Participated · Equity · Mar 2022

Pursuit operates a job-training model where learners pay nothing up front and only remit payments once they secure a job earning more than $50,000. Learners who qualify pay 5–15% of their new income for four years, with employer-side support including three years of post-hire advising to improve onboarding and retention. The program emphasizes skills-based hiring and works with companies to create hiring pipelines for a preset number of positions. Pursuit reports that after four years 86% of a cohort had jobs earning on average more than $85,000, and 90% retained those jobs past the first year. The organization began testing the model with $750,000 in 2016 and generated a 6.6% return, repaying that capital in full plus earnings in 2020. Pursuit says scaling — recruiting more learners and convincing more employers to participate — is its main operational challenge. The recent financing is intended to expand capacity and support roughly 1,000 fellows over the next few years, moving the model toward financial self-sufficiency.