Australia's Blackbird leads Series B for education start-up

Additional contributions came from Telstra Ventures, Citi Ventures, Gaingels, Cap Table Coalition, and ETF@JFFLabs. Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and FundersClub, which led a $9.3 million Series A last year, re-upped. The company previously received funding from Transition Level Investments, Y-Combinator, and Arizona State University.

Forage, formerly known as InsideSherpa, offers virtual experience programs that simulate projects or tasks that employees at a particular company would complete. The courses, which on average take five hours to complete, are intended to allow students to develop tangible skills and understand what their career could look like.

The company believes there is a fundamental mismatch between the skills that candidates possess, and the skills that employers identify as being critical to job success. This leads to employers basing hiring decisions on imperfect data and processes, and candidates ending up in roles not aligned with their skills and interests.

More than 100 programs are available, from the likes of General Electric, SAP, J.P. Morgan, Electronic Arts, Aon, PwC, and HSBC. Forage also partners with over 350 universities globally to embed virtual experience programs in coursework and careers centers. Partners include Macquarie University, University of California Los Angeles, University of Westminster, and National University of Singapore.

The company claims significant growth on the back of COVID-19, with 1.8 million candidates signing up to programs during the pandemic.

The new funding will go towards adding programs across a broader range of industries and verticals – such as healthcare, biotech, life sciences, retail, and media – and expanding the overall product suite.

“Forage is solving a huge problem that is truly worth caring about,” said Tom Humphrey, a principal at Blackbird, in a statement. “By positioning itself as the glue between the futures of education and work, Forage is defining a completely new and exciting market category.”
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Blackbird is currently deploying its fourth fund, which closed at A$500 million ($357 million) last year. The GP claims to be Australia’s largest venture capital firm with A$1.2 billion in assets under management. Existing exposure to the education sector includes Edrolo, a software-as-a-service platform that supplies digital content to secondary schools in Australia.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• North America
• Early-stage
• Technology
• Australia
• Education
• Blackbird Ventures
• Telstra Ventures
• Lightspeed Venture Partners