An Irish bootcamp that teaches people how to code is moving abroad

AN IRISH COMPANY set up to teach people how to code has just raised €500,000 in seed funding from a range of investors and now has its sights set on expanding abroad.

Code Institute said that the syndicated investment came from Enterprise Ireland and Kernel Capital, one of a series of funds set up by Bank of Ireland to invest in the technology industry.

It added that the money will be used “to develop a suite of future courses and to support the company’s international market expansion plan”.

Following the investment Mícheál Ó Foghlú has joined the Code Institute’s “advisory council”.

Ó Foghlú served as the chief technology officer to Waterford-based mobile software company Feedhenry, which was bought by US multinational Red Hat in 2014 for €63.5 million.

Code Institute is modeled on the “coding bootcamp sector” in the US, which claims that graduates of its courses are more employable and likely to be better paid.

Skills gap

The Dublin-based firm was founded in 2014 “to tackle the widening information and communications technology (ICT) skills gap across Europe”.

It provides a three month software training course that aims to teach people coding skills that can immediately be used in a work environment.

The standard cost of its 12 week in-classroom course is €7,900. Prices are lowered for people who book early or sign up a friend, while the online course costs about €4,000.

Jim Cassidy, the CEO of Code Institute, said that there is a “real shortage of people with coding experience both in Ireland and internationally and our intensive bootcamp course gives graduates the real-world coding and software development skills that are in demand.”

He added that the company’s approach “greatly reduces” the time taken to get students job-ready.

From left: Helen Norris from Kernel Capital; Code Institute co-founder Anthony Quigley and Joe Healy from Enterprise Ireland.

Code Institute said that the EU Commission “has identified a shortage in ICT skills is looming, with 825,000 job vacancies predicted across the EU by 2020 due to a lack of digital skills.”

Job prospects

The company claims that 94% of the people who complete its courses have been hired within 3 months of graduation.

It said that the syllabus for its course was developed in conjunction with experts from companies such as PayPal, Morgan McKinley, Accenture and Dell.

The business is accredited and certified by Edinburgh Napier University and is the only university accredited coding bootcamp across Europe.