By Daniel Nivern and Ed Holroyd-Pearce
When we started Virtual Internships four years ago, our mission was to create a world where internships are accessible to all. Today, we’re proud to see that mission continue to gain international momentum as we announce the closure of our $14.3 million Series A funding round, led by a global coalition of investors including Hambro Perks , Sequoia India & Southeast Asia’s Surge, Arsenal Growth, Kaplan, Ascend Vietnam Ventures, and STIC Investments.
This mission was born when we noticed an unfair problem. Only 20% of students were completing internships, however, students were often told that they needed internship experience in order to get a job. But without prior work experience, internship experience was difficult to obtain. The result is a vicious cycle. Through partnering with early adopters in the US, UK, and Australia, our vision –to create a world where this problem no longer exists and to build a virtual internship program that is scalable and makes work experience accessible to all– gathered significant momentum.
Compounded by the clear societal acceleration toward remote work, we doubled and then tripled our size and revenue within the first and second years. Fueled by the opportunity to help students and graduates from all over the world to boost their employability, our virtual internship program matches ambitious talent to exciting companies all over the world, based on interests, career goals, and merit – not location, experience, or background.
This funding will enable us to expand our international platform, creating internship opportunities for the 250 million students in higher education worldwide.
By guaranteeing an internship match for every student within one month, more and more young people will be able to gain access to real global internships at the world’s most exciting companies, upskill during their internship, and unlock a global network of relationships.
In turn, we’ll be able to expand our solution to employability for educational institutions all over the world. With such a dramatic shift towards online learning and work, global institutions of higher learning need to adapt to deliver fresh graduates who are capable and confident with this change. Our unique platform enables institutions, students, and companies to successfully collaborate to meet the demand of this new age of work.
All being said, it’s important to acknowledge that we are just scratching the surface. Whilst Virtual Internships has grown significantly over the last couple of years, this funding round will enable us to grow in a variety of ways. We’ll look to continue to build our team, hiring superstars that will take us to that next level, whilst putting a heavy emphasis on our product roadmap to broaden our offering and reach.
Together, this will enable virtual internships to become the employability solution that educational institutions, companies, and young people need.
Before wrapping up, we want to emphasize just how thankful we are to our global team, investors, partners, and customers who have helped drive our mission. We’re proud to be working with these brilliant minds daily to accelerate our mission of helping one million young people pursue their dream careers.
Best,
Dan & Ed
More about Virtual Internships:
With employees in over 25 countries, Virtual Internships is a remote-first EdTech company that is redesigning internships for the 21st-century workforce. The platform ensures intelligent matches between students and companies, provides access to real global internships at the world’s most exciting companies, trains students before and during their internship, and unlocks a global network of relationships.
Virtual Internships works with universities, governments, foundations, and corporations to provide their students, graduates, or employees with a solution to employability customized to the institution or organization. Virtual Internships was founded in 2018 by Daniel Nivern and Ed Holroyd Pearce and has been awarded winners of Mass Challenge 2020, listed as one of the top 20 EdTech start-ups ready to address the needs of the education sector (Jisc and Emerge Education), and one of the top 100 EdTech companies in Europe by Holon IQ.
This news was also covered in:
TechCrunch, Tech in Asia, The PIE, Yahoo Finance, Edtech Review, EducationInvestor, TechNodeGlobal, GritDaily, BackScoop, VentureCation, mcgtech, Mekong Asean, Founder Lodge,
For media inquiries:
Grace Homer
Content Marketing Manager
hello(at)virtualinternships.com