Leland Raises $12 Million Series A

Today, Leland announced it has raised a $12M Series A investment led by Forerunner Ventures. Forerunner has invested in iconic marketplaces and consumer brands and marketplaces such as Warby Parker, Chime, Glossier, OURA, Faire, Zola, The Expert, and others. Eurie Kim, Partner at Forerunner, will join Leland's board.

Also participating in the round are GSV Ventures (a leader in education and workforce investing) and inVest Ventures (a fund created by LinkedIn alumni). Existing Leland investors FJ Labs, Contrary, Peterson Ventures, and GSBackers also joined the round.

Dozens of Leland coaches and customers participated, in addition to leading marketplace founders, operators, and angels from companies like Instacart, Handshake, LinkedIn, Mercado Libre, Pluralsight (Aaron Skonnard), Nursa (Curtis Anderson), Neighbor (Joseph Woodbury), and others.

"With this fresh capital and support, we’re positioned to realize our vision of unlocking human potential by making the world’s expertise more accessible," said John Koelliker, Leland Co-founder and CEO. We sat down with Koelliker, whose background has been in building world class marketplaces (Uber, LinkedIn, Curated). We asked how the company is doing. "We have seen incredible momentum in 2024, through an increasingly competitive job market, dropping education admissions rates, and a rise in the importance of in-demand skills."

In the past year, Leland's coaches have helped hundreds of thousands of people in over 70 countries pursue their most ambitious goals across school admissions, career development, upskilling, test prep, among other things. Only 5% of those people who apply to coach on Leland make it through the company's strict vetting process. Leland’s coaches have received over 10,000 reviews with an average rating of 4.98 stars. The company has been focused over the past few months on expanding its supply of coaches; it intends to reach the 5,000 number within a few months, according to Koelliker.

"One coach can serve many customers and we want to maintain that quality bar," said Koelliker. "As we add new categories and scale the supply side, whether the coaches we recruit are part time versus full time, we will reach 10,000 coaches relatively quickly," he projected.

Going into this fundraise Leland was cash-flow positive, putting the company in a favorable position with respect to the investors it was talking to. "We didn't really need the money; that probably made us more attractive to investors," said Koelliker. The company has witnessed a surge of demand for its services, which Koelliker described Leland as a "business in a box" designed for coaches to be able to manage their clients, with video, tools, and scheduling, "all of the different things coaches need to run their businesses." It is also a marketplace for customers. "We make it easy for them to find the right coach, at the right price point," said Koelliker.

He stressed that Leland is designed in its scope and pricing to appeal to a wide range of customers that can access its services at a variety of price points.

"We have coaches across a range of different price points," explained Koelliker. "It's based on experience level, and that's really important to us. We have coaches that were executives at certain well-known companies or former admissions officers at Harvard or Stanford. These folks are in high demand, and so they charge a lot more. But then you have other folks that are recent graduates or students. They can be really helpful for a specific segment of the market, maybe customers that are a bit younger. And so we have everything in between."

Koelliker said applications to the top 10 MBA programs are up 20% this past year. While some universities are struggling with declining enrollment, the top programs that deliver strong outcomes are doing well.

"We've been blown away by the demand for this sort of thing," Koelliker exclaimed. "We don't want to just be the option for the 1% that can afford to spend $50K, $100K or more to see their child get into the school of their choice, we want to be the option for everyone," he added. "Of course, we will happily serve customers that have a lot of budget, but we want to serve everyone and be able to help them with whatever their goal is."

Part of the company's activities this past year or so has been to dramatically expand the categories of coaching. "We have wanted to expand into new categories, and that has gone very well. We now do everything from medical school admissions to software engineering, to investment banking to GRE prep. We do a bunch of different categories. We are building a marketplace and a technology layer where we can make it easy for our customers to discover the right coach, and we are doing it at several different price points. This flexibility and range of categories infuses trust, allowing us to build community, and drive real network effects."

This new $12M enables the company to be more ambitious in building out its vision. In addition to adding new categories, the company is expanding its partnership program about which it will be making announcements before the end of the year. Leland is also pursuing new enterprise opportunities, building out its courses and content experiences, and investing in product capabilities to super-charge its coaches and customers.

"These past three years of building have shown us that the world needs dedicated, hands-on support to help people unlock their full potential," said Koelliker. "We feel deeply proud of the trust our customers have in us and our coaches, as well as a fundamental responsibility to build the best platform for any of them to reach their most ambitious goals."

"While a fundraise is never a destination, it certainly represents an opportunity to reflect on the progress we’ve made and thank the community who has helped us get this far. Most importantly, we know the biggest opportunity is ahead of us, and we’re excited to be building a world class team to go after it," said Koelliker.

Leland is hiring. Currently it has about 15 full time employees who work out of its stylish Kiln Lehi location; it plans to double in the coming months by adding another 15 or so software engineers, partnership managers, coaching managers, and program managers.

For more information click here.

Those interested in working with a coach or coaching the next generation, may contact the company website, here.

See previous TechBuzz coverage of Leland here and here.