Changing the Future of VR Adoption | Hani Abu Ghazaleh, Co-Founder & CEO of Mental VR

Our international tour with Founder Journey continues. We are in Abu Dhabi meeting with Hany Abu Ghazali from Mental VR. We're talking about unlocking human potential with virtual reality. Hany gives us his history in gaming and how he's applied that knowledge and experience into education and training with virtual reality and Enterprise Solutions.

3, 2, 1.

Hey. Welcome back to another episode of Founder Journey. Today I am in Abu Dhabi. Trade mission number three, I believe. And I'm here with Hani Gadzali. Did I get right?

Yeah, you almost. Hani Abu Ghazali.

Yeah, Hani Abu Ghazali from Mental and Mental VR.

Yeah, correct.

Based in Abu Dhabi. But you also have offices in Canada. You've got offices in the US as well?

No, basically, eventually, hopefully we'll have offices in the U.S. but yeah, we're based out of Abu Dhabi and we have a development office in Montreal.

Cool. And your cto, Artur, I actually know he made that intro small. Yeah, really, really random. Hey, he's on me on LinkedIn. Hey, you're Abu Dhabi. Yeah, my company's in Abu Dhabi. Me, my CEO, my co founder. Awesome. Make that intro.

It's the story of the gaming industry, right? Like, I was in Vancouver, I lived in Vancouver for a long time and that's. That's how. Although I didn't know Artur, but I know him through a friend. So it is a small world.

Yeah, we'll get into it in a second. But yeah, the gaming world in Vancouver is a tight community and it sparked so many other startups and so many other verticals in industry. Like the VFX stuff that's happening in Vancouver came from the gaming industry. The esports. Now you got NFTs and Web3 and the VRAR. It all stemmed from gaming.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

All right, let's get back to the podcast and the intro. So, Hany, tell us about Mental VR.

Yeah, so Mental VR is a vocational training platform where we're basically, we're positioning ourselves as a content agnostic platform that helps the workforce train in virtual reality. So virtual reality is a sandbox for us. But what we do is we do experiential learning in VR. So we've been in business for about four years in Abu Dhabi and we've done work with some of the large companies here in Abu Dhabi, and we're starting to expand now to Saudi Arabia. So traditionally we've done a lot of work in the energy sector. And this year we're going to be expanding to include other Verticals.

Yeah. When people hear virtual reality, their mind obviously gravitates to gaming and entertainment because that's the most experiences that they saw with the VR platform. But we in the industry know that the real path to adoption and monetization, let's face it, it's all about making money is through industrial and enterprise applications and vocational training, whether it's mining, forestry, food and beverage. I know hololens being used in auto repair mechanics at Porsche. Those are really, I wouldn't call them dry and boring, but it's like I did not expect to see VR in that application. Yeah. Can you elaborate on that? Like, how did Mental figure out that this is where we want to be?

Well, you know, being in business for four years, the first, the first year when we started Mental, we were trying to find where this technology fit. You know, like the, the consumer market was not ready and I still think it's still not ready. There, there's not a lot of people that have headsets. So our head was like, for us to sustain ourselves, we had to look for ways to generate revenue. So the early stage of Mental, we were doing anything that was virtual reality. But what clicked with us where we started noticing that the value added for virtual reality was in education. And at that stage we were looking at two possibilities. One of them is K2 to 12 type learning and the other one is higher ed or vocational learning. So immediately when you start thinking about, you know, like the comfort side of virtual reality, younger age, it's not recommended for them to be using virtual reality. And the adoption would have been a lot more challenging. Probably parents would not like, you know, their kids to be strapped to a large headset and immediately like we, you know, about two and a half years ago we started doing some work with, with the energy sector and one of them is the regulator, the nuclear energy. And the success that we had, I mean other than the fact that for them it was a proud moment that they're adopting a new technology. We were trying to solve a real problem that they had, you know, a problem with their training. That's a combination of the, of the cost and the actual impact of the training. You know, so what we found, you know, through doing experimentation with the early modules that we developed for them is we're actually saving them a lot of money on their training. An example of that would be a module that would cost them almost a million dirhams, which is the equivalent of 300,000 Canadian dollars to block a street in an industrial area and stage an accident scene. And have the trainees go in there and just use the equipment to measure the radiation of whatever. It works. So it's a very costly exercise that you can Capture almost to 80% accuracy in virtual reality. And that was almost like the Eureka moment. Using virtual reality, you can reduce the cost of trading. You can connect people from anywhere, they don't have to physically go to the location. You can create digital twins and you can create multiple scenarios of those digital twins that can add a lot of value to the businesses. And I think once we built that and the management and the training team saw the value of doing that, it gave us confidence and it gave them confidence that this is a very viable and probably the only way for them to really scale their training in the organization. And we have a couple of other examples that we've created in the energy sector.

