New York-based Thinkful, an online education startup, announced Tuesday it raised $1 million in a seed round with investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s FF Angel, RRE Ventures, Quotidian Ventures, and other investors. Thinkful, founded in 2012, helps its students with job interviews, placement, and career coaching, in addition to providing education. The startup offers online tutoring and mentors with curriculum customized to students’ career needs. The aim is prepare students for the current job market, emphasizing skills and expertise that employers want. “We’ve started by teaching classes in web development, but technology now touches almost every industry,” said Thinkful co-founder Dan Friedman via e-mail. “We’ve had students with jobs in marketing, sales, finance, as well as tech.”
This is actually the second time that Thiel, who co-founded PayPal, has backed Friedman. In 2011, the Thinkful co-founder won a Thiel Fellowship, which provides students under the age of 20 a cool $100,000 over two years to skip out of college in order to develop startups, work on scientific research, and other pursuits. Today’s announced investment is the first that Thiel has made in a venture launched by one these fellows.
