Income-share agreements, or ISAs, are a way to bring flexibility to the often steep financial costs of higher education. The financial model allows a student to learn at zero upfront cost, and then pay any costs through a percentage of future income over time.
While the model has caught fire from a variety of trade schools and bootcamps, it’s a hard service to offer at scale. It required underwriting a risky group of people — and that costs money. Just last week,
a leader in the ISA space Lambda School laid off 65 employees amid a broader restructuring.
It’s here that a startup like Blair, which graduated Y Combinator in 2019, could be of use. The startup today helps universities finance and offer income-share agreements, or ISAs, to students. The startup has two services: a capital arm (Blair Capital) for which it secured a
$100 million debt facility, and a services arm (Blair Servicing) that helps manage the flow of money, which just got a new tranche of capital to expand
The company told TechCrunch that it has raised a $6.3 million round led by Tiger Global. Other investors include Rainfall and 468 Capital, along with angels such as Teachable’s Ankur Nagpal and Vouch’s Sam Hodges. The raise came on top of a $1.1 million pre-seed round, bringing Blair’s total capital raised to date at $7.4 million.
A big portion of the venture capital money will go toward doubling or tripling Blair’s San Francisco team, said CEO Mike Mahlkow. It is especially investing in engineering and product, as well as a few senior hires in finance, compliance and the service side.
Source: Tech Crunch