education-to-employment
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Pierre Dubuc
He was 11 when he started building a website to teach people how to code. Two decades later that hobby is OpenClassrooms, and Pierre Dubuc still measures its worth in one thing - jobs.
OpenClassrooms
OpenClassrooms is a Paris-based online education company that turns coursework into jobs. Founded in 2013 by Pierre Dubuc and Mathieu Nebra out of the tutorial site Le Site du Zéro, it offers hundreds of free courses plus accredited, mentor-supported degree and apprenticeship programs in fields like data, AI, cybersecurity and web development. A certified B Corp with roughly 2.5 million monthly users, the company pairs project-based online learning with real-world work placements and a network of thousands of expert mentors, positioning itself as an education-to-employment platform rather than a video-course catalog.
Clasp
Clasp is a Boston-based workforce and fintech company that ties student-loan repayment to employment, helping healthcare systems recruit and retain clinicians. Using a model it likens to military ROTC, employers commit to students before graduation and repay their loans over time in exchange for a multi-year work commitment. Founded in 2018 as Stride Funding and rebranded as Clasp in 2024, the company links education and employment to attack two problems at once: crushing student debt and chronic clinical staffing shortages.