He is Argentinian, his family emigrated in 2001 and created a million dollar startup in Silicon Valley that teaches programming and remote working.

“I grew up in Argentina, went to school in Europe, started a business in San Francisco, taught in Africa and lived in Asia for a year. I saw that talent is everywhere, but not the opportunities ”.

This is how it appears on your business website Ariel Camus (34), the Argentinian entrepreneur who takes care of Microverse, a company born in Silicon Valley, in the United States, and which is on the lips of the investment world. It is dedicated to one of the “hottest” segments for those who invest in companies with a projection: edtech, startups that use technology to drive innovative learning systems.

“Emigrating taught me that the place where one is born does not determine the opportunities of life”

Camus was born in Mendoza and his family, headed by a dentist and a psychologist, emigrated from Argentina in the midst of the 2001 crisis. Today, he does not hesitate to define himself as a citizen of the world who “loves his country. “. Yes Microverse, your business has that DNA. It was born in 2018 focused on remote and global working, a trend that has “exploded” with the pandemic. This is why the startup is a boom that is in the crosshairs of investors around the world: raised over $ 3 million initial years ago and in the next few hours there will be an important announcement in this regard and key to the future of the company.

“We’re the only company crazy enough to do this on a global scale”, says Camus de Mendoza from Spain, where he settled last year, when the pandemic took him around the world.

The axis of Microverse it is collaborative learning with a global reach. They teach software programming and other digital careers, but they also have a strong focus on the soft skills required to work remotely, something universities rarely teach and is vital these days. They have around 1,000 students from 118 countries, including Argentina, and a very particular economic model. They don’t charge anything up front: students start paying $ 15,000 in “installments” only if, upon graduation, they get a job that earns them at least $ 1,000 a month.

The program – which requires a high level of English and availability full time– lasts 10 months, seven full-time and three focused on getting a job. At this point, the graduation ceremony becomes effective. The way to learn is not with conventional teachers, but in a project environment similar to real remote work. “We have Argentinian students who work for Mercado Libre, Globant and other companies in the United States. The people of the region are very important to the company “, explains the entrepreneur.

– How do you define the value of the race and why is it the same in all countries?

– The price is the same in all countries and this encourages us to get international student jobs. We have set this number so that access to this position means a significant salary increase for students who are 75% from Latin America and Africa. We have a revenue sharing agreement with them, where each pays us a total of $ 15,000, but only when they start receiving the base salary of $ 1,000 per month. They pay us 15% of that salary. We charge this because the employment opportunities for our students are not the same as those at a local university. Average salary growth, after following our program, is 240 percent. 96% of students are employed six months after graduation. 92% work remotely and 75% do so internationally in their first job after Microverse. Then our coaches They help them advance in their careers, prepare for interviews and negotiate salaries. The increase in the second job is 40 percent on average. That’s why we charge more.

Ariel was 12 when he arrived in Spain with his family, fleeing the corralito and a severe political and economic crisis. Already then it was a nerd computer and electronics fanatic. “Emigrating has taught me that where you are born does not determine your opportunities in life. It is a truth that has accelerated with the pandemic. You don’t have to give up on everything to access incredible opportunities. It is something that we have already seen before that was going to happen, but it did not take 10 years, it is now ”, he confides.

He lived in the Canary Islands and at 16 he went to study telecommunications engineering in Madrid. There, in 2009, his first project was born, Tourist eye, an app that offered offline maps to people who traveled the world and had no data on their cellphones or Wi-Fi.

– How did it go with this first adventure?

– On iPhone it exploded and we had 1 million downloads. We were competing with other companies that were all based in San Francisco and in 2012 I went there to look for capital. I did not know anyone. When I first met an investor, they told me I was wasting my time and no one was going to give me money. It was the first and the worst meeting of my life. Then, with a lot of work, everything was easier. Two months later we entered the accelerator 500Startups and years later I received an email from the CEO of Planet alone. We had dinner, he made us an offer to buy, and they finally took the business for a seven-figure dollar amount.

– How did the idea of ​​Microverse come about?

– In the transition to start working for Lonely, I went to Africa, Burundi, and I spent a month teaching computer science in a small town in the north of the country. It was beautiful and frustrating: from the mecca of tech to people who were studying hard but were totally out of touch with opportunities. I realized that we are wasting human potential enormously. Perhaps similar to what would have happened to me if I had stayed in Mendoza. And I’m not talking about being happy, but about development, potential and having possibilities. I returned to San Francisco, met the founder of Github, and saw how remote working was going to change the world forever. But you have to learn to work this way for it to truly be a bridge between talent and global opportunity. It was not going to be enough for us to teach programming. This is how the idea of ​​my company was born, with a focus on collaborative learning, peer learning. In 2018, within a week, my wife and I quit our jobs, sent our dog with my mother-in-law to El Salvador, and we moved to Asia to start the business.

– Why this launch so far?

– To relieve me. I grabbed two students, one from Serbia and one from Kenya, and put them to work on a collaborative project. Others were addicted, from Canada and the United States, and more. The first framed the second and I realized that the collaborative structure was working. Not only that: they started to find jobs. Kevin, the boy from Kenya, came to Microsoft and the mother enthusiastically called me to thank me. Microverse worked. It works and will work better and better for hundreds of people around the world.

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