A couple of weeks ago, my company, BillionMinds, was one of ten organizations to make the regional finals of the Startup World Cup.

That’s a big deal – the Startup World Cup is the world’s largest pitch competition! So, even though I was in the UK at the time, I jumped back on a plane to the US and made my pitch.

The great thing about this type of activity is that it forces you to distill down important things in a way that makes sense to others. Things like why do you exist, what problem are you trying to solve, what value do you bring, and what would you do if people invested in you? I had four minutes to convey all that, while still trying to tell a story that people would hopefully connect with.

You can read more about the competition here. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the grand final (the amazing Rejuvination Beverage Co. did), but I got something almost as valuable – a deeper understanding of BillionMinds’ reason for being.

So today’s newsletter is a bit different – a distillation of that distillation – in the form of Q&A. This, in even less than four minutes, is why we care, and why we think you should too.

Fair warning – this is a bit….pitchy, but I hope you will find it interesting anyway!

Why did you form BillionMinds?

We appear to be creating a society where all the incentives are for humans to sleepwalk into irrelevance. In a few years, it’s likely that the per-hour cost of general-purpose robotics will be lower than the minimum wage. These robots will never get tired or sick and will only get better with every upgrade. Robotics, AI, and automation will converge, doing a lot of work more cheaply and effectively than the rest of us.

Meanwhile, 70% of us are disengaged at work. In fact, many of us are disengaged from the real world in which we live. That has to change.

We don’t accept that future, though, so we are betting on Team Human, with a goal of creating an army of people with advanced durable (soft) skills—the types of skills that differentiate people in a world of machines. Skills like critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity, but basically all the intangibles that get people consistently hired, retained, and promoted.

Why focus on Durable Skills?

Three reasons:

First, because they will make more of a difference than any other skills in the future of work. The stuff that can be easily defined? That’s going to be some of the first stuff that gets automated. But our human abilities? They keep us relevant because they differentiate us.

Second, because building these skills helps solve the crisis in employee engagement. As durable skills build in employees, it begins to reignite employees’ passion for work. After all, we are helping employees master the HOW of work, and when you get better at anything, you start to enjoy it more.

And third, because it helps organizations. No organization can perfectly predict the future, but organizations can thrive in whatever future world is coming. Truly resilient organizations will be able to master the unexpected through highly adaptable, engaged employees who are ready for anything, and we help create those organizations.

How do you build these skills?

The right answer is repeated cycles of learning and practice that build over time to embed behaviors, a bit like how Duolingo helps you learn a language.

That’s what we do with our BillionMinds Learn/Do experiences. BillionMinders build their skills through just 2-3 minutes of learning, plus 6-7 minutes of practice, but performed each day. This represents only 2% of a 40-hour work week, yet in just a couple of weeks, employees and teams start to see tangible results, and in a couple of months, the learning results in new behaviors.

Who do you work with, and how?

While we have some individuals who buy our programs, we mainly sell to organizations (businesses and education). We have three offerings.

Standard Programs – These are designed to build the durable skills students and employees need to thrive for a specific scenario. Each program is supported by certification. Example programs include our Thrive With AI Program, our Early-in-Career Durable Skills Program, and our Leading Distributed Teams Program.

Custom Programs (Semi and Fully Custom) – We work with you to assess the durable skills gaps in your organization and assemble programs from a library of over 300 experiences to plug those gaps.

Content Modernization – We take your existing learning and development content, in any form, and transform it into concise Learn/Do experiences to ensure that the content actually leads to new behaviors.

What are your plans?

Our goal is to establish ourselves as THE company that helps organizations become human-centric through durable, embedded skills.

Today, we combine experiential learning, micro-learning, and micro-credentials to ensure that learning leads to new behaviors. But, as they say, we are just getting started. BillionMinds 2.0 will create lifelong, personalized learning and development journeys, allowing people to measurably demonstrate their durable skills without ever having to take an exam or assessment.

We won’t rest until every human maximizes their potential at work, and meaningful work is available to every person who wants it.

Thank You

I hope you enjoyed the pitch. If you want to learn more about our future vision, particularly if you are interested in helping us get there, do feel free to reach out.

Normal service will be resumed in our next newsletter!