A Chat with Raffaela Rein, CareerFoundry CEO
From Rocket Internet to Rockin’ CEO: Raffaela Rein
With 90% of all jobs requiring digital skills by 2020, many people will need to upgrade their current skillsets or learn new skills altogether in order to progress in their careers or keep their current positions. Traditional education still offers very few options to learn about this kind of technology which is why startups, entrepreneurs and bootcamps have stepped into the breach. CareerFoundry, a Berlin-based educational platform which teaches courses in UX Design and Web Development, offers an alternative outcome-based learning path that is focused on professional success while being time and cost effective for each and every student.
Raffaela Rein, CEO and co-founder of CareerFoundry, had the idea for her tech bootcamp when her last employer, Axel Springer, struggled to hire 150 developers for its innovation lab. It was during this time she realised that there was a huge demand for web developers in many industries, but simply not enough people with the right skillsets or training to fill these positions. It seemed illogical to her that there exist so many unemployed young people in Germany and Europe when there is such a huge demand in this one area for those with the right skills. Raffaela founded CareerFoundry in the hope of bridging the tech skills gap and getting more people into creative, highly-paid and fulfilling careers in programming and UX design.
CareerFoundry in Action
CareerFoundry has already seen the fruits of its labours with a number of students from both the UX design and web development programs kickstarting careers in their chosen tech field. One example, Spyros Fotiou, went from being completely unemployed to working as a full stack web developer in just three months thanks to the CareerFoundry immersive web development course. Spyros now enjoys a lucrative, flexible and creative career in a fast-paced and challenging industry, designing and building websites for companies across Germany. Speaking about his dramatic career change, Spyros said: “I’m now working as a front-end web developer, something I never imagined would be possible this time last year.”
Raffaela had already had some experience of what it takes to found a startup from her time at Rocket Internet where she built three companies for the startup incubator before beginning her own entrepreneurial career. The valuable lessons she learned at Rocket, such as fast iteration, stellar execution and analytics-driven management she was then able to directly apply to her own company, CareerFoundry, which she founded in 2013 with Martin Ramsin. However conversion rate optimization, customer development and fundraising were all areas she has since had to become an expert in since working for herself.
CareerFoundry has grown by 60% month on month in revenue and now has customers in over twenty countries worldwide. The CF team in Berlin consists of thirteen core members and across the globe the company boasts approx 80 expert mentors.
Looking ahead to the next six months, the company will be focusing heavily on conversion optimization, while the next twelve months will involve taking ownership of certain market geographies and raising a new funding round. The next two years will see not only growth but also an increase in the impact CareerFoundry is making on the lives of members of its worldwide community, as increasing numbers of its UX design and web development students realise their dream careers in the tech industry.
