Austin serial entrepreneur Ed Sattar is capitalizing on the tailwind that the Covid-19 pandemic has generated for the education-technology sector.
“A major transformation is occurring in higher education,” he said. “A lot of students are questioning their [return on investment] in [higher] education. It’s a very hot topic.”
Sattar said students are wondering more than ever about their job prospects after spending tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to earn a bachelor’s degree.
QuickStart Learning Inc., the ed-tech startup Sattar co-founded in 2017 and leads as CEO, offers an alternative that “is really hurting universities,” he said.
The online education platform uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to personalize training for career and workforce preparedness. It offers bootcamp and certification programs in areas including web development, data science, data analysis, cybersecurity and cloud computing. Students learn skills enabling them to work with Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services, for example.
Those six- to seven-month courses, the CEO said, “easily” yield jobs that pay in the range of $50,000 to $70,000 a year.
Sattar said those kinds of results are what led investors to pump an additional $10 million into QuickStart, a funding round that was announced last month. The company has raised a total of roughly $20.4 million. It employs a little more than 100 people, Sattar said, with about 30% based in Austin and the rest spread throughout the United States and Canada. It boasts about 1,000 customers and a community totaling 18,000, comprising instructors, trainers, coaches and mentors.
Sattar and the QuickStart team plan to use the capital to scale its offerings and expand its income-share agreement program. Under such agreements, the education entity provides the student tuition money, which the student pays back upon obtaining a job.
The company has partnered with New York City-based Leif Technologies Inc. to launch and manage the program. The subscription-based courses on the QuickStart website start at $39.99 a month.
“Once you get a job, then you can pay us," Sattar said. "It’s becoming a more interesting marketplace. Students are putting more pressure on institutions to do that.”
In 2019, Inside Higher Ed reported that income-share agreements were “first tested in short-term programs like coding boot camps" but have spread to the wider higher-ed ecosystem and are even being offered by some traditional colleges.
Another aspect of QuickStart’s value proposition for students is Sattar’s premise that “the way people learn, retain and implement” new information “has changed over the years,” he said. “Learner behavior has changed. How people engage [in learning] has changed.”
The startup’s AI and machine-learning algorithms personalize learning for each individual, the CEO said — one of the ways QuickStart differentiates itself from competitors such as New York-headquartered Trilogy Education Services, New York-based Thinkful Inc. and California-headquartered Lambda Inc.
QuickStart’s AI assesses students’ goals and technical competencies, then provides each student a curated curriculum, Sattar said.
Another differentiator, the CEO said, is that company also trains its students to “start their own consulting” company. "The objective is to get them two to three leads to see how this thing works," Sattar said.
QuickStart also partners with higher-ed institutions to provide its curricula under those schools’ brands, he said. The company provides end-to-end service in those cases, from admissions to sales and marketing to retention to finance.
Sattar owns the startup’s headquarters, a 16,000-square-foot building at 1101 South Capital of Texas Highway. He purchased the site more than a year ago without the use of a commercial real estate broker. He's the only one in the office nowadays, because he said he cannot work from home — everyone else in the company is working remotely.
Sattar said he currently is looking for a CEO — he’d become company chairman, then — or chief operating officer. And the company is hiring for marketing, sales and operations positions. Sattar said the company could hire 20 to 30 more people during the coming 12 months.
Growing the headcount would enable the company to double its annual revenue, which is “in the neighborhood of eight figures,” Sattar said. The company is not yet profitable and remains in growth mode. But Sattar has a goal of attaining profitability “by the end of 2021.”
Sattar said he envisions selling the company “around 2023.”
The pandemic did not force the CEO to lay off any employees or cut costs, he said. But it did cause an unexpected 40% “nosedive” in the company’s business-to-business clients. “We didn’t think companies would go into cash-preservation mode,” particularly with the various federal stimulus packages.
But the consumer side of QuickStart’s business has skyrocketed by 200% to 300%, he said. “That’s why we raised money. We shifted our focus to [business to consumers].”
Sattar in 2018 sold a controlling stake in online-education company 360Training.com Inc., which he founded in 2000 to help those such as real estate agents and restaurant workers earn certifications required for their respective professions. He invested $5 million from that exit into QuickStart.
In addition to working as CEO of QuickStar, Sattar is a limited partner for California-based venture capital firm Moneta Ventures.
