2023 Innovation Showcase Pitch Profile: Zak Farag

The 2023 Innovation Showcase is Canberra Innovation Network’s biggest event of the year! It offers a unique opportunity to recognise the amazing individuals in the innovation and startup ecosystem, highlighting their successes and inspiring even bigger goals for the new year!

At this year’s Innovation Showcase, Canberra startups will go head-to-head in a high-intensity pitching competition judged by YOU.

So, who will be part of this epic lineup?

Introducing Zak from Psyquility:

What impact do you see your innovation having when shaping the future?

At Psyquility, we believe that each child, regardless of the challenges they face, deserve to succeed in their educational journey. We believe that there is a desperate need for holistic, evidence based, non-pharmacological interventions for our neurodivergent children. With Psyquility being the world’s first, psychologically appropriate software-based intervention for neurodivergent children we believe that we can support our neurodivergent children, some of the most talented and heterodox thinkers, to succeed in their educational journey. As a by-product of this, their unique and creative ways of thinking can be fully harnessed to contribute to our society when they enter adulthood. With Psyquility, our children will face less adversity on their learning journey, build confidence and self-efficacy. This product will reduce the overall level of challenge faced by neurodivergent children including comorbidities, on their early life and consequently, carry learning tools instead of learning trauma into adult life.

What has been the high of the year for you?

This year has been one of the highest highs, Tyler and I were accepted into the GRIFFIN accelerator and have had the privilege of working within the co-working space with a cohort of driven, intelligent, and risk-taking entrepreneurs. However, the high of the year has been building our fantastic team. Sarah our R&D lead is on a lifelong mission to, if possible, for anyone, to understand the mind. Her genius and drive have added such value to our company, and she is the perfect person for this role within Psyquility. Now we know we have the most fantastic team of individually successful, driven, conscientious, and professional co-founders who will ensure Psyquility will be a success.

If you could disinvent something, what would it be and why?

Although there are many inventions which have had a net negative on society, I believe that I would not disinvesnt anything. We learn from our mistakes, and human history is in and of itself a series of mistakes, lucky accidents, and a bunch of monkeys in shoes banging rocks together hoping something will happen (think of the large hadron collider). Human beings are a collection of our past experiences. We have the power, and moral responsibility to learn from these previous mistakes. Therefore, I would not disinvent anything.

What is one innovation that has shaped your future?

By far the most important innovation in my life has been podcasts. Online, long form discussion has destroyed traditional media in the form of television. Previously, bandwidth was limited and the ability to share a message, or story, was limited by one’s ability to get five minutes screentime, ten if lucky. Now all someone needs are a microphone and camera, and all of a sudden three hours of conversation can be accessed by half the world’s population instantly. This lift in bandwidth restrictions has ensured that (for better or worse) for the first time in history a diversity of voices can be truly expressed. Who to listen to? That is a question I cannot answer.

Want to learn more about Zak and Psyquility? Watch him pitch at the Innovation Showcase on Wednesday, 6 December 2023. Register now!