Thinkful is a New York, NY-based edtech startup that offers mentor-led online learning focused on technical skills. It provides 1-on-1 mentorship from industry experts to help students switch careers or advance in their current professions. Mentors meet face-to-face, answer questions, and tailor curriculum to students' schedules and specific job goals. Courses listed include Engineering Immersion, Full Stack Flex, Data Science, and Front End Development. Employers can use the platform to find diverse talent. The company raised funding to expand operations and grow its offering and business reach. Thinkful operates an online education service that connects students with a network of professional programmers and developers who mentor students through short courses. Courses typically run two to three months and cost roughly $300–$500 per month (about $1,000–$2,000 per program), positioning the company as a lower-cost alternative to multi‑month, $15,000 bootcamps. Thinkful reports roughly 3,000 students, a mentor network of about 250 professional engineers, and a 70% course completion rate. The company says many of its programmers (and alumni) have gone on to roles at companies like Google, PayPal, and Instacart. With its new financing, Thinkful plans to expand its curriculum offerings and launch a more selective program designed to better monitor and measure student outcomes. Founders Darrell Silver and Dan Friedman started the company in October 2012. Thinkful provides personalized, mentor-led online career training that pairs students with expert mentors, places them in peer cohorts, and customizes curricula after a skills assessment. The platform emphasizes one-on-one weekly mentor sessions and a curriculum tailored to students' goals. It launched last year and began with web development courses while receiving applications from professionals in marketing, sales and finance. The team has spent months developing its curricula, which remain under construction, and has trained its first 25 students. More than 70 tech companies have expressed interest in hiring Thinkful graduates. The company also ran targeted outreach following Citigroup layoffs and received numerous applications from former Citi employees.

Total raised

$15M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Jan 2018