Loading
A Tampa firm that offers coding classes for the masses, gr8code, is in a unique spot: It recently received a four-year, $5.4 million capital commitment.
“I'm pinching myself,” gr8code co-founder and CEO Virginia Barnett tells Coffee Talk. “I'm ridiculously happy to have this opportunity.”
The unusual part for gr8code, run out of a historic bungalow in Ybor City, is that it's a tech startup, it's a woman-owned business, and it's in Florida. Entities with those three attributes, says Daniel James Scott, associate director of entrepreneurship at University of South Florida St. Petersburg, aren't traditionally high on the list for most investment firms. Scott, in a statement, says he believes this funding, from Lithia-based OmniElite, is the largest for a women-owned tech startup in the state.
OmniElite lists two other investments in its portfolio. One is for the Zoo Nightclub, which, according to the OmniElite website, is a forthcoming chain of nightclubs with potential locations that include Ybor City, Miami, Las Vegas and Dubai. A second investment is in a mixed-use hotel and luxury condo complex near the Tampa Convention Center.
“This is not a typical investment for us,” OmniElite President and CEO Steve Brickner says in a release, “but after meeting with the gr8code team and several of our key investors, it quickly became apparent that we wanted to be involved in this tech initiative.”
The gr8code model is to train students in a variety of programs, including HTML and JavaScript, and prepare them for jobs in a compressed timeline. The cost isn't cheap: A nine-week class runs $10,000, with a $1,500 deposit due five days after acceptance. Financing is available.
The payoff, says the firm, is the classes will allow graduates to think and work like a developer. Students also get a MacBook Pro and help with interviews and job offers. The expectation for a student who
successfully completes the $10,000 boot camp, the firm says in the statement, is “almost immediate employment in high paying jobs with salaries averaging $55,000.”
Barnett co-founded gr8code with fellow entrepreneurs Phuong Nguyen Cotey and Deborah Alvarez Neff in April. Barnett previously ran operations at Florida Next Foundation, a small business and entrepreneurial resource center founded by former Florida chief financial officer and onetime gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink in 2011. The foundation is run from an office inside Tampa Bay WaVE, a nonprofit that supports tech entrepreneurs and startups. Cotey, currently communications director at Florida Next, is a former newspaper reporter, including a decade with the Tampa Bay Times. Neff is director of operations at Tampa Bay WaVE.
This story was updated to reflect the correct spelling of gr8code.
Your free article limit has been reached this month.
Subscribe now for unlimited digital access to our award-winning business news.
Join thousands of executives who rely on us for insights spanning Tampa Bay to Naples.
