On the heels of explosive growth in 2020, Ironhack, the Miami-based global tech school, has raised $20 million in venture capital funding to accelerate remote tech education and enterprise training.
The Series B round was led by Lumos Capital Group, with participation from Endeavor’s Catalyst Fund and existing investors including Brighteye and Creas. The company plans to use the funding to expand its corporate and development programs, including talent acquisition and re-skilling, and increase its technology investment in its remote learning platform.
“We believe that practical skills training, a supportive global community and career development programs can give everyone, regardless of their education and employment history, the ability to write their stories through technology,” said CEO Ariel Quinones, in announcing the new funding. “Lumos Capital, the Endeavor Catalyst Fund and our partners at Brighteye and Creas share our commitment to that visoin. Their support gives us the operational and financial strength to not only empower more people, in more places, but to be a strategic partner to some of the most respected companies in the world.”
Ironhack was co-founded by Quinones and Gonzalo Manrique in 2013. Since then, with campuses in Miami, Europe and Latin America, the company has graduated more than 8,000 students worldwide. Its global team includes 110 full-time employees plus about 200 contractors.
Ironhack offers full-time and part-time web development, UX/UI design, data analytics and cybersecurity bootcamps and classes meant to help people break into the tech field or expand their skills. Today, locally and globally, you can find Ironhack grads at Visa, Google, Magic Leap, Reef Technology, Microsoft, Siemans and Santander among many other companies. CourseReport recently ranked Ironhack’s bootcamps 29th in the world. Last year, Ironhack teamed up with OfferUp to offer diversity coding bootcamp scholarships to locals.
Like a number of edtech companies, the company experienced exponential growth during the pandemic. To meet the demand for online learning, Ironhack quickly ramped up virtual offerings and trained more than 3,000 students during 2020 alone, Quinones said in a recent interview with Refresh. “As an outcomes-driven company, we were concerned with how well we’d do with online classes,” he said, but the metrics were on par with in-person classes.
Remote offerings also helped Ironhack expand its reach, such as with stay-at-home parents and people with disabilities, as well as people in far-flung locations such as Asia.
In recent years, Ironhack developed an enterprise arm to its business. In addition to large-group trainings, companies also sponsor individual employees to take Ironhack courses to expand their skillsets.
“Ironhack’s outcomes-focused education model, its deepening capabilities in remote and enterprise learning, and the market’s continuing shift to alternative forms of career preparation and professional development have positioned the company for both tremendous growth and social impact,” said James Tieng, managing partner of Lumos Capital.
Ariel Quinones, co-founder and CEO of Ironhack. Shown at top of post, Ironhack’s team (pre-COVID). Photos provided by Ironhack.
READ MORE: Catching up with Ariel Quinones of Ironhack
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