Career Karma, an EdTech startup dedicated to helping connect people who are interested in tech jobs find career-changing resources, announced that it has raised $40 million as a part of its Series B funding round led by San Francisco-based global venture capital firm Top Tier Capital Partners, alongside GV (Google Ventures), Bronze Venture Fund, Stardust, Trousdale Ventures and Alumni Ventures Group.
The round was also backed by existing investors including SoftBank, Emerson Collective, Kapor Capital, Backstage, 4S Bay Partners and Y Combinator.
According to a press statement, the San Francisco-based startup plans to utilize the capital to expand into higher education and accelerate the growth of the enterprise, in addition to adding several key roles in the company.
Founded in 2018 by Harris and twin brothers Artur and Timur Meyster, Career Karma provides a code learning platform for adults. It is a community platform of peers, mentors, and coaches for adults to learn coding. Its users take assessments to get matched with boot camps, peer circles, and career guides and also get notifications about scholarship and stipends. By offering free coaching and peer mentorship, Career Karma has grown to over 150,000 members from every background and profession.
Career Karma is on a mission to connect the world's talent to their next opportunity. In the last decade, boot camps have proven the most employers value specialized skills. As technology continues to disrupt traditional industries, workers are choosing rapid reskilling programs to increase their earning potential and career security. With this in mind, the company's vision is to help one billion people over the next 10 years.
Speaking about the company, Co-founder and CEO of Career Karma, Ruben Harris, said in a statement, "There is currently not one company that dominates the reskilling space. Whichever player aggregates demand will become the category leader in the $2.2 trillion post-secondary education market. With over 10 million job openings in the United States and more than 4 million people who have recently quit their jobs, employers are beginning to accept alternative credentials while workers are increasingly choosing these pathways to upskill into roles that are in high demand."
Since its inception, the company has managed to cross eight-figure revenue per year run rate, offers more than 25,000 job matching training programs monthly, has driven more than 3 million monthly organic visitors in website traffic, and has hosted thousands of users via its live audio room community.
Adding further about the platform, Co-founder, Harris, said, "Customers/Partners such as 2U, Chegg Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), Flatiron, and General Assembly have been a key part of leadership in the Bootcamp space. With its expansion into higher education, the company continues to focus on positioning itself as the front-end for all job training. Furthermore, Career Karma is now working with employers to offer Career Karma as a benefit to their employees and contractors, starting with one of North America's largest luxury retailers joining as the company's latest partner."
Career Karma has established partnerships with three EdTech services that host universities' online course offerings, including 2U. This way, it aims to become a connector to not just boot camps, but other training programs of different durations as well.
According to Harris, the company is hiring folks to help figure out the best news pricing strategy.
In December 2020, Career Karma had raised $10 million in its Series A funding round led by Initialized Capital, with participation from Lattice's Jack Altman, Collab Capital's Jewel Burks and Moz's Amira Yahyaoui. The start-up's latest funding brings its total fundraise to $52 million.
