🏫 Lambda School

Lambda School enables students to sell a piece of their future earnings in exchange for tuition. The school teaches in-demand skills such as web development and data science. Courses can be completed remotely and are highly practical, focused on getting students hired once they complete the course.

Some companies—like Lambda (Series C; $122M raised), Flockjay (Series A; $14M raised), and Microverse (Seed; $3M raised)—use Income Share Agreements (ISAs), which align incentives with learners. Flockjay, for instance, only gets paid if students land a new job paying at least $40,000 per year. The average graduate gets a job paying $75,000.

One of the most well-known leaders of the “building in public” phenomenon is Austen Allred, Founder & CEO of Lambda School. Allred largely built his company on Twitter, and those who followed him got to see him build Lambda in real time.

Building something of significant value to the student, but shifting the risk away from the student to your company or the current or future employer is the way to build a very large education company. Prenda does this for parents in K12 by serving as a public charter school, Lambda does this for students by deferring tuition until they get a job.

Think ISAs (Income sharing Agreements) for software jobs. Lambda takes in rookie coders, trains them and introduces them to potential employment opportunities. It then takes a cut from their income as their fees. Yield Guild does the same but for gamers.

Online education 2.0 is about group courses, community, vocational training, and edutainment. A lot of smart people are experimenting with new approaches. Teachable is taking the Shopify approach of “arming the rebels” by enabling anyone to easily set up an online course. David Perell, Tiago Forte and Nat Eliason are building online-first schools f... See more