ENTITY Academy, a female-focused EdTech company that offers training in digital marketing, data science, and other future skills, has raised $100 million from Leif, an outcome-based education finance platform.
The capital raised will be used to help students finance their ENTITY Academy tuition, which typically costs $15,000.
According to the company’s Founder and CEO Jennifer Schwab, the latest financing is a precursor to the company working on its first, more traditional VC-led equity round.
ENTITY Academy provides a learning solution for graduating students such as hard skills, soft skills, mentorship, and experiences. The platform has a unique blueprint for upskilling women that can be leveraged across industries.
Started in 2016 by Jennifer Schwab, the US-based startup is disrupting traditional education models by taking a student-led approach that supports women from education through career trajectory. ENTITY Academy’s four-pillar methodology equips women of all ages with skills and experiences needed in the rapidly changing career landscape, including real-world, leadership training and assistance with job placements. Through its unique offering, the company strives to directly impact closing the gender pay gap by training, mentoring, and placing women in 21st-century careers.
Speaking about the company, Founder and CEO of Entity Academy Jennifer Schwab said in a statement,
“ENTITY’s sweet spot is a bifurcated one. It’s women who are either new (typically aged 19-23); or those newly returning or rethinking their careers (typically aged 30-39), women in both categories are coming to Entity because they would like to consider tech jobs or more technical promotions, but have found their expertise lacking to do so. Most likely, they studied humanities or other non-technical subjects in college, and typically they don’t have the support in their work environments to simply retrain to open the door to those more technical roles.”
Schwab said there are another 300 students going through the course, and it’s on track to have 1,500 next year.
ENTITY Academy aims to provide its tools to address all of these women with all of their different challenges around breaking into tech jobs, in what it describes as a “wraparound” strategy.
Since its inception, some 400 students, almost all women, have completed the course. But originally it started as a much shorter (6-week) program, was all in-person, and cost $5,000. Now with a number of the courses lasting eight months and all virtual, that spells more costs and more people.
In September 2020, ENTITY Academy secured $10 million in financing to expand its Income Share Agreement program.
