Content agency The Pulse receives $560,000 government commercialisation grant for VR education platform

Australian content and tech agency The Pulse has received a $559,000 commercialisation grant from the federal government to help it develop and sell its virtual reality education platform.

While The Pulse was founded in 1996, the company’s VR-focused venture – The Pulse IQ – is “almost a spin-off business”, according to managing director Brett Heil, and is very startup-minded.

“Three years ago we made a group decision to create a startup culture within the business to help us reinvent ourselves, and The Pulse IQ is the first product to come out of that,” he tells StartupSmart.

“We wanted to move away from project-based work and into our own IP and products. We’ve treated it like a startup, we think of it as a startup, and we all have that startup mentality.”

The Pulse IQ is a virtual reality platform aimed at students, allowing them to collaboratively interact and learn in a virtual environment through the use of multiple VR headsets. It was born three years ago after Heil and his team saw the opportunity as VR tech became increasingly more accessible.

It’s a more tech-focused play than the creative agency is used to, but Heil explains he believes the future for Pulse exists in platform models and software development, rather than just “trying to develop apps”. He says the team recognised multiple aspects of VR which made it appropriate for education and training. Read more

Dominic Powell - Smart Company - 23 Feb 2018