In the already hot job market for workers with tech-based skills, cloud computing is among the hottest.
With tens of thousands of openings and a median salary around $146,000, it's an attractive line of work for those with the right skill sets -- often in Amazon Web Services and similar infrastructures.
The trick, of course, is having the right skills for those positions. That's where A Cloud Guru is making its play -- it offers online cloud computing training and skill development courses to prepare for certification exams. The startup, founded by brothers Sam and Ryan Kroonenburg in 2015, is now expanding by making new hires in Austin and beyond to bring its cloud training content to more people globally.
On Monday, the startup announced it raised $33 million in growth equity funding to add to its team and develop new products and content. The investment was led by Summit Partners. AirTree Ventures and prior investor Elephant also backed the round. The company, which is based in the U.K. and has its North American headquarters in Austin, had previously reported raising about $9 million from Boston's Elephant Venture Capital.
As spelled out on its website, A Cloud Guru was founded by the Kroonenburg brothers after Ryan interviewed for a job with Amazon and didn't get the gig. He was frustrated that there wasn't much training available at the time and what was there cost about $2,000. So he dreamed of creating a better option for people like himself, and he starting creating content.
Ryan, who was in London at the time, submitted his training videos to a training marketplace and business started flowing quickly. He called his brother, Sam, who was living in Australia and working as a software developer, and they talked at length about how to build a business around the new opportunity.
The startup was born. And it now offers content about Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure cloud platforms. It says it has about 800,000 customers and about 70,000 YouTube followers.
A Cloud Guru has about a dozens open positions listed for its Austin office, along with others in Melbourne, Australia and Twickenham, England.
“It’s amazing to think how far we’ve come since those early days in 2015,” Ryan said in a prepared statement.
The growth is driven by a business world that is hungry for new and better cloud services.
“Enterprise workloads continue to move to the cloud at an enormous pace, requiring a new set of IT skills to design, manage and secure applications,” Tom Jennings, managing director at Summit Partners, said in a news release. “ACG’s platform uniquely enables organizations to develop their existing employees’ cloud skills and provide ongoing training to ensure continued aptitude in cloud architecture.”
