Company: WEDEVX offers an affordable digital platform that allows anyone, including immigrants and low income individuals, to gain the skills necessary to pursue high-paying technology careers.
HQ Location & Year Founded: Chicago, 2019
Founder: Adina Tilek and Askar Musakunov, co-founders, both immigrated to the United States from Kyrgyzstan in order to attend college. Adina is a software developer and entrepreneur with a degree in business from the City University of New York. Askar, who serves as the company’s CEO, has worked as a software and QA engineer at CME Group and Apple.
Funds Raised and VC Investors: $565,000 from Antler and Beta Boom
Where did the idea for WEDEVX originate?
WEDEVX comes out of a personal attachment to the cause. I (Askar) was passionate about technology and computer sciences and wanted to be an engineer. I pursued a degree in Omaha, Nebraska and started looking for internships. Then the harsh reality set in. I wasn’t taught how to do a resume, conduct interviews, or how to look for jobs. I went to the market and couldn’t even get an unpaid internship. So I started driving a taxi to make ends meet. Then I found out about a coding bootcamp and enrolled. In six months, I got a 100k job offer. This proved to me the right information can change a person’s direction immeasurably. I became one of the strongest students in the bootcamp and others started approaching me about how they could prepare themselves for similar lucrative technology careers. I discovered passion toward teaching others and I noticed a particular chain reaction in immigrant communities. People spread the word quickly within their networks. A lot of people came for mentorships, advice and I realized there was a bigger opportunity to serve an unmet market need.
What is the key problem that WEDEVX intends to solve?
For individuals who are new to the country, don’t have the requisite educational background, or can’t afford a college education, we wanted to provide an onramp to high paying technology careers. We know that for many tech companies, degrees and certifications are less important than practical skills that can be implemented in the workforce. Therefore, we wanted to train underserved markets to be prepared to enter the workforce as highly paid computer programmers. We started our own bootcamp as the first iteration of the company in order to learn about the market and how best to serve the needs of hopeful future software developers. We identified gaps in knowledge that bootcamps were providing. In parallel, we wanted to work on language self-esteem and confidence in spoken English, since our target market has always been immigrants to the US. We gained expertise in education and teaching.
How are you most differentiated as a service?
WEDEVX helps people with no prior tech experience land a high paying job in tech by providing them with industry-leading, robust and true to real life simulation and practice. Plus, we offer the flexibility and affordability of an online learning experience coupled with the intensive learning of a bootcamp.
What are the company’s key accomplishments to date?
We have so far placed over 500 people in jobs, including at big tech companies such as Amazon, Apple, and Meta. We are also proud of the diversity of our community. We serve lots of moms who are interested in starting a career in tech.
What lies ahead in the plans for WEDEVX?
Right now, we offer one course. Next year we will expand as we are creating content around data analytics and dev ops as well. We’ll continue to offer courses on demand and focus on enriching the quality of our learning courses. We will eventually offer four career tracks. We will also look to expand our B2B angle, targeting companies and universities as an upskilling platform. In addition, we will be seeking grants from states that want to enable state college computer science students to improve their technical skills by leveraging our platform.
Ron’s Take
This blog has previously examined a number of companies, such as Bloom Institute of Technology and VeroSkills, that are helping individuals to upskill within the technology industry in a disruptive and affordable way. By focusing on immigrant communities, WEDEVX is able to craft a solution that is tailored to the needs of individuals for whom language and cultural education are equally important parts of their workforce readiness training. The demand for talented software engineers is not likely to fade anytime soon and WEDEVX is positioned to be a force for empowerment, particularly as the company pursues additional technical career tracks for those who do not have the time, money, or other resources that are necessary to pursue a traditional college education.