From winning an iAward to making Forbes Australia’s 30 Under 30 List, it’s been a “wild and transformative” journey for Jesse Waller and Matt Gordon. Each achievement has brought the students closer to their mission of empowering children to take charge of their mental health.
InnerSteps Co-Founder Jesse Waller, left, receives the winning iAward in the Student & Education category from Datacom’s Managing Director Mike Fuller.
Born in the same hospital just six hours apart, best mates since age 5 and now successful tech entrepreneurs, Jesse Waller and Matt Gordon’s friendship would make a good story. But Jesse says it was hearing people close to them share their own stories about their mental health challenges that steered their friendship towards a new milestone of innovators making a social impact.
“Both Matt and I had seen really close family and friends struggle with their own mental health and the devastating effect it can have on people,” Jesse says. “It was only years later we realised it all started back in primary school.”
After looking further into it, Jesse said they found there was little awareness, support and almost no resources to help young children with mental health challenges. “It lit a fire in us that we needed to make a difference in this space.”
The pair harnessed “the new opportunity of AI technology” and combined it with traditional approaches to treating mental health to create the InnerSteps app. InnerSteps is designed for children aged 3 to 12 and uses storytelling to help empower kids to tackle mental health challenges and open up conversations with their family.
The innovation won the Student & Education category in the 2024 iAwards. Jesse is studying a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Information Systems at the University of NSW (UNSW) and Matt is studying a Bachelor of Design Computing at the University of Sydney.
Personalised stories on a global scale
Using storytelling to help children with their mental health isn’t new. But InnerSteps is helping to make this support accessible to all, Jesse says, with the free base version ensuring that no child is left behind. The app also supports 109 languages.
“InnerSteps transforms mental health into magical adventures, where kids become heroes conquering their worries,” Jesse says. “Each story is uniquely crafted to empower children with strategies to face challenges and build confidence in themselves.”
These stories are created after a parent or caregiver inputs things like their child’s favourite colours, favourite animals, their interests and what their child struggles with into the app. The app then draws on expertise from children’s book authors and around 30 child psychologists enlisted by InnerSteps. The AI uses this material to create a story tailored to support the individual child.
Ensuring a safe space
As an emerging technology, making sure InnerSteps was a safe space for children was “our number one” priority, Jesse says. Guardrails in place include a closed database to ensure AI only uses the information the team provide it. They’ve used algorithmic quality testing to test stories up to eight or more times to make sure that every single part of the story is safe.
The third component is “completely rigorous” quality testing where they create thousands upon thousands of stories. It’s tiring but essential work. “A 1% failure rate is not at all acceptable to us. It has to absolutely be 0%,” Jesse notes.
Opportunity for students “doesn’t get any better” than iAwards
The pair first tested their pitching mettle in 2023 in front of 500 people when their concept for InnerSteps won UNSW’s Peter Farrell Cup, an ideation pitch competition for undergrad and postgrad students.
But as students, the iAwards provided a unique experience. “The fact that as a student, you’re able to participate in an industry pitch competition and connect with some of the best in Australia…the opportunity doesn’t get any better.”
“The awareness it provides, not only to what you are building, but to industry and to connections is absolutely invaluable,” he says. “The whole experience end to end was beyond anything I could have wished for.”
As well as winning the Student & Education category at the National Ceremony, InnerSteps also took home wins at the NSW State level in the Student & Education and the NfP & Community categories, and merit awards in the Start-up and Business & Industry categories.
Not long after their iAward success, Jesse and Matt were named on Forbes Australia’s 30 Under 30 List, joining the company of superstars like Olympic gold medallist Ariarne Titmus. Jesse says he’d always looked at the list and would be excited if he spotted someone he knew on it. “So, to be listed in it myself…it was one of my best days ever.”
Since the win, Jesse says InnerSteps has raised six figures in funding and he and Matt are embarking on another angel round with investors as they further enhance the app’s features. “Our biggest priority is that we want to work with people who are passionate about making a difference in kids mental health.”
Find out more about the iAwards and how to enter
Note: Western Australian innovators enter the iAwards National competition through the state-based INCITE Awards. Tasmanian innovators enter through the TasICT Awards.