Today we’d like to introduce you to Marwan Kodeih.
Marwan, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My journey began at the University of Texas at Dallas, where I met Brian Hoang, who was just starting a club called the “Virtual Reality Society.” We began thinking of different ideas for initial projects upon starting the club, one of which was a VR horror game. We realized that if we wanted to monetize the game, we’d need to form a separate company for legal reasons. Thus, we began a company named “Immosis.”
We began building out the horror game, which we called “Amelia’s Curse.” Our company immediately received entry into some of the biggest gaming conventions such as SXSW, DreamHack, and PAX to demo our game. We noticed that as attention towards our game increased, other companies in the VR space started to notice us. We were then approached by a bunch of different companies to create contracted applications and experiences for them. This was an incredible source of immediate revenue, so we put development for Amelia’s curse on hold, and began pursuing contracts. After one year of consulting, Immosis generated well over six figures in annual revenue. Keep in mind, I was still taking classes and living next to my college campus during this period, so running this company was exceptionally stressful.
Consulting was not our end goal, as it is very difficult to scale a consulting company that generates revenue via one-off contracts. Our ultimate goal was create an incredible VR product for enterprise, only issue is we didn’t know which industry to target. We were approached by several people who wanted to spin off our company to create different types of products, which we ultimately turned down, or it failed until we appeared on a radio show hosted by a retired police officer.
The radio host had served as an officer and detective in Las Vegas for 12 years, so he’d seen a lot. We showed him Amelia’s Curse, and he was blown away. He described how his department paid an extremely high price tag for their old police training simulator, and how he saw that VR tech could be utilized for law enforcement training in a cost-effective manner. This was the only proposal for a spinoff business that truly resonated with us because it gave us a chance to help the public and keep our communities safer. Thus, SURVIVR, a public benefit corporation to help better train officers, was born.
Has it been a smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road. I personally believe there is no smooth path when founding a startup. Before SURVIVR, we attempted to found several spin-off businesses while running Immosis. Every single spin-off failed miserably. For example, we applied to the UTD big idea competition with an AR dance app idea, which made it to finals, but ultimately failed, We also attempted to create a VR training simulator for autistic children, but the market did not seem ready.
Eventually, once we started SURVIVR, there had already been a few law enforcement VR training companies, so we had a lot of catching up to do. These startups had been developing their products for about a year before we even started. Luckily, due to the tools and leftover profits from Immosis, we were able to catch up within a matter of months. Our approach to officer training is completely different from our competition. Instead of just creating a shooting simulator, our team has developed a very realistic verbal de-escalation tool that allows officers to have life-like conversations with a suspect and virtual individuals. This ultimately allows officers to treat virtual individuals as if they were real, and makes them more prepared for real-world encounters.
Please tell us about SURVIVR. What should we know?
SURVIVR is a virtual reality training platform for first responders. Right now, we are working with several law enforcement agencies across the nation, and we have a contract with the United States Air Force.
Our simulator enables officers to realistically verbally deescalate an encounter with a suspect to ensure that the least amount of harm is caused. SURVIVR randomly generates suspect appearances meaning every time a simulation is run, the virtual individual will look different, just like the real world. This allows instructors to track whether or not an officer may potentially have a bias towards an individual with a certain ethnicity, gender, religion, etc. Our aim is to help repair the broken trust between the general community and our brothers and sisters in blue. We believe that SURVIVR is a direct solution to achieving safer communities.
Officers are all allowed to customize just about every aspect of our software, including which metrics to specifically track, how many users to run in a simulation, and more.
SURVIVR also offers hyper-realistic active shooter training, where officers must clear a building using a highly realistic training assault rifle, designed for VR by SURVIVR. We’ve developed tools that allow departments to actually scan existing schools in their district, and train in them in a VR environment. This saves departments hundreds of thousands of dollars per year since they no longer have to hire actors to train for live actor active-shooter scenarios. When we scan an existing location to train in VR, officers can jump in at any time, for however long they’d like.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
I love that Dallas is a growing ecosystem for startups. It’s much easier to stand out in Dallas than it is if you moved to the bay area. We’ve been able to utilize just about every startup resource possible in this city due to the fact that it’s growing so quickly in the startup world. Dallas also has a very unique police training division that has received national attention. We believe Dallas is the best city to start a company like SURIVR.
As for cons, it is very hard to raise money in Dallas when compared to New York or California. Luckily the leftover funds from our previous company kept us kicking until we were able to raise a significant amount. Also 75 traffic…
Contact Info:
- Address: 8330 LBJ FWY Suite b1165 Dallas, TX, 75243
- Website: https://survivr.com/
- Phone: 5122997544
- Email: marwan@survivr.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/survivrlabs/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SURVIVRLabs/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/SURVIVRLabs
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/survivrlabs
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