That's awesome. Again, industrial applications, enterprise applications. I think that's the future for VR adoption. Okay, that's the company. Well, let's go back to you. So you kind of hinted that you were in Vancouver, you were in the gaming industry and you met the network there. So now you're in Abu Dhabi. But let's go back. How did you end up in Vancouver and how did you get to where you are today?

That's an interesting story. I initially went to Canada. I had great passion. I was doing computer graphics back in the 90s, but I was self taught. My original education was in architecture and I started dabbling with, with, with and.

That was here in the uae.

I was in Jordan at the time. And I actually moved to Dubai in 97.

Really early.

Yeah, yeah, really early.

Dubai was at Dubai.

Dubai was like 20% of what it is right now. This city, you know, like it, it grows very quickly. So at that stage I was doing, I was doing a combination of pre visualizing, you know, buildings in architecture and did some commercial work, you know, TV commercials and things of that nature. And that was just the passion. Like my day job was, you know, being an architect, but my passion was in computer graphics and creating all these cool visuals on sgi, very expensive SGI machines. At that time, back in that day, it was really difficult to learn. So I had to literally read books. Like I was spending my evenings reading books and after my day job looking for ways to do projects just for the fun of it and knowing that this is where I wanted to go, I decided to move to Canada. And it was a toss up between Toronto and Vancouver. I ended up going to Vancouver because of being accepted at vfs. So I Went to vfs.

VFS being Vancouver Film School. Vancouver Film School grown to be one of the most recognized in the world as graphics and visual effects.

Absolutely, absolutely. It was a great experience and it just grounded everything that I knew into something that's more logical, you know, like going to, you know, the theory of it into the implementation. And it was an excellent program. But what was even more important is that it connected me with, with the ecosystem in, in Vancouver because part of that program was at the end of it is that they bring people from the industry to mentor and guide you. And my animation instructor actually got me the first gig and it was at a company in Vancouver called Radical Entertainment that eventually got acquired by Vivendi Universal and then became an Activision studio. So I worked there for about eight years. Towards the end of it, I was the director of the Advanced Visual Group, which was a team that was overlooking the future of computer graphics for next gen. What was called back then next.

Gen consoles that would have been Xbox One.

Well, no, that was 360. Yeah, yeah, PS3. 360.

Yeah.

So that was back in 2006 after finishing Scarface. I just, I remember that very well. So it was a great opportunity for me to, to learn to grow and work with some of the most talented people that I, that I, that I ever worked with. And after that I went, I left Activision and moved to a company that some friends of mine started called United Front Games. Oh, I know, United Front, yes. I was with United Front Games. I was on a game called called Sleeping Dogs which was an open world game set in Hong Kong and was the art director on the, on the project. So we shipped that game in 2012. It was a great game and a great team. Again, so much, so much learning that happened there. And in 2014 my wife and I decided to come back to the region, reconnect with my, with our roots and just look for a new fresh start. So I moved here with Ubisoft initially and I stayed with Ubisoft Abu Dhabi. I think it was a one year old company and the person that founded it, Yannick, who's a good friend now, he was the one that convinced me to actually move to Abu Dhabi. And it was a great experience. Two years moving from console development to mobile development. Although in the beginning for console developers, there's a bit of a resistance working.

Too small of a screens. It's all of our environment. It's really build the game experience that you are used to building.

Right, exactly. But I learned so much about the business because what mobile was doing that console games were not doing is that it was a data driven type experience. And console games, I mean traditionally, like you spend four years, sometimes five years working on a game, so many things could change in those five years. And then you launch it and it doesn't really get updated except for if it's broken, you release a patch. Whereas in mobile games it's about releasing the MVP and having the long run.

Short iterations, short development cycles.

Right, exactly, exactly. And that's the modern way of working on a product game as a service or product as a service. While this was happening. I was introduced to virtual reality when I was at UFG when the first Oculus Rift came out and there were a group of developers in our downtime that started working on it.

Just geeking out on it.

