Sure the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming tech companies, Built In launched The Future 5 across seven major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five early-stage tech companies, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. Read our round-up of LA’s rising startups from last quarter here.
* * *
Countless software innovations emerge all the time and with heightening frequency in today’s digital age. As such, the amount of engineering opportunities in the tech sector has proportionally increased. However, the prospect of building apps, sites and solutions from scratch can be intimidating to folks who have never even read a line of code.
While it might seem scary, nothing is impossible. Edtech platform Sabio believes that with the right practice and training, anyone can code.
By learning to code, people can open doors to new opportunities they previously wouldn’t have considered. Sabio’s platform is the product of one such success story — that of co-founder and CTO Gregorio Rojas.
Like most of Sabio’s students, Rojas transitioned into software development from a vastly different industry. He graduated from Boston University with a bachelor’s in athletic training and subsequently pursued work in said field. When working with athletes, some of them mentioned shifting career prospects from athletics to computer science due to its more lucrative job prospects.
“They were making [about] $70,000 right out of school. And that was really impactful because, for me, $70,000 was the pinnacle of my career 20 [to] 30 years from today,” Rojas said.
His decision to switch his career path was nearly instantaneous after that.
“I went to night school and over the course of maybe 10 months to a year, I got my first job in software development. And then 18 months later, I found myself switching jobs, making approximately $80,000. ... I made as much as I could possibly have hoped for in my prior career,” Rojas said.
Today, Rojas, alongside his wife and co-founder Liliana Aide Monge, work to help others build the skills needed to undergo the same journey. Sabio offers a coding boot camp that helps train people to enter the technology sector. During Sabio’s 17-week program, students individually complete assignments and then further discuss materials with mentors and peers.
More and more people are going to be able to leverage what is one of the best careers that you can get into nowadays.”
Participants start off learning the basics of HTML and CSS and access introductory-level JavaScript libraries. The program consists of online content and coding exercises as well as daily meetings and lectures that help students progress through increasingly complex topics. Sabio also makes a point of creating a space where students can freely ask questions and learn how to navigate their new social and emotional environments.
Rojas recounted experiencing impostor syndrome when he first began working in software development. He would often be fearful that he didn’t belong among his colleagues due to his previous field of study, or worry that he’d be presented with a task he couldn’t perform. Eventually, that feeling subsided, though Sabio hopes to ensure no one in its program ever feels that way.
“You have to provide support, you have to be there to support them as individuals [and] provide a community for them to be able to grow,” Rojas said. “Whether you’re coming out of college or coming out of the military service, or you’re an accountant or someone in marketing [and] you want to get into technology … we give them all that environment, give them that guidance.”
Sabio has grown exponentially since its founding in 2012. Its very first cohort was a group of four people who’d meet at different spots across LA every weekend to work with Rojas. Now, Sabio has around 30 staff members and trains about 500 to 600 people every year.
Thousands of students have already undergone Sabio’s program, and with each graduating class, the company gathers ideas for improvements. Recently, Sabio added a dashboard for students to track their progress and gamified ways of providing feedback. It plans to improve its student experience even more by further updating and building out these elements.
Rojas looks forward to seeing Sabio’s continued growth and success as the company helps people change their lives by learning to code.
“I’m excited to say that our success rate of job placement is staying pretty consistent which means that as we’re growing, the quality of what we’re doing is not being diminished,” Rojas said. “It means that we can get out to more people and can keep this up, and more and more people are going to be able to leverage what is one of the best careers that you can get into nowadays.”
