Silicon Valley Bank has partnered with a startup accelerator in a move that is intended to help high-growth companies find qualified candidates to scale their businesses.
A $3 million Series A investment in Startup Institute (SI), an immersive career accelerator geared toward cultivating startup-savvy talent, was made by SVB Financial Group, the holding company of Silicon Valley Bank.
The investment will support worldwide expansion of SI’s offices and programmes.
SI has also announced partnerships with London-based startups Hailo, Geckoboard and Toothpick. These partners will present to the inaugural London class which launches on October 6th.
In return they will get access to a pool of graduates that are already familiar with their companies and ready to hit the ground running.
Hailo, Geckoboard and Toothpick now join Boughtbymany, Episode1, MassChallenge and Pivotal Labs on the roster of Startup Institute partners working with the career accelerator to develop good talent and support their growth ambitions.
Instructors from Twitter and Yelp have also been signed to support the inaugural London course.
SI launched its first program in 2012 to help startups find employees who could help their companies grow.
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The founders, including Katie Rae, founder of SI and chairman of Techstars Boston, observed startup candidates had the ‘hard’ skills, but failed to contribute when hired because they failed to understand how high-growth innovative companies work.
The founding team thought this was a fixable problem and sought to create a talent pipeline for high-growth startups.
Phil Cox, head of EMEA and president of Silicon Valley Bank’s UK branch says, ‘Since we are continuously looking for ways to help increase innovation companies’ probability of success, working with SI to address this problem is a natural fit.
‘It gives students an on-ramp into the startup world, as well as the skills to succeed, while providing startups with access to an expanding workforce to help them scale.’
Katie Rae, co-founder and chairman of Startup Institute adds, ‘The response to our institutes has been humbling. The demand for this style of education has been incredible.
‘Growth into new markets was inevitable, and our strategic partnership with Silicon Valley Bank means we can accelerate our development of new programs and our expansion into more cities in the US and across Europe.’