Yeah, exactly. And it's just like it stayed with me, right. And I bought one when I was here and myself and somebody that I worked with, we started dabbling with it and just tried to pre visualize things and it just connected with me immediately. And then one thing led to the other and we got a commercial project which was a Mars simulator, really cool project. So we worked with subject matter experts, the that had done work at NASA and we took all of that educational knowledge that she had and we brought it to a team, which we were not really a full time team. It was just basically people within my network that I was contacting, sound designer that I worked with before, a couple of 3D artists that were on our team. And we put together this experience in three months that became a huge hit here in the uae and it has a.

Were you using Unity or.

We were using Unreal. I mean, we're an Unreal studio. Yeah, we have developers that use Unity, but for us we were going after the visuals. And back then probably you can argue that till today I think Unreal when it comes to the quality of the rendering. And that was an important factor to give that AAA feel of an experience. So we opted for Unreal.

Did you struggle at the beginning of. Instead of doing simulation and now you're doing vocational training? Like no, I'm a games guy, I gotta build games.

There's a bit of that that seeps into everything that we do. And I think that's what adds value to the content that we create here is that a lot of people feel uniqueness about content that's developed by mental and they can't really put their fingers on it. And the reality is the team structure that we have is very Similar to a gaming studio. As a matter of fact, most of the team that we have, and you met some of them, they worked at companies like Relic and Ubisoft, etc. And they bring that knowledge with them. But the one thing that we wanted to make sure that we don't take for granted is the educational side of it. So from the get go, we brought in some educators as partners and in some cases contractors and a behavioral scientist. That's ensuring that we don't get too carried away with having fun with the technology and making sure that education comes first. But the added value is the immersion. We know how to immerse players and now users into something that could result in better learning.

So I always have this narrative that I paint about why Vancouver has such a strong VR AR industry. Arguably, what's the second biggest VR AR industry in the world. For me, there's three components and it's all about the legacy industries that we're in Vancouver. So a super strong VFX industry gives you the ability to create the graphics, create the atmosphere, create the visualizations. Super strong gaming industry gives you the ability to have that game logic and the understanding of how things connect to each other and build a story and a narrative. But then the film and television industry gives you the story writers.

That's right.

That then brings in that killer. Three elements that allow you to create a VR experience that is immersive but also realistic.

Absolutely. Completely agree with you. And then there's the universities. There's some really good universities and education, educational institutes.

The future, proofing now and understanding what's coming down the pipeline and how to keep abreast of everything.

Exactly. Yeah. But when it comes to computer graphics and gaming, I think Vancouver is one of the best cities to, you know, the quality of studios there and the games and products that came out of Vancouver, they speak, you know, it speaks to themselves.

It's amazing how I'm here in Abu Dhabi. I'm still connecting Right back with Vancouver.

Absolutely, absolutely.

The journey of an entrepreneur is full of ups and downs and you've sure had your fair share being an international entrepreneur now, managing a dynamic team. And I guess now you're also probably remote workers as well.

That's right.

Tell me about some of the challenges that you faced in your career.

So I think there's nobody that tells you about what it takes to become an entrepreneur. Nothing and nobody can prepare you for the challenges that come with it. I think you just have to be. It's a. Literally. I mean, I know it sounds Cliche, but it's truly a roller coaster. You have great days where people are trying your product and the hard work that you've done. And there's nothing more rewarding than when they take the goggles off. It's like, that was amazing, that was insane and all of that. But then there's the hard part of it. And it's a combination of getting funding, right? Getting projects, making sure that you're not perceived as another gimmicky technology, right? A combination of all of that that creates the challenge for Menkill. Specifically, being in Abu Dhabi, you touched on the value that a city like Vancouver can add, where the market has amazing talent there and a lot of good schools that you can hire from. That is not the case here in Abu Dhabi, although it's changing and hopefully we're part of building that ecosystem. Having studios like Ubisoft open here and mental the partnership that we have with New York University of Abu Dhabi, we have an internship program. We invite the students over and that's great in the coming years. But immediately when we need to scale, it's really, really difficult for us to find people that have the experience that we need. And that's part of the reason why we ended up setting up the studio in Montreal, is to tap into that talent. And our CTO Artur now, like you said, is in Montreal. And it just changed the game for us. When we need to scale, it's so much easier for us. There's a lot of talent that's available there and great incentives that the Canadian government, the federal and the provincial governments are offering us.

What type of stress or anxiety do you get? Probably some of the audience members have multiple offices, but a lot of times when you're doing it for the first time, you're managing a team, not just in other parts of Middle east. You're on the other side of the world.

Exactly.

12, was it nine hour time difference? 12 hour from here to Vancouver, nine hours to Montreal? Yeah. Like things are happening while you're asleep. Like how do you.

