We’re thrilled to announce our newest investment in Mia Share’s $6.5M Seed round led by our friends at TTV Capital. Nine Four Ventures is excited to partner with Josh and the Mia Share team to democratize financial access to trade schools and close the skilled labor gap.
Here is a bit more about the business, opportunity and why we invested:
Who is Mia Share, and what do they do?
Mia Share is a tuition payment software platform for trade and technical schools. Its goal is to reduce financial barriers for students and offer applicants a wider selection of flexible payment alternatives. This, in turn, could streamline tuition payment collections for schools by digitizing offline workflows and integrating disparate processes to increase scalability.
Mia Share embeds itself within the trade school application process and allows applicants to select from a flexible menu of payment options that best fit their needs. This reduces the number of applicants trade schools turn away, increases conversation rates with an improved user experience, and gets more students in available seats. Although Mia Share is focused on tuition payments today, it aspires to standardize the back office “plumbing” of trade school financial services and provide a full-stack, end-to-end platform from application to enrollment, paying, servicing, and recruiting. This platform could be the backbone that will enable trade schools to operate more efficiently, offer more courses, expand classes, train more students, and ultimately get more skilled trades people into the workforce faster.
Mia Share was born out of Josh’s previous role at Vertical Harvest, an indoor farming company, where he experienced the pain of having to procure skilled trades with limited supply. The procurement process was slow and expensive, and he discovered that some tradespeople earned more than he did as an Ivy League educated investment banker at Citi in NYC. As he took a deeper dive, he realized that although upward mobility through the trades was alive and well, many potential applicants lacked access and understanding of the tuition payment options at trade schools that could’ve allowed them to matriculate.
What is the market and opportunity?
The four-year university market has received a significant amount of startup founder and investor attention over the years which led to the creation of substantial tech companies like Anthology (fka Blackboard), Blackbaud, Ellucian, and Navient, among others. Sophisticated capital markets infrastructure has also been built to support a broad range of financial alternatives and the servicing of trillions of tuition dollars[1]. These technological and infrastructure developments helped pave a road to higher education that was previously out of reach for many people who couldn’t afford it. Analogous to the evolution of the four-year university market, we believe the same opportunity exists for financial services and technology to impact trade schools.
Skilled trades play a critical role in driving many of the nation’s largest economies. Tradespeople build, fix, maintain, and operate important assets, from single family homes to commercial buildings, airplanes, manufacturing lines, and pretty much any physical good. However, trade schools, which are responsible for training the next generation of mechanics, plumbers, truck drivers, etc., have been overlooked and under invested and have contributed to a deep and widening skilled labor hole.
Why invest?
Nine Four’s team, investors, and expanded network have felt the pain of training, hiring, and retaining tradespeople, which has led us to develop various investment theses in the space. Mia Share’s software fit into an investment thesis we have in the ‘FinTech’ corner of PropTech, whereby democratized access to capital can streamline the onboarding of new talent to enter the space and reduce financial barriers.
We’ve been impressed with the Mia Share team, leadership, and vision, and believe that the relationships they can establish with users (students, schools, employers, lenders, institutional investors) complement the company’s roadmap and long-term vision (more to come on that later!). We believe the opportunity is meaningful on a variety of levels, the time is now, and that it’s the right team to build this.
If you’re interested in joining the team to build the future of financial services for trade and technical schools, they’re hiring! Congrats again to Josh and the entire team on this milestone. We’re just getting started!
Disclaimer:
This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by Nine Four Ventures. All views expressed herein are the opinions of Nine Four Ventures employees and are not the views of our affiliates or investors.
