Y Combinator-Backed Startup Sphere Raises $4M Seed Round

More about Sphere’s new funding

Sphere was founded in 2020 by Adrian Sarstedt and Nicholas Rudder. Before naming it Sphere, it was called ScholarSite and aimed to provide corporate education through an accessible online platform. The platform gained traction for tech employees that wanted to further their experience or education. 

The startup just raised $4.3 million in seed funding for its classes. Angel investors like some of the founders of BetterUp, Go1, Lyft, and Flexport gave their support. In addition, being accepted into Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 cohort was a big deal for this company moving forward.

These funds will go towards improving its software engineering skills-enhancement classes, like machine learning and data science. The team also hopes to use this new funding to win more bulk contracts with enterprise customers and hire new employees for their growth and engineering teams. With its current momentum, Sphere plans to add more courses next year.

Sphere has three-week courses that are live-streamed and interactive. Each course is hosted by working professionals in the tech industry, working in fields like data science or machine learning. During the courses, they will provide the students with first-hand knowledge of their respective position and experience.

Some companies that work with Sphere will cover the course fees for their employees, but courses can be taken independently by anyone interested in learning more about these topics. 

In the world of computer science, Sphere’s instructors are well-known experts. The teachers are allowed to work independently and develop their own curriculum. Sphere’s live hosting has led to very high completion rates as opposed to asynchronous classes.