In a few words: Andela is a talent accelerator that prepares African developers and connects them with top employers globally. Yesterday, the company announced a seed round (read here). Today, CEO Jeremy Johnson, a serial education technology entrepreneur, answered our questions about the company, the funding and the future of the startup.
FinSMEs: Hi Jeremy. First, can you tell us a little bit more about you? What’s your background?
Jeremy: Prior to founding Andela, I co-founded a company called 2U, one of the fastest growing education technology startups in history. 2U went public on March 28th, 2014. Outside of Andela, I serve on the board of the Young Entrepreneur Council and the education non-profit PENCIL and co-authored a book, Education & Skills 2.0: New Targets & Innovative Approaches, for the World Economic Forum.
FinSMEs: Let’s speak about Andela. What’s the problems you want to solve and the opportunity you found in the market?
Jeremy: With the fastest growing and youngest population in the world, Africa is the largest market of untapped talent. Our goal is to tap into this brilliance to produce world-class developers and connect them with top global employers.
FinSMEs: How does Andela work? Tell me something about the features of the service…
Jeremy: Using a combination of proprietary and third-party assessments we source talent globally. We offer an industry-leading certification course for those developers in training. We also provide ongoing support for employers looking to bolster their technical teams. Our developers specialize in the MEAN stack (Mongo.db, Express, Angular, and Node.js) of JavaScript based technologies.
Each Andela developer:
• Has at least 1,000 hours of coding experience
• Ranks in at least the 95th percentile in problem-solving abilities
• Works full-time (at least 40 hours per week)
• Receives ongoing professional development to sharpen their skills
• Problem solving abilities ranking in at least 95th percentile worldwide
• At least 1000 hours of training
FinSMEs: Where are you now in terms of growth? Some numbers?
Jeremy: Our inaugural class of developers is based in Lagos, Nigeria. We had 5,200 applicants for 28 slots.
FinSMEs: You just raised a round of funding. What can you tell me about the investors? How are you using the funds?
Jeremy: Investors in the seed round include Steve Case, Omidyar Network, Founder Collective, Rothenberg Ventures, Learn Capital, Melo7 Tech Partners, and Chris Hughes. We are thrilled with the support we have received from these seasoned investors and are pleased that they see the potential that we do.
FinSMEs:…future plans?
Jeremy: Right now, we are focused on producing world-class developers at our initial campus in Lagos, Nigeria and connecting them with top employers around the world.
FinSMEs
24/09/2014