Andela, a company that mentors African software developers and connects them with top-tier tech companies, raised $100m to double in size.
As both an outsourcing company and a professional development program, Andela has staffed more than 200 tech companies and launched tech careers for 1.1k developers.
So, how does Andela work?
Andela wears two hats. For applicants, Andela is a highly selective professional training program; for corporate clients, it’s a top-quality tech staffing agency.
Employees apply to Andela: If they survive the rigorous application process (less than 1% do), developers go through 6 months of immersive training before they’re paired with a partner company.
Clients pay between $50k-$120k per developer, and Andela pays ⅓ of that directly to the employee and keeps the rest to feed back into the business to provide resources that allow their developers to work remotely.
The distributed future
Andela’s ‘distributed’ model is good for local economies (because highly skilled employees stay in-country) and global tech companies (who need trustworthy remote employees).
To date, Andela has raised $180m (with backing from Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Al Gore’s investment firm).