Education is an increasingly recurring theme in tech hubs like Berlin. The idea goes that there are plenty of people out there with the potential to be a part of the tech-based economy, but many don’t have the requisite skill set. The solution to this talent gap dilemma, then, is more opportunities for people to learn what they need.
Hence a blooming of education-related groups and services, with the Startup Institute an obvious recent example. Yet another player on the block is CareerFoundry, which was described on its launch a few weeks ago as wanting to be the next General Assembly for tech skills – but specifically with online-only tools.
Students are paired with an experienced mentor who reviews, coaches and meets with them on a regular basis, mainly online.
And the Berlin-based startup is rapidly reaching out to partners to ensure it doesn’t hit the same problems faced by the likes of GA here. The latest of those partners, and the first to be officially integrated into a CareerFoundry program (in this case, the user experience design program), is Quote Roller, a software as a service (SaaS) platform helping entrepreneurs to create, pitch and track potential deals with clients.
Students will be trained to use the software on the free version and then offered a 50 percent discount. San Francisco-based Quote Roller, which was founded in 2011, claims to increase its customers win rate by an average of 28 percent by structuring client sales with a smart proposal maker and tracking system.
Mikita Mikado, CEO and co-founder of Quote Roller, said: “The future of learning is online, interactive and automated, as is the future of sales. Since our number one clients are in the design world we’re happy to help the next generation of digital creatives grow their businesses rapidly with software as a service and we are excited to have our sales solution involved from the start of CareerFoundry’s students’ learning process.”
CareerFoundry CMO Emil Lamprecht, meanwhile, said the deal would see its students “get a leg up when it comes to building their first client relationships.” All eyes will be on the company and the rest of the tech education sector in the few years as Berlin seeks to close its talent gap.