Blog 20: VeroSkills
A no-cost solution for learning to code
Company: VeroSkills offers an education technology platform intended to teach people how to code. The company offers “coding bootcamp” style online content to both novice and experienced students at no cost to the user. At the same time, the company offers a channel for recruiters to engage and hire newly minted talent to help fill the vast need for software developers and other IT professionals.
HQ Location & Year Founded: Birmingham, Alabama, 2021
Founder: Daniel Walsh is an experienced startup founder with a demonstrated history of working in the computer software industry to grow companies through sales and marketing. He has been a leader in numerous prior entrepreneurial endeavors as a President, CEO and Chief Marketing Officer.
Funds Raised and VC Investors: $500,000 from Eagle Venture Fund
Where did the idea for VeroSkills originate?
I founded VeroSkills about a year ago after having been involved with startups over the past 15 years. In my last company, we offered a coding bootcamp that trained over 1000 engineers how to code and then we helped to place them in jobs. When Covid hit, we saw a huge increase in interest. However, I realized that only a small fraction of the people who wanted to learn to code and seek better, high paying jobs, could afford to pay for the education that would prepare them. A lot of people didn’t have the time to enroll full-time in a class or couldn’t pay the tuition to participate. I was struck by what a shame this was considering how there are millions of open technology jobs in the US and across the world. I started brainstorming ways to take down barriers to education by helping more people advance into a lucrative profession. My goal became finding a business model that would work well to support educational opportunity.
What is the key problem that VeroSkills intends to solve?
Our platform is built to deliver high-quality professional training in software development at no cost to the student. We do this by offering a subscription-based service to employers who may wish to hire our graduates. We target medium to large size organizations that have significant needs for training developers and IT professionals. The only requirement of our students, in lieu of tuition fees, is a willingness to engage with a limited number of targeted potential employers. On the recruitment side, we offer employers the opportunity to connect with newly trained software developers at a far lower cost than working with traditional recruiting agencies.
How are you most differentiated as a service?
By generating revenue entirely through recruiters, we are disrupting the education market in a significant way. Our platform provides not just on-demand education, but we partner up our students with experienced mentors who are able to help guide new developers as they embark on this promising new career. Our strong impact mission has also proven to be of great appeal to many of our students.
What are the company’s key accomplishments to date?
We are proud of the high-quality content that we have built for training new software developer talent, as well as for upskilling and maintaining skills of folks who are already working as programmers. Thousands of existing and prospective software professionals have already signed on and started engaging with our learning and community-building platform.
What lies ahead in the product plans for VeroSkills?
Our big milestone ahead of us is the July 1st launch of our recruiting platform. We will have 50 companies already signed up that each have over 500 employees and then need to hire at least 25 new software developers each year. We are also ramping up our in-house course content production, to go from 15 courses now, to be able to create 15-30 new courses each month.
What are the long-term strategic growth objectives?
Our 10-year aspiration is to be teaching a million students a year how to code, as well as other technical skills, to advance people into the IT profession who might not otherwise have the means to get there.
Ron’s Take
Making inroads against inequality will be nearly impossible without breaking down the many barriers that exist to quality education that leads to highly demanded, lucrative professions. Few people would doubt the pressing need that exists today and will likely remain for decades in software and information technology. Coding bootcamps have proven that individuals can obtain the skills that they need to get started in this field without having to attend a four-year college or greater. If we can reduce the time it takes for student to get these skills, we will have made significant inroads. If VeroSkills can demonstrate that it is also possible to deliver such training at no financial cost at all to its students, then countless more people will truly have the opportunity to advance in life, while organizations will simultaneously be able to fill more of their critical staffing needs.