Coding skill development startup Educative raises $12M; CEO says edtech 'finally having its moment'

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Educative co-founders Fahim ul Haq and Naeem ul Haq. (Educative Photo)

New funding: Seattle startup Educative landed a $12 million Series A round to grow its platform that helps employees at companies such as LinkedIn, Samsung, and Ford improve their coding skills.

The software: Educative promises to help software engineers "learn in-demand tech skills in half the time" via its web-based interactive learning platform. The company targets both consumers and enterprises, which use Educative to train their workforce. Educative doubled its user base last year and counts more 550,000 developers as users. It declined to share revenue metrics.

Edtech surge: The pandemic put a spotlight on education technology, with a record $2.2 billion going into edtech startups last year as people were forced to learn and work remotely. Educative CEO Fahim ul Haq said "edtech seems to be finally having its moment for a lot of reasons."

"As remote work, career transitions and upskilling continue, both sides of the market — software developers and the companies that employ them — need to invest in employee learning to maintain productivity and ensure developers feel like part of a team," he said.

Company background: ul Haq co-founded Educative with his brother, Naeem ul Haq. They were previously engineers at Facebook and Microsoft. The platform launched in March 2016. Educative participated in Techstars Seattle in 2018. Total funding to date is $14.6 million. The company plans to use the fresh funding to grow its headcount from 130 people to 300 by the end of 2021.

Investors: Matrix Partners led the round, which included participation from Trilogy Equity Partners, Lookout founder Kevin Mahaffey, Mercury.com founder Immad Akhund, Segment founder Ilya Volodarsky, and other angel investors.

"Educative has made impressive strides to respond to the challenges associated with upskilling software developers in a time when the job market is growing exponentially for experienced programmers," Jake Jolis, partner at Matrix Partners, said in a statement.

New funding: Seattle startup Educative landed a $12 million Series A round to grow its platform that helps employees at companies such as LinkedIn, Samsung, and Ford improve their coding skills. The software: Educative promises to help software engineers "learn in-demand tech skills in half the time" via its web-based interactive learning platform. The company targets both consumers and enterprises, which use Educative to train their workforce. Educative doubled its user base last year and counts more 550,000 developers as users. It declined to share revenue metrics. Edtech surge: The pandemic put a spotlight on education technology, with a record $2.2… Read MoreStartups, educative, Funding