Jolt aims to go head-to-head with higher education
"Our next big move is to keep increasing and enlarging our learning programs. In the foreseeable future, you will be seeing Jolt go head-to-head with academic programs," said Deutsch.
By EYTAN HALON(From left) Jolt co-founders Nadav Lashem, Nitzan Cohen Arazi, Roei Deutsch and chief product officer Lior Frenkel(photo credit: NITZAN ARGOV)
Learning, says Roei Deutsch, is like eating broccoli. Everyone knows it’s good for you, but you don’t necessarily want it every evening.That thought was at the core of Deutsch’s motivation in 2015 to establish Jolt, an alternative professional learning experience, together with Nadav Lashem and Nitzan Cohen Arazi.“We are feeding a generation that really wants to acquire new skills and wants to advance themselves, but looks at the old education institutions and sees that they do not offer enough of what is current and relevant today,” Deutsch, the company’s chief executive, told The Jerusalem Post.“A very core part of our product is creating learning that people love and get addicted to, and [so they] can actually obtain the learning skills that they truly need.”Every evening, young professionals descend on Jolt’s sleek, modern mini-campuses in Tel Aviv and London, eager to acquire new skills, networking and experiences that can help them in today’s business world.Offering video conference-style lectures on 21st-century work skills, business methodologies straight out of Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley, and the latest know-how on digital tools, Jolt has already enjoyed rapid success, having raised $9 million in funding to date.Now, the young entrepreneurs behind the game-changing approach to education are aiming to challenge the major educational institutions.“Our next big move is to keep increasing and enlarging our learning programs. In the foreseeable future, you will be seeing Jolt go head-to-head with academic programs,” said Deutsch.“We’ll be directly offering alternatives to higher education, and we do see Jolt expanding to multiple locations across Europe and the United States soon.”Deutsch, like his co-founders, was inspired by the training methods that he learned during his military service but which, to his surprise, never reached the civilian market.
“I grew up with a very strong belief that education is counterproductive and goes against your creativity. Then I joined [the] 8200 [Intelligence Corps unit] and went through five months of the most empowering, incredible and uplifting training imaginable,” he said, adding that he concluded his service with a strong desire to disrupt the higher education industry.Aiming to control every aspect of the learning experience, they decided to build Jolt’s campuses from scratch. The company offers a range of monthly and annual memberships according to the student’s needs. Jolt plans to open a second campus in London later this month.Deutsch said Jolt not only teaches the most relevant and current methodologies available, but the “most effective business methodology on the planet.” That methodology is the “start-up method,” Deutsch added, referring to the behavior and culture that enables organizations to create great business successes with few resources.“We’ve seen this methodology create WeWork, the largest office company, and Airbnb, the largest hospitality company. These are huge organizations that grew using the start-up method and leveraging few resources,” he said.“We encapsulated that into a learning program that allows you to achieve anything faster in business. When we do give that program to people who work in organizations, we do believe they become more adept and successful.”
