collaborate to innovate success story- halfbrick academy

H a l f B R K C I

Innovation, brick by HALF-A-brick....

Halfbrick?

Founded in 2001

Maker of Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride and 20 more

Partners: Apple, Google, Sony, Disney, Tencent, Amazon, Microsoft…

700M+ downloads

20M+ Fans

400M monthly active users

80+ awards in mobile: Apple, Pocket Gamer, IGDA…

120+ countries

92 employees, in 6 locations

2

Our problem

High bar for recruiting

Skills shortage

Schools train people for PC and console

Want to leverage our user base more

Not enough bandwidth to work on all our projects

People assume we’re only going to work on Fruit Ninja

3

Halfbrick Academy

Great at first job (70% first job)

Training platform for recruitment

Give back to the community

Work on something new and different

A lot of our employees come from QUT

QUT premises nearby

4

Academy model

Housed at QUT, in the Creative Industries precinct

Partnered with QUT and the wider universities for applicants

Received 300 applications

Selected 2 teams of 10 people each

The program ran for 3 months: 5 deadlines in 10 weeks

Provided 8 Halfbrick mentors to the team

Goal: develop a Halfbrick IP

5

Results

Results:

3 game created, assessed by Halfbrick internal stakeholders

3 people were progressed to hiring stage

These 3 people were hired!

50% more successful than our regular recruitment process!

6

Outcome

High hiring percentage

Customized learning in line with the industry needs

Successfully emulated a studio environment

Participants were much more engaged than anticipated

Amount of stakeholders created multiple diverging interests

This impacted the time spent with students

People assumed they’d be ready to get a job in the industry

7

What next?

How do we expand on the Academy program?

8

What next?

Fix hiring gap for Halfbrick and startups

Continue working with students

Partner with promising startups

Support the entrepreneurial ecosystem

Provide a working space to promising startups

In situ learning for students

Provide mentors

Bring in entrepreneurial drive

9

People

Place

Opportunities

Leverage Halfbrick’s user base to seed promising startups

Ex: Halfbrick’s investments in Otherlevels, Beintoo, iDreamSky

Fix funding gap for startups

Enable promising entrepreneurs to build their vision

Support with:

HR, admin, legal, accounting, marketing, tech support

10

Growth

Funding

Services

$

11

Let’s discuss this more!

Any questions?

Ramine@halfbrick.com

Khynes@halfbrick.com