Portfolio overview

Winc Academy (Alumni)

Winc Academy is on a mission to fill this skills gap and create job opportunities for all. With their online school and innovative teaching methods, Winc offers careers, not courses. They give everyone with the required ambition and grit a shot at a future-proof career in tech, regardless of previous education or work experience.

Lifelong learning and jobs for all

The tech industry continues to grow at a rate of knots and as a result, the demand for people with the right skills is rising faster than the supply. There is a huge disconnect between the large number of people that are (at risk of becoming) unemployed and the digital skills that are needed for the future. Learning to work with code is becoming increasingly important.

Winc makes learning to program accessible to all by offering remote training courses, which they can start right away. The curriculum consists of a combination of open source and proprietary (= Winc-branded) content. There is a strong practical element, with many assignments and direct teacher feedback. No specific prior education is required and students can study at their own pace, mentored by tutors.

For Winc Academy we tracked 2 impact targets:

➡️: Number of Winc Academy graduates; the cumulative number of students who completed a medium or long digital skills course at Winc (80%)
➡️: The cumulative number of careers positively influenced by Winc Academy (20%)

SDG Alignment

Significant entrepreneurial and scale-up experience

Winc was founded in 2018 by Carla Snepvangers and Marijn Pijnenborg. The founders, both serial entrepreneurs, believe that everyone can – and should – be able to learn digital skills to help future-proof their career. Within a year, the Amsterdam-based scale-up increased its active student base by eight times, driven by the digitalisation of work and accelerated by COVID-19 Winc Academy gives everyone with the required ambition and grit a shot at a future-proof career in tech, regardless of their previous education or work experience.

Winc aims to support (unemployed) job seekers as well as talent that needs to be upskilled within existing jobs via a flexible and low-cost program in the Netherlands, soon expanding into European countries. Together with co-investors Dutch Founders Fund and Vivid Ventures, we are dedicated to helping the Winc team grow and create opportunities for 20,000 learners within a few years.

Portfolio overview