AI Coaching Startup Practica Launches Personalized Workplace Mentor and Coach for Professionals

Can an AI be your mentor? Practica thinks so

Practica, a startup that evolved from a marketplace for executive coaching, has launched an AI system that aims to act as a personalized workplace mentor and coach. Built on top of an existing knowledge base developed over years of working with human coaches, the AI chatbot offers guidance and support across a range of topics, including management, strategy, sales, personal development, and more.

From marketplace to AI coaching

Practica was initially founded in 2020 by Dave Whittemore and Andy Scheff, both of whom became executive coaches. They later expanded the platform by adding other executive coaches to the marketplace. Today, Practica boasts 250 human coaches with domain-specific expertise, serving primarily B2B clients. However, the founders recognized that the high pricing of their services prevented many individuals from accessing them.

Blending personal coaching with AI technology

To address the pricing barrier, Practica decided to combine their knowledge of one-on-one coaching with AI technology. They curated a vast knowledge base of publicly available learning materials, including blogs, videos, podcasts, and more. The AI system leverages these resources, following a technique called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), to match the best learning materials for each user’s situation. The AI coach explains the selected resources and encourages users to further explore them.

More than a generalized AI chatbot

Unlike generalized AI chatbots, Practica’s AI remembers the learner’s history and progress over time, similar to how a human coach would. It employs a range of coaching tools, including instruction, questioning, and finding applicable challenges in the learner’s job. The AI organizes insights from the materials into a list and adds useful notes for future reference.

Increasing access to executive coaching

Practica’s AI coaching system has been in private testing since July and is now available to individual learners for a monthly fee ranging from $10 to $20. With this pricing, Practica aims to make executive coaching more accessible to a wider audience. The ultimate goal is to introduce more people to the effectiveness of coaching and encourage them to upgrade to the company’s premium human coaching services.

Practica has secured $1.5 million in funding from two rounds in 2021 and 2022, attracting support from Script Capital and over 40 individual angel investors who are leaders in the coaching domains Practica focuses on.

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