Martin Ramsin
CareerFoundry, a German tech company that offers online courses for tech workers, has raised €5 million in funding with a former Just Eat executive joining its board.
The funding for the online tech school comes from Tengelmann, IBB Ventures, and Verdane.
CareerFoundry runs online courses in web development, UX and UI design, digital marketing and data analytics.
According to the company, it has doubled the number of students enrolled on the platform every year since the start of the pandemic. It has had 10,000 students come through its programs and has 800 instructors.
Citing figures from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report, the company said 50% of employees will need to reskill or improve their existing skill bases in order to remain relevant in their industry.
This has driven a demand for online training services so people can re-train for an ever-evolving jobs market.
In its courses, students are guided by an industry mentor and personal tutor to provide personalized learning.
The company said it will refund students who do not secure relevant employment within six months of graduation. Some of its graduates have gone on to work at large tech firms like Google, Airbnb and Amazon, it said.
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More than half of CareerFoundry’s students are in the US with the rest in Europe and globally.
It recently launched a 10-month course on product management to meet the high demand for product managers.
“The financing from Tengelmann, IBB, and Verdane will enable us to further scale our unique model of education, which prepares people for success in the modern digital economy,” chief executive Martin Ramsin said.
Coupled with the funding, CareerFoundry has appointed Rasmus Wolff as the chairman of its board. Wolff is a former executive at Just Eat and is currently chief development officer of edtech company StuDocu.com.
“I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to be a part of the CareerFoundry team as I am highly passionate about edtech and the opportunities it can create. I look forward to furthering the company’s growth and bolstering the impact it has on its students’ careers,” Wolff said.
Emma Tracey, former CEO of jobs platform Honeypot, has also joined the board.
CareerFoundry’s funding comes at a difficult time for edtech investment with a retrenching in the broader venture capital space.
According to an analysis by Crunchbase, edtech funding globally in 2022 is down significantly after a bumper 2021.
The dialling back represents an adjustment by investors as they adapt to the new economic environment of inflation and higher interest rates and a tech sector that has been slammed by job losses, spending cuts and revised targets after a particularly fervent couple of years.
This year has still seen some notable activity in edtech investing, such as Owl Ventures closing a new $1 billion fund to invest in the sector while Austrian edtech start-up GoStudent raised $300 million in January.
