Info Patronale · No. 341 · October 2026

What if the quality of conversations became a performance lever?

Born in Fribourg, Project Harbour is developing an app that helps people who struggle with spoken exchanges to improve, conversation after conversation. It is led by a researcher from the University of Fribourg and an executive from the healthcare industry.

A job interview that paralyses you, a discussion that goes off the rails, the feeling of never knowing whether you said the right thing: for many people, conversation is an ordeal. Samy Rima, researcher and lecturer at Unifr, and Marie-Liesse Le Corfec, with a 35-year career in medtech and pharma, decided to address it. Their prototype is ready and a beta is planned for this winter.

A coach available at any time

What inspired your start-up?

A hard fact: more than one in five people, and a third of young adults, say they feel uncomfortable with social interactions. 69% of managers find it difficult to communicate with their employees. Building rapport, staying on topic or controlling one's impulsiveness remains difficult, with real consequences: isolation, anxiety, professional obstacles. Yet where exchanges with customers and partners are critical, many people lack the tools to practise regularly. What was missing was a reliable, always-available tool for building reflexes, beyond training content or a generic AI.

What is your innovation?

Harbour simulates conversations structured by communication strategies and rigorously assesses how they are applied, on a psycholinguistic basis. The user chooses a situation, for example a job interview, receives a few concrete methods, then talks for a few minutes with a virtual partner. They then receive factual feedback on criteria specific to the situation: speaking time, open questions, listening, alignment of tone and vocabulary. They try again, track their progress and gain confidence. Our proprietary algorithms make the results reliable and reproducible.

Professionals as multipliers

Who are your customers?

Before launch, there are no paying customers yet, but there is a long waiting list for the first version and discussions are under way with several potential partners. In addition to direct users, we are targeting sales and customer service trainers, HR, coaches, specialised organisations, and universities and schools preparing young people for employment. In Switzerland, then in Europe and beyond.

What sets you apart?

Available 24/7 and judgement-free, the app offers short, realistic sessions. For a coach, trainer or therapist, it is a practice tool between sessions, not a replacement. Where other solutions focus on fluency, tone or content, and where a chatbot assesses according to generic criteria, Harbour analyses the actual application of strategies suited to the situation and measures progress from one session to the next. For a training programme, we define the useful strategies with the client and develop the associated scenarios.

Test, prove, grow

What are the next steps?

We will soon be testing a first version with English- and French-speaking users, on scenarios specific to our markets. Registration at project-harbour.ch. At the same time, we are offering professional players the opportunity to co-develop scenarios and a pilot project.

From university to incubator

What does Fri Up bring you?

Unifr's technology transfer office (KTT) put us in touch with Fri Up at the end of November 2025. Since then, the team has helped us apply for competitions, reviewed our strategic and financial plans and worked on regulatory compliance. A decisive point: within the Swiss and European framework, our approach to data protection is a real asset.