10 years after launch, Miami-based Ironhack grows global bootcamp network 

By Riley Kaminer

Ariel Quinones was bullish on #MiamiTech before it was cool.

10 years ago, after finishing an MBA at the University of Pennsylvania, Quinones moved to Spain to launch Ironhack: a coding school that has bootcamps for web development, UX/UI, data analytics and more. Alongside co-founder Gonzalo Manrique, within two years Quinones and team conquered the Madrid and Barcelona markets.

“We always had global ambitions,” Quinones told Refresh Miami. So Quinones moved to Miami in the summer of 2014 and opened Ironhack in 2015. “We have been here ever since.”

Education and entrepreneurship always ran through Quinones’ blood. “My mom was a school teacher, and my dad was a university professor turned administrator turned traditional educational entrepreneur,” said Quinones. “I was always deeply touched by their work and the impact they had on thousands of students’ lives.”

Through Ironhack, Quinones is now able to do the same. Since its inception, Ironhack has trained 15,000 alumni. The school is now active in 10 cities: seven in Europe and three in the Americas. About a dozen of its 190 employees are based in South Florida.

Ironhack provides courses across all core tech verticals: from UI/UX design to data science to web development and beyond. In 2019, Ironhack raised a $20 million Series B led by Lumos Capital Group.

The pandemic fundamentally changed Ironhack’s business in a variety of ways. Now, 50% of Ironhack’s students learn remotely – up from 0% in early 2020.

“That’s exciting for a number of reasons, particularly because it provides access to folks who benefit from that type of format,” said Quinones.

Another major change: Ironhack’s business model is increasingly B2B. “We’re helping companies think about talent attraction and acquisition at scale,” explained Quinones. 

Ironhack gives access to talent that otherwise might not exist, or at the very least would be inaccessible to companies. In particular, Ironhack helps these corporations solve three major challenges: scaling their workforce quickly, finding talent with specialized skills, and increasing the diversity of their tech talent base.

The advantage of this model for students is that companies can either subsidize or totally fund tuition costs. Quinones’ goal is for as many as half of overall learners to be funded in some capacity by Ironhack’s enterprise partners. Ironhack also offers large group trainings to is B2B customers.

And Quinones expressed excitement about this growth being spearheaded in Miami. “Miami’s tech ecosystem has changed so much. In the last three years, we’ve seen more growth than the growth we saw in the last six years.”

Despite the growth in capital, talent, and overall momentum, Quinones believes that the core tenets upon which the #MiamiTech movement were built still remain. “ I still find a community of folks that are incredibly supportive, that are collaborative, that are welcoming to new people in the same way they were when I first moved here.”

Coming up April 13th to 15th as part of Miami Tech Month: The eMerge Americas annual Hackathon in partnership with Ironhack + powered by Kaseya. Teams will have 48 hours to develop an AI-powered project – with a chance to win $10,000. Learn more and register here.

On April 21st at eMerge Americas, Ariel Quinones will share the strategies that have driven Ironhack’s global success over the past decade at 3:30 on the eMerge Launchpad stage.

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Riley Kaminer