Through support from the Innovate UK BridgeAI programme, MyPocketSkill developed Pocket‑AI, an integrated AI co‑pilot designed to help young people complete paid tasks for small businesses more efficiently, accurately, and confidently. With over 250,000 registered users, the platform supports young people at the earliest stages of skill‑building and employability. Pocket-AI provides practical, in-flow assistance by generating to-do lists, offering inspiration, and delivering in-flow learning content that helps users manage their time.

The challenge

Small businesses often struggle with time-consuming admin and support tasks that are essential but difficult to resource efficiently. At the same time, many young people seeking work opportunities lack the experience, structured guidance, and confidence needed to deliver high-quality results. Beyond immediate task delivery, there is also a need for young people to build long-term employability skills.

MyPocketSkill identified a critical link between these two challenges. Small businesses need reliable support for everyday tasks, while young people need opportunities and mentorship to bridge their experience gap. In connecting the two groups, MyPocketSkill noticed that young service providers can often lack the guidance needed to deliver quality work, while businesses may struggle to provide the mentorship required. There was a need for on-demand guidance and scalable personalised learning for young people when carrying out tasks for businesses.

The solution

Pocket‑AI is an AI co‑pilot embedded directly within the MyPocketSkill youth skills marketplace. It is powered by a custom‑trained large language model (LLM) built using proprietary platform data, including bookings, task listings and conversational history. This enables the system to provide contextual, task‑specific support that reflects actual work requirements. It also has been designed with considerations of fairness, transparency, and safety in the foreground.

Pocket-AI supports users by generating to-do lists, offering personalised recommendations, providing creative inspiration, and delivering short, focused learning materials that sit alongside tasks. This approach supports in-flow, experiential learning, allowing users to develop skills naturally while completing paid work, gradually building employability and helping young people transition to meaningful employment.

Pocket-AI is also piloting an extension of AI functionality into personalised, adaptive financial education, further expanding its capacity to support young people’s development. Unlike existing tools that rely on general-purpose AI, MyPocketSkill leverages its proprietary marketplace data and platform policies to deliver contextualised support, connecting AI guidance directly with real task delivery.

The impact

MyPocketSkill has achieved 30% productivity gains, while supporting young people in gaining real work experience, building confidence, and developing transferable skills. The platform has secured a paid partnership with Lloyds Bank and has been recognised as an EIT Digital Champion. It has also been accepted onto programmes run by the UFI Voctech Trust and the Greater London Authority.

The future

MyPocketSkill is now expanding Pocket-AI across digital, creative and business admin task categories. At the same time, the team is also scaling its financial education pilot into a full product offering and deepening its partnerships with financial services and education providers. With over 250,000 registered users already on the platform, MyPocketSkill demonstrates clear market appetite for this approach, delivering both immediate operational benefits and meaningful support for young users’ long-term development. The company will continue to leverage its proprietary dataset for wider applications, while preparing for growth through ongoing investor engagement.

At a time when there are almost a million young people not in education, training or employment there’s never been a more important time for young people to develop the skills they need for the workplace. The Bridge AI Programme was instrumental in accelerating our AI capabilities to support this aim. Pocket-AI has now supported hundreds of young people doing paid assignments for small businesses, with an initial focus on creative and digital skills. We’ve seen improvements in productivity, stronger retention and great feedback from our community.

– Matthew Harker, Cofounder and Co-CEO, MyPocketSkill