Issue #8: New growth areas

I wrote this with a robot. They told me to say that.

I’ve figured out a good rhythm for this newsletter. Three weeks on, one week off. It’s a good cadence to aim for. It also helped that last week was Thanksgiving and I went down a huge hole creating a dataset of 100 coding bootcamp graduates from 2015 to see where they are today. 

More on that next week… For today, I wanted to look at a topic suggested by Lex, an AI writing tool created by

Nathan Baschez

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I was tooling around in the editor, looking for new topic ideas and it suggested this one. I didn’t get the tool to write it, but it was incredibly useful for getting unstuck and picking something to write about.

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As I discussed in a previous issue, the business of bridging the gap between education and employment is still growing.

Bootcamps first emerged as a remedial solution to fill this gap. They provided a form of education that schools and universities didn't address. 

After 10 years as the dominant model, the B2C bootcamp has become a little stale. In response, we've seen new providers emerge with different funding models to challenge the incumbents.

But for providers looking for growth, or new entrants looking to own a niche, what areas are worth investing in?

I wanted to spend this issue looking at three topic areas that are worth exploring further right now because there is currently less competition and more opportunity to own the space in these areas.

They are: cyber security, AI literacy, and AR / VR development.

You’ll have seen these topic areas before, but there’s a bit more nuance to it than a clickbait LinkedIn headline.

Let’s get into it.

Literacy to mastery

Digital skills can be broadly construed on a spectrum. The three subject areas outlined (cyber security, AI literacy, and AR / VR development) can be approached from either.

On one end, there are the digital skills needed to work directly with code and technology in roles such as software developer, data scientist, and cyber security expert.

To date, bootcamps have primarily focused on this category. For our three subject areas, the need here is for developers to be upskilled or reskilled in cyber security, AI or AR / VR.

But these jobs still represent a relatively small percentage of the overall workforce. There are just 4.6 million workers employed by technology companies (largely building software) – equivalent to 3% of the total U.S. workforce.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have basic digital literacy. This second category of skills is individuals' ability to use digital tools in traditional work environments, such as creating and editing spreadsheets, using no-code tools, or managing essential CRM tools. 

In relation to our three subject areas, the skills need here is for workers to be able to use the technology as part of their job, not to create the tools.

The requirement for these baseline digital skills has grown two-fold in the last 20 years. Brookings found that, whereas only 44% of U.S. jobs required digital literacy in 2002, 70% did by 2016. 

The digital literacy end of the spectrum is what consultants really mean when they talk about "digital transformation". These skills are needed in a more significant portion of the U.S. workforce than just tech. 

As a recent report from the Innovation Technology & Innovation Foundation points out, at least 75% of the value of data flows over the Internet actually accrues to traditional industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, finance, hospitality and transportation. 

Increasing capability in this industry group, i.e. most people's jobs, has the most significant potential to impact a much larger section of the U.S. workforce.

Viewed through that lens, bootcamps looking for growth have two ends of the market they can focus on. The highly-specialized top end or the distributed, low end.

Bootcamps can support the development of digital skills and job creation across both ends of this spectrum. The three subject areas outlined below can be approached from either.

1. Cyber