place 10 red flags in scenes where someone is violating a company policy. “Maybe a thumb drive isn’t encrypted properly, or someone’s accessing public Wi-Fi to send secure information to their Gmail account,” Sodowick says. There are 50 places total where the employee can place a red flag, 15 of which are correct.
The characters in TrueOffice’s games are drawn in the style of a graphic novel or comic book. This allows the company to customize the games to different overseas markets. And, says Sodowick, “it’s not exaggerated. It seems to resonate well with both the companies and the employees.”
Another advantage that TrueOffice offers, Sodowick says, is the ability to measure how well employees are remembering what they’re learning. In four pilot tests the company ran last year, it found that 95 percent of employees better understood their companies’ policies after completing the game.
TrueOffice was one of six companies to complete the FinTech Innovation Lab, a 12-week incubator program sponsored by Accenture and the New York City Investment Fund. The program gave TrueOffice an opportunity to further develop its technology, test pricing assumptions, and build a “product road map,” Sodowick says. “We had access up and down through Morgan Stanley, Citi, Barclays, and nine other banks. We had a tremendous amount of support. It was a big accelerant.”
TrueOffice cannot reveal the names of the companies that tested the product during the pilots, but Sodowick says the games are catching on primarily in the financial services and pharma sectors. The company is preparing for a commercial rollout soon and hopes to raise a $5 million Series A by the end of the year, he says.
Although Sodowick started the company in Boston and still maintains a technology-focused office there, he moved the headquarters to New York for access to the financial services and pharma industries, he says. “Also there’s a big concentration of talent and capital here,” he says.
