Basecamp Skills, formerly known as The Fearless Academy, has undergone a major rebrand and celebrated with over £2m in funding from The Department for Education (DfE)’s Skills For Life Bootcamp programme.
Basecamp Skills, which was set up by the Social Chain co-founder and former COO Dominic McGregor, along with fellow entrepreneurs David Newns and Charlie Yates, now sits within venture capital firm Fearless Adventures’ sister company, Basecamp. Its mission to help close the digital marketing skills gap and provide individuals with life-changing opportunities remains.
The award-winning training academy will use the funding to launch its 12-week digital marketing bootcamps nationwide, with central locations in Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham. Basecamp Skills is already recruiting for its sixth cohort, starting on the 9th of October 2023.
Basecamp Skills delivers fully-funded industry-led digital marketing training to help individuals over the age of 19 looking to upskill, retrain or kick-start a career in digital marketing. It promises every single learner access to a fully-funded training course, delivered by industry marketing professionals, and a job interview should they wish to pursue a career in the sector.
To date, it has successfully enrolled over 200 learners across 7 cohorts, with 48% being from gender minorities and 48% from an ethnic minority background.
Basecamp has rebranded with the aim of asserting the firm’s position within the education space, as well as introducing its talent arm of the business, Basecamp Talent.
Spearheaded by head of talent Emily Moffat, Basecamp Talent is a talent service for founders who aspire to build exceptional teams, as well as support students to find employment once they have completed the digital skills Bootcamp.
Amy Wild, Former CCO of Northcoders and Basecamp director, said: “Our digital marketing bootcamp is simply different. We consistently enhance our curriculum to ensure that we are upskilling the next generation of ambitious talent with the skills desperately needed by the industry. Every life we positively impact cements our mission and we are on track to upskill 1,000 individuals by 2025.”
Moffat, added: “Basecamp Talent was born out of the need for a genuine talent service, offering trust, transparency and support. After speaking to over 1,000 founder-led businesses, there was an obvious recurring problem; hiring and retaining the right people. It was clear, that after spending time sourcing best-in-class people for our investment portfolio, we should extend our services to the wider business ecosystem.”
Dominic McGregor, Fearless Adventures and Basecamp co-founder said: “We launched The Fearless Academy with the aim of bridging the digital skills gap. With this rebrand, we are confident that it will enable us to further pursue our mission and scale our efforts in creating an inclusive environment, accessible to everyone seeking to acquire essential digital skills.”
