STRIVE TALENT, a San Francisco-based startup that helps train adults for jobs in sales and other “middle-skill” occupations, raised $3.8 million in a seed round led by Upfront Ventures earlier this year. Kapor Capital, Webb Investment Network, NextView Ventures, University Ventures and Graph Ventures also invested.
Will Houghteling, Strive’s founder, started the company last year after a stint at The Minerva Project, where he led efforts to recruit students from North America for the exclusive, elite university alternative. “Minerva was doing a good job of creating an immersive experience for the most impressive students,” he told EdSurge in an interview. But “I felt there was a gap for those in the middle—those in community college, with students loans and low job prospects.”
At Strive, Houghteling’s immediate goals are two-folds: The first is streamlining the traditional headhunter and recruiting services, by offering online assessments and interviews to match candidates for sales positions with employers. The second is akin to the “bootcamp” model that has been popular for coding careers, whereby the company will create online training programs around sales and other roles to prepare adults to apply for these jobs.
“We’re targeting jobs that earn between $40,000 to $60,000 a year,” adds Houghteling, “areas where this is a middle-class salary.”
Strive isn’t the only upstart striving to bring the bootcamp model to training future salespeople. There’s one company that literally takes the model for its name Sales Bootcamp. There are also Sales2Job Academy and Always Hired.
