A Sydney-based private academy teaching virtual reality design is targeting a $4 million raise so its own courses can be taught exclusively via headset.
Academy Xi turned over more than $1 million in 2016, its first year of operation, as virtual reality flirted with a mainstream breakthrough thanks to the launch of headsets priced under $1000 from HTC Vive, Sony Playstation and Facebook's Oculus Rift.
The academy now hopes to close a $4 million 'Series A' funding round by the end of February, on a bet that many more designers will want to learn how to use virtual reality, and that they'd prefer to do so in a format that brings the classroom to their own headset wherever they are. The money will be used to boost Academy Xi's headcount from 15 to 60 by the end of 2017, including more instructors as well as developers to build the virtual classroom.
Academy Xi's Surry Hills campus sold out the three Virtual Reality Design courses it offered in 2016, with students paying $4000 for 10 three-hour sessions. This is a cheaper alternative to Deakin University's Graduate Diploma of Virtual and Augmented Reality, the first university course of its kind, which costs $26,280 for a year's fulltime study.
Corporate workshops have become another revenue source for Academy Xi. When The Australian Financial Review visited on Monday, a dozen PwC consultants were learning to apply 'user experience' concepts in a virtual reality context, including building a scene in the 'Unity' 3D game development platform.
"It's powerful stuff they can take back to clients," said Academy Xi co-founder Ben Wong.
Additional VR Design courses will be offered in Melbourne and Brisbane in 2017, as well as an Augmented Reality Design course built as Pokemon Go became a $US1.2 billion phenomenon last year by 'augmenting' a user's surroundings with VR elements.
"The best thing about being private as opposed to a Registered Training Organisation is that we can change our courses or add new ones like Augmented Reality as we go," said Mr Wong.
"Things are changing so fast in the VR and AR space that if we had to wait around for the Government to approve amendments like the RTOs have to, we'd be irrelevant."
Academy Xi was launched with $50,000 by Mr Wong and Charbel Zeaiter, who both previously worked for the Australian arm of design education multinational General Assembly, Mr Zeaiter as a user experience design instructor after 20 years in the space. The seed funding came from Annie Parker, who is running the new Lighthouse startup precinct at Barangaroo's International Tower 3.
A further $210,000 was invested last September by Vivant, an innovation consultancy whose clients include the International Towers' owners, and which has designed the Lighthouse's program for startup development.
Vivant co-founder and chief executive Anthony Farah said the investment gave his company a 10 per cent stake in Academy Xi at the time, however the school's revenue run rate has more than trebled since then.
Mr Wong said Academy Xi would definitely have a presence at Lighthouse, although he was awaiting further information on the pricing of the harbourside space.
