General Assembly has reeled in $35 million in fresh funding, money that the New York-based company will use to continue expansion of its unique educational community. The company also announced that more than 100,000 students have participated in the community to date.
Maveron, the Seattle venture capital firm behind companies such as Zulily and Capella University, participated in the round in the three-year-old company. Institutional Venture Partners led the deal, with additional participation from GSV Capital, Rethink Education and Western Technology Investment
“While our progress has been tremendous, our work has barely begun,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Our mandate, our deepest organizational responsibility, is to support these alumni not just now, but for many, many years to come. It is this obligation that led to our new round of funding for General Assembly, designed to ensure that we will be able to educate students and help decades of alumni yet to come.
It follows an increasing amount of investment in the online education sector, one in which Seattle companies such as CreativeLive and Koru also are participating. (Koru’s Kristen Hamilton, who also is backed by Maveron, will be our guest on the the GeekWire radio show and podcast this weekend).
General Assembly operates nine campuses globally, hosting events and classes on topics such as front-end Web development, data science and product marketing. It also hosts online courses. Its campuses are located in Boston, San Francisco, Hong Kong and other locations.
It has yet to expand to Seattle, though the 250-person company says in the blog post that new campuses and programs are in the works. We’ve asked General Assembly about their expansion plans, and we’ll update this as we hear more.
Maveron’s Jason Stoffer, whose firm led General Assembly’s series A financing round, said he can’t comment on the company’s future expansion plans.
“GA is disrupting education in a big way — it essentially eliminates the need for grad school for many millenials who want careers in technology, design and business,” said Stoffer in an email to GeekWire. “And it does so with certificate programs that take significantly less time and money than any master’s degree programs and place over 95% of students into jobs after graduation.”
