Career Karma Raised $10 Million Series A To Help Workers Acquire In-Demand Trades

We are thrilled to announce a $10 Million Series A investment, led by Initialized Capital, and welcome Garry Tan to our board.

The Problem

Income inequality is one of the greatest threats to our nation’s stability. Rapid advances in technology are fueling a larger gap between the haves and the have-nots. The whole of society is poorer when many Americans do not feel they have an upwards and mobile path towards a more economically secure and prosperous future for themselves and their families.

Preparation

In 2014, I left a successful investment banking career in Atlanta and moved to San Francisco to break into tech.  Before leaving Atlanta, my co-founders, Artur and Timur Meyster and I formulated a plan that we have implemented over the past six years.  First, I would quit my job, move to San Francisco and find a job in tech.  Later, the others would do the same, and together, we would gain valuable experience working for different tech companies in anticipation of launching our own company one day.

We created the Breaking Into Startups podcast in the Fall of 2016 where we featured intriguing stories of people who figured out ways to break into tech without having college degrees in computer science. Soon, we began hearing of others who were inspired to use these stories as a blueprint for acquiring tech skills and landing jobs in tech.  This is how the idea for Career Karma began coming into focus.  

The Solution

Career Karma was founded in April 2018 and was designed to be a repeatable and scalable way to bring workers across the country to higher-paying and more fulfilling careers. 

You may have already heard the story about how my co-founders and I broke into tech, but you probably didn’t know that we had been working with Kim and Garry, Partner and Manager Partner at Initialized Capital, for several years. Their firm has invested both time and support to help Career Karma grow from day one.  

Since meeting Kim and Garry, we took their advice, continued to execute, and are proud to share with you today that Career Karma has raised a $10 Million Series A led by Initialized Capital to hire a world-class team that is committed to creating the best career navigation software of all time (Apply Here to Join Our Team!)

The Great Lockdown

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly hit the world with the intensity of a nuclear bomb. Suddenly, all of the speculation about automation and the future of work accelerated in less than a month with one major exception:

The ability to use computer software and its capacity to provide even more refined tools that millions of people can access easily in order to continue to do their jobs in spite of worldwide restrictions in terms of travel, has rapidly become essential for everyone. 

What has become clear now is that the need to produce even more products that improve upon what we already had is critical. And our needs show no sign of diminishing in the near future as we find product flaws that need to be corrected.

As a result, what has been largely limited to an elite career field for the last few decades has rapidly become a skill that everyone needs to know to be able to navigate modern jobs and careers.

The urgent need in the world for outstanding tools that can be created by knowledgeable and creative individuals was and continues to be why this is the moment and time for which our company Career Karma was created.

Connecting The World’s Talent To Their Next Opportunity

Career Karma is a platform that provides the easiest way to find a job training program online that meets the specific needs of each individual exploring the possibility of learning the skills needed for technology-related careers. Over the last two years, our platform has grown to attract more than one million job seekers per month in response to unemployment that has risen to levels we have not seen in almost a century.

To help combat these record unemployment rates, Career Karma matches individuals with rapid reskilling programs. Also, when people download our app, we give them support and guidance from peers, coaches and mentors in small groups called “squads.” These small groups are available throughout their time learning new skills and can help them as they transition out of their reskilling program, begin looking  for jobs, and get started in their new careers.

Collaboration Over Competition

Over the last 12 months, Career Karma placed over 3,000 people into job training programs that have taught them the skills needed to obtain jobs at companies such as StitchFix, Gemini and Tesla, among others.. During this time we have also learned what is required to help people transition from low-income jobs to high-income careers within a relatively short amount of time (i.e., on average, within several months versus several years).

We shared these experiences and our new insights with several other impact-driven investors, including SoftBank’s Opportunity Fund, Emerson Collective, Imaginable Futures, Kapor Capital, Unshackled Ventures, and 4S Bay Capital. These discussions led to those funds also joining the Series A round, and all in agreement that rapid reskilling combined with the diverse talents that each new technology professionals brings with them, is needed to address one of the most critical issues facing the world right now.

It’s clear that education is fundamental for every worker.  With that in mind, we have built a rigorously ranked directory of 450 bootcamps and 7,000 trade schools, colleges, and universities.  In addition, we have created the community and software tools needed to help workers and job seekers determine which programs and institutions are right for them. Career Karma has the experience to help them determine how to more precisely determine which of those programs they need to compare based on their current goals (join our community).  

As founders, we are aware that there are many things we need to continue to learn.  We have determined that people from other companies can help us make ours even stronger, and we have carefully looked to see which of those can potentially provide the guidance we seek. 

For this reason we have asked several of our friends including Sander Daniels (Thumbtack), Bangaly Kaba (Instagram/Instacart/Reforge), Jack Altman (Lattice), Amira Yahyaoui (Moz), Iman Abuzeid (Incredible Health), Nick Soman (Decent), Jewel Burks (Google), and Liz Fong-Jones to join in on this Series A round as well, because with their collective experience they can help us with our goal of becoming a $100 billion company and help humanity thrive.

Spread Good Career Karma

Our vision is to help at least one billion people in the next 10 years. To help us with that, we were chosen as one of five companies to be part of the founding cohort of Reforge Partners with Casey Winters joining us as an advisor to help us scale.

For those of you who are already thinking about your New Year’s resolutions and the next company you want to work for, we’d love for you to consider being apart of that larger vision. There are now one billion reasons why you should speak with us today about becoming a part of the Career Karma movement. (Apply Here to Join Our Team!)

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and we wish you continued happiness during the rest of the holiday season.