Andela promises to give companies access to previously untapped, world-class talent while opening up new doors to the digital world for ambitious young people in Africa. While a hefty mission, Andela is succeeding in achieving its goal, receiving 10,000 applications in less than six months after launching.
Such success comes as no surprise given that the idea for Andela was birthed by none other than 2U Co-Founder Jeremy Johnson. An extraordinary leader in the edtech industry, Johnson has once again discovered a way to tap into the space with a do-good startup filling a skill gap for employers across the globe.
Johnson has described Andela as a "different approach to academia" that works with "bright people mostly in their 20s who are very rapidly able to pick up the nuances of coding." It's his company that is giving brilliant minds in Lagos, Nigeria, and beyond paths to meaningful careers.
You can train brilliant young men and women to be world-class developers and place them with companies looking to expand their engineering team
"If you had asked me or Jeremy when we launched if we thought we'd be where we are now, I think we would have been happily surprised at the speed at which we've moved in our initial months," said Adam Frankel, former Obama speechwriter turned vice president of external affairs for Andela, over the phone. "We formally launched at the end of September and here we are just at the beginning of March. We've crossed 10,000 applications and those applications are coming not only from Lagos, but from across Nigeria and Africa."
Andela hasn't been operating for long, but interest is high. Attraction to Andela's services was imminent, considering that the company is focused on selecting the smartest young people in Africa, training and mentoring them to thrive as full-time, remote developers, and then connecting them with top employers itching to hire gifted coding professionals right now.
"We're proving what we set out to prove, that you can train brilliant young men and women to be world-class developers and place them with companies looking to expand their engineering team," Frankel explained. "The result is that we're not only meeting a market need and helping a company thrive, but creating an on-ramp for somebody who didn't have it."
The Andela team has already demonstrated that they can do what they set out to do. Their future looks bright, but it's still early on to make any predictions about Andela's growth prospects. That said, I think it's safe to say that there's a lot of opportunity for expansion in Nigeria. The country is home to just about 177 million people and has a 55 percent-plus youth unemployment rate. There are a lot of driven young people hungry for the chance to excel and thrive in a way that Andela is offering.
Andela has a 0.6 percent acceptance rate – that's 10 times more selective than Harvard
The startup's selective model has been successful in procuring high-end clients for developer placement. Andela has a 0.6 percent acceptance rate – 10 times more selective than Harvard. What this means is that Andela is taking the brightest, most ambitious applicants to ensure that the quality of the services its providing as a company is very high and exceptionally strong. Given that no company has dropped an Andela developer, that also proves that what Andela is doing is working. Frankel admitted that the 100 percent retention rate likely won't last, but the fact that it still stands at 100 today is impressive.
"Look, over time, as we continue to scale, I think that it's probably likely that we will not have 100 percent retention. I think any company, even those offering the best quality, often don't maintain that standard," he said. "But thus far, we've been very pleased by that statistic. That's a reflection of the strength of our model and the quality of the caliber of people coming through out training and the quality of the training itself."
Frankel says he, Johnson and the rest of the Andela team will continue to learn over time from the challenges the company faces and the successes it achieves and will make adjustments to their services as deemed necessary.
The company was founded on the idea that brilliance and talent is evenly distributed around the world, but opportunity is not
"This is a very data driven company, and we're focused on always learning and always integrating what we are learning back into the selection and training process itself so that we're constantly iterating and constantly improving," Frankel said. As they learn more about what makes for a strong developer coming through their program and as they learn more about those developers who really thrive and what accounts for that, the folks behind Andela will take that information and use it as fuel for advancement and growth.
But while the selection and training process may change over time, Andela's mission will remain the same.
"The company was founded on the idea that brilliance and talent is evenly distributed around the world, but opportunity is not," Frankel added. "That's the premise for what we're doing and what we're working to address: Linking brilliance and opportunity."
