Carousell, DoorDash founders join $1.1m round of Lambda School-like SEA firm

Neo Kai Yuan was in the tech industry even before he graduated from Stanford University, starting out as an intern at Alibaba and Facebook, and eventually becoming an engineering manager at DanaCita, a student-focused loan startup based in Indonesia. After all those experiences, he realized how difficult it was to hire good engineers.

That’s why he decided to set up an online coding school in Singapore called Rocket Academy in 2019 to train software engineers. A year later, Akira Wong, a former lead instructor at a US-based coding course General Assembly, also joined Rocket Academy as head of education.

Rocket Academy founder Neo Kai Yuan (left) and head of education Akira Wong / Photo credit: Rocket Academy

However, Rocket Academy struggled to bring in students. Neo then started reaching out to his friends and inviting people on social media, Eventually, three students joined the pilot batch in early 2020.

“Fortunately, those guys are doing great and were accepted in prominent tech companies. After we have the success stories, it’s easier to attract more students,” Neo told Tech in Asia.

Not only has Rocket Academy attracted students, but it has also drawn investor interest.

The company announced that it has raised S$1.5 million (around US$1.1 million) in pre-seed funding from 50 angel investors and venture capitalists in Southeast Asia. Rocket Academy’s backers include 99.co founder Darius Cheung, Carousell co-founder Marcus Tan, DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang, Payfazz co-founder Hendra Kwik, investment community XA Network, and VC firms Taurus Ventures and Hustle Fund.

This allows Rocket Academy to build relationships with the investors’ respective companies, which in turn can be potential recruiters for the school’s alumni. Some of the investors are also senior engineers who can give feedback to improve the curriculum and the design of the course. “Besides that, angel investors allow us to close the round faster, because VCs usually take longer to decide,” said Neo.

Free courses if you don’t get a job

Rocket Academy, which has a similar business model with the US-based Lambda School, promises students that it will refund their money if they don’t get recruited by any company six months after graduation.

Neo is confident to make that offer because the school’s more comprehensive courses, such as the software engineering bootcamp (SEB), take almost six months to complete. Despite SEB’s length, he says that the course is quite effective because it also provides pre-recorded videos. During the live sessions, students can ask questions and do the programming exercises.

“We are also quite selective with our students. That’s why all SEB participants need to pass the coding basics course, which is designed for beginner students,” Neo explained.

Rocket Academy plans to use the fresh funds to scale and strengthen its courses by hiring more senior engineers to lead its education, product, and growth teams. It’s also looking to expand to Hong Kong and Australia in the near future.

According to Neo, Rocket Academy has actually received students from those two markets. However, he wants to double down by ramping up marketing and getting local partners that can grow the school’s presence in those areas. In the medium term, he is also eyeing other Southeast Asian markets like Indonesia. But doing so may require a different pricing scheme and translating the course content to Bahasa Indonesian.