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Edtech company Upkey is opening a second office in Austin after closing a deal for $2.6 million in seed funding and signing several universities and companies to its service.
The Chicago startup offers free online career readiness tools to students across the country. It plans to use the seed funds to grow and scale the company’s operations, including the office in Austin.
S3 Ventures, Tensility Venture Partners, Bronze Valley, Lofty Ventures and other angel investors, including Steve Schaffer, the founder of Offers.com were all key to the investment.
“There has never been an effective and remote professional development service focused on assisting students from underrepresented communities and schools,” Charlie Plauche, a partner at S3 Ventures, said. “The product's viral growth in such a short time has highlighted a significant gap in the market. We are excited to partner with Upkey to fuel their next stage of growth.”
Plauche is joining Upkey’s board of directors.
Upkey offers a variety of professional development tools to students free of charge, and provides students access to internships, connections with industry leaders, and opportunities to build career skills and a personal brand. Participants have a personalized dashboard that includes many different tools and career preparation services.
The support for participants is individualized and self-paced. Whether a student wants help with pitch development or interview preparation, or even to take virtual classes, UpKey can help them. The dashboard is a career map that is customized for each student’s goals and needs – different interactive, gamified modules help them to earn ranks and badges, which open new opportunities.
"Over the past year, nearly 100,000 students have benefited from Upkey career preparation tools," Amir Badr, founder and CEO of Upkey, said. "Our mission is to level the playing field so that every student has the opportunity for support and training to reach their goals while giving organizations access to qualified candidates ready to take on new and varied challenges."
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