths and relationships in those markets
5. Brand Narrative: While we would significantly benefit from the brand and marketing opportunities through ServiceNow given its focus on the future of work, we would also be able to bring ServiceNow new brand opportunities through some of the networks we are connected to such as the World Economic Forum and OECD

Through ServiceNow, we would love to work with their business leadership teams to identify customer executives who might be interested in adopting FutureFit AI including existing customers such as: Aflac, American Express, Discover, and Wayfair.

Through MIT Solve, we would love to work with their leadership to identify partners whos impact portfolios are most aligned to FutureFit's mission such as Emerson Collective, GM, and Australian Government.