Startups offer technology courses and only charge after hiring

Until 2020, a profession in the area of ​​technology had never been considered by student Livia Brasil, 21 years old. “I was human, completely. Health, at most,” she says. In high school, she thought about studying geography or psychology and decided on the second option in her final year of school, before entering the UFF (Universidade Federal Fluminense) in 2018.

At the beginning of the pandemic, when I was in my third year of college, the discouragement with remote classes joined another dissatisfaction. “My idea was to be a teacher. I wanted to pursue an academic career, get a master’s degree, a doctorate, teach at a university”, she says, who saw her desire to wane with the research scenario in Brazil.

An advertisement for education startup Driven was the push that was needed: the idea of ​​taking a course and paying for it only after being hired caught her attention. “It’s kind of a proposal that you have nothing to lose. You make it, if you start working, you pay and, if you don’t, that debt will eventually die,” he says.

The shared success model — or ISA, for Income Sharing Agreement — was created in the United States in the 1950s and has been driven by the booming technology market in Brazil. In addition to Driven, Trybe and Cubos Academy are examples of initiatives with the same purpose.

“It’s an old model, but it was never popularized”, says the founder of Driven, Paulo Monteiro. “When demand is high, it makes sense for you to train a person and only earn after they have an employee above a certain salary.”

In Livia’s case, the cycle was completed without major problems. She passed the selection for the course, which accepts only 2% of applicants in a competition of 50 people per place, studied for six months and got a job at OLX on the last day at the startup, when she started paying for her training.

It is a very different reality from what he observed in his former area.

“In psychology, I never came close to getting a paid internship, and the outlook for even after graduation wasn’t very promising. And technology is exactly the opposite. .

According to Monteiro, his case is no exception. In the last course, 60% of the class was employed in a week, and in a month the number was 94%. The average salary of graduates is R$6,200, which allowed an increase in the income range to start paying, from R$3,000 to R$4,000.

Part of the success is due to a reversal in the time of the job search. Driven has around 80 partner companies that, in the last two weeks of the course, go to the class, introduce themselves and open internal selection processes.

In her class, says Livia, “practically everyone” was changing areas because they didn’t see a way out in their own profession. “Many people graduating in engineering and with no prospect of getting a job, some people coming from more distant areas, from the humanities. I even joined OLX together with a girl who is an actress.”

According to a survey by Brasscom (Association of Information and Communication Technology and Digital Technologies Companies) at the end of 2021, Brazil trains 53,000 people in courses with a technological profile, but needs 159,000 of these professionals per year. The projection is that the deficit will reach 530 thousand in 2025.

With the rise in interest rates all over the world, the tendency is for liquidity in the sector to normalize, but last year, US$ 9.4 billion (about R$ 53 billion) was injected into the Brazilian innovation market, almost 2 .6 times what was captured by companies in this segment in 2020.

The strength spills over even in companies that are not focused on technology.

Galena, an edtech that also uses the shared success model, prepares former public school students aged 18 to 24 for the job market. Although it has more traditional companies, such as Unilever, among its partners, most are in the innovation sector, such as iFood and Quinto Andar.

“There are a lot of companies in this world of technology, startups, because they are companies that grow a lot and generally have large sales areas”, explains one of the founders, Guilherme Luz.

The company, which completes one year this month, for now offers only one course, in the area of ​​sales and customer service. Graduates must earn at least R$2,000, under the CLT regime, to start paying for the training, which can cost from R$3,500 to R$6,500, depending on the payment term. If in three months the young person doesn’t get a job, the debt dies.

According to Luz, of the first group, 100% are employed, and of the second, which ended just over a month ago, more than half are working. The idea now is to expand. In April, the company received a contribution of US$ 16.7 million to scale its operation: from 230 people trained in 2021, the expectation is to reach 1500 young people in 2022.

“Galena was born to serve 40, 50 thousand young people a year”, says Luz. “Education for a few Brazil has already shown that it knows how to do well. We want to be another successful case of education for many.”