Announcing Beta Boom‘s recent pre-seed investment in WEDEVX.
WEDEVX helps blue-collar workers such as taxi drivers and warehouse workers train for and land $100K+ tech jobs at top companies like Apple and Amazon. WEDEVX upskills people with zero coding background into high-paying and in-demand tech jobs by combining the intensity and efficacy of a bootcamp with the convenience and affordability of online learning platforms such as Coursera or Udemy.
The company has established its beachhead in software engineer in test (SDET), which is automated software testing. This is a great entry point for non-technical students given the relative ease of training, high demand, and high-earning potential. (Median salaries are just over $128,000 per year in the United States.) WEDEVX is rapidly expanding into adjacent spaces, with Data Analytics and DevOps programs coming online in early 2024.
Students watch micro-lessons and complete real-world practice questions at their convenience. Unlike self-service learning platforms, WEDEVX has a complete, structured, and practical curriculum, ensuring that students know everything they need to start their new career. Additionally, students have unparalleled access to course instructors and their peers to get help and deepen their mastery of their budding skill set.
WEDEVX is led by Adina Tilek and Askar Musakunov, both immigrants from Kyrgyzstan with extreme domain expertise and lived experience. Adina and Askar are engineers who went through coding boot camps themselves to break into tech in the SDET space. They later went on to run a traditional bootcamp for four years, which reached $1.5 million in annual revenue. Through this business, they helped over 500 people to break into tech, with 87% of their graduates successfully landing their first $100K+ per year job within 6 months of graduating.
The timing for this solution is ideal. Given the competitive hiring market and a potential upcoming recession, the $332.6 billion e-learning market (of which the U.S. accounts for one-third) should see rising demand and is currently growing at a 9.1% CAGR. WEDEVX is predominantly serving the immigrant population, which has traditionally been an early adopter of upskilling solutions and is a rapidly growing market.
Since launching in January, WEDEVX has grown to serving over 170 students.
If you’d like to be connected with Adina and Askar, please feel free to reach out to me, Sergio, or my fellow GP, Kimmy.