Should you’re a fan of the punk scene from the early 2000s, you might acknowledge Nick Gross, the drummer for the band Goldfinger.
Now he’s empowering younger folks to pursue their passions by way of his profession exploration platform, Find Your Grind. The platform highlights different professions not often emphasised in colleges, together with being a pop-punk band member, content material creator, social media supervisor, and even knowledgeable esports participant.
The corporate introduced on Tuesday a $5 million Sequence A funding spherical, bringing its whole funding to $8 million. The spherical was led by Echo Funding Capital, with help from Gross’ funding agency, Gross Labs. The funding will assist broaden the corporate’s “profession readiness” applications throughout the U.S.
Gross started his music profession at 17 when his highschool band, Open Air Stereo, gained important publicity after being featured on MTV’s hit actuality collection “Laguna Seashore.” Impressed by his expertise, Gross got here up with the concept for Discover Your Grind after bringing college students into his studio and seeing firsthand the challenges they face when exploring profession choices, typically resulting from an absence of publicity in conventional colleges.
“Younger individuals are coming into a quickly altering world of labor,” Gross instructed TechCrunch. “As college students put together to depart college and enter into their skilled careers, many are doing so with no sturdy sense of who they’re, what they need, or learn how to navigate their subsequent steps after college. Discover Your Grind provides them the instruments to discover not simply what careers are on the market, however what paths swimsuit their strengths, pursuits, and visions for what they need their futures to appear like,” he stated.
Standard profession steering typically focuses on salaries and promotions, however this may really feel disconnected from the quickly evolving job market that the brand new era is coming into. Many of those college students not aspire to grow to be docs, engineers, or attorneys. In actual fact, the World Economic Forum predicts that roughly 92 million jobs gained’t exist in 2030.
Conventional profession exploration additionally tends to miss the emotional facet of selecting a profession that aligns with an individual’s values and desired life-style.
The startup’s platform focuses on 4 key competencies: self-awareness, profession consciousness, social consciousness, and motion consciousness. It additionally contains a Way of life Evaluation that helps college students determine three life-style paths based mostly on their preferences. For instance, they may uncover that they align with the roles of an entertainer, a creator, or a humanitarian. College students then get a tailor-made next-step plan for what to do after commencement.
Moreover, college students can entry movies and interactive classes, and a gaggle of mentors supplies sensible recommendation about their very own profession beginnings and the steps they took to attain success. Notable mentors embrace Tony Hawk, Tony Hoffman, and can.i.am, amongst others.
There’s additionally an AI-powered “Reflective Coach” that gives personalised suggestions and encourages college students to dive deeper into their solutions for higher insights.
Discover Your Grind additionally runs workforce growth initiatives, comparable to life-style festivals, that give college students real-world expertise. The corporate is rolling out its first program in Oklahoma Metropolis, working with native colleges and coaching facilities to assist college students uncover job alternatives of their hometowns that align with their life-style preferences.
The corporate plans to launch extra applications in further cities sooner or later.
To date, Discover Your Grind has helped 100,000 college students, in accordance with the corporate. Gross instructed us he hopes that “over 1,000,000 college students” be a part of the platform to be “extra future-ready.”