Well, the key, the thing is you have to compromise on sleep. Sleeping, right. So sometimes, you know, especially when we still have some developers in Vancouver and it, it's about 12 hour time difference, right. So it's 7 8pm here, you're completely burnt out. You know when you get a phone call, somebody that's having their morning coffee.

They'Re ready to say, yeah, I'm ready to tackle this problem. The other day I'm like, I did not need to know this problem's Happening right now, I want to go to sleep.

And you have one of two choices. You either go to sleep and, and basically risk the whole operation or you're just gonna have to suck it up and just, and just deal with it. But, you know, it's that emotional thing that, the sacrifice that you have to make on your personal life, on your, to a certain extent, you know, like your mental health. Right, because it becomes an obsession and it feels good because it's something you're passionate about. And it's almost like a Lego game where you fall asleep because you're tired and you want to wake up in the morning and continue building it, but after time, you don't realize the toll it takes on your, on your mental health. Right? Because you've basically. In some ways it's a bit selfish because you start ignoring people in your personal life and there's challenges that come with that. So that is probably one of the biggest challenges. The other thing is, so there's your family outside of work, but then there's your family at work. And you got to make sure that there's always funds in the business here to pay the salaries and to, to, to fund the operation. And that's constantly ongoing, you know, securing new business, getting investment and all of that. And, and it's a responsibility, right, that you have to, to worry about.

And at the top, you're obviously taking.

More.

Headache and stress on that because you know what your Runway is other people might not see. Exactly. And then they don't know how hard it is to bring in that next client.

Exactly. Absolutely. But I think even probably more important than that is the stress of knowing your identity and what, what value proposition you have to the market and how do you stand out amongst all the competition? Right? So while you're, while you're worrying about all of these things, like creatively, before you even roll up your sleeves and start doing the work, how do you make sure that you're, what you're doing is something that's, that the market needs? Because first and foremost, the users need the customers. In our case, it's a B2B business. The businesses need to give us that positive feedback. So building that business case and doing all these pilots and POCs and failing over and over again, our motto is to, like many other startups, fail fast. Right? But how do you keep the team motivated when they know that nine out of ten times they have to, you know, restart from scratch? Not from scratch, because there's learning that comes with that. So having a team that's willing to go through that journey, an intuitive journey, to. To be able to do work, throw it away and do the next one and so on and so forth. Yeah.

There's definitely a level of mental appetite to do that.

Yeah.

So I want to kind of wrap this up, but you made a decision to come back to Abu Dhabi.

Yeah.

What is it about Abu Dhabi that brought you back? And what's so great about building a company and building a family here in Abu Dhabi?

Absolutely. I mean, other than the personal reasons of us wanting to be closer to our. I'm originally from Jordan. It's such a great city. I mean, if you look at. I mean, when we talk about Abu Dhabi, let's talk about the UAE as a whole. Dubai and Abu Dhabi, there's the progress and the speed that this city is moving at is like no other city in the world. Right. And part of it is it's a decision from the leaders of this country to support entrepreneurs and businesses like ours. And we're here in one of the incubators and you've seen it for yourself. There's a lot of support for innovation and there's a pride that comes out of businesses that grow and thrive there. So we quickly found out that there's this great ecosystem, although there were the challenges with hiring, but there's that team that's rooting for you. And it's like, what do you need? You need more space? Do you need. And it's. That is the first thing. The other thing is that it's a market that's maturing, so there's a lot of opportunities, especially when it comes to vocational training. And when you look at opportunities in defense, in energy, I mean, there's no better place to be in here than the Middle east when it comes to that. So it's a great place for us to launch or soft launch our platform. And there's a lot of excitement.

And.

As challenging as it is, once you prove yourself, you have a bigger chance of standing out because there's nobody else that's doing what you're doing.

Would you say UAE is the gateway to the Middle East?

In my perspective? I would say yes. There's a lot of innovation there. There's a lot of great opportunities that are coming out of Saudi Arabia as well. So, you know, it's a new thing, but we're seeing the amazing startups that are coming out of Saudi Arabia and it's a massive market and it's changing very quickly. So I would say uae, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. I would say one of the main gateways in the mid air region.

Awesome. Well, I'm having a blast while I'm here, meeting so many great entrepreneurs, so many opportunities that I can see out here, and so many, many connections back to Vancouver.

Absolutely.

Hany, this has been amazing. Thank you for your time. Thank you. And we look forward to seeing great things coming out of Mental.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.