We are delighted to announce Edge’s investment into Ed-tech platform Springpod. Springpod is the UK’s leading career and university experiential learning provider for young people, working with over 300 employers and universities. It solves the problem of university and early career drop-outs. Springpod supports two key groups: Firstly, school students, helping them gain meaningful, high-quality virtual tasters of university courses, before they apply.

The virtual tasters count towards UCAS points. Secondly, the company provides online work experience for university students as they take their first steps into a career. Clients include Airbus, Siemens, Vodafone, Fujitsu, the NHS and many more.

• 400,000 students now have a Springpod account and the company’s latest impact stats show that on average, pre-programmes, 50% of students say they have a poor awareness of the associated career. 50% say they are not confident about finding a job in the future. Post-programme, 99% of students report they have a “good” or “excellent” awareness of the career. 91% of students are “confident” or “very confident” about finding a job in the future.
• Springpod serves a diverse audience, with 45% of students identifying as BAME, 63% as female. 22% report being recipients of free school meals.
• Springpod develops highly engaged, diverse and prepared talent pipelines for leading employers and universities.
• Springpod will utilise the funding to expand internationally and deliver on their mission to democratise access to career opportunity for every young person.

“We are delighted to partner with Edge and are excited to draw upon their extensive creative economy expertise. We pride ourselves on creating Netflix-quality content for young people to experience careers and courses with leading employers and universities.

Edge’s focus on driving social mobility for young people and backing innovative, creative start-ups aligns perfectly with Springpod and we are excited to scale our impact together from the 400,000 young people we have supported to date to millions.”

• Sam Hyams, CEO of Springpod

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Springpod, joining them on this next phase of growth and supporting the team to achieve its mission of enabling every young person to experience a university course or career before they apply.

Due to a lack of careers advice, young people are often choosing the wrong career or course because they have little experience of what these involve. This has huge implications for their futures and astronomical costs for universities & employers as students drop out.

Springpod offers a compelling solution, by partnering with outstanding universities and employers to create interactive, experiential learning programmes. These programmes empower the next generation and enable them to take their future into their own hands, by giving them equal access to opportunity.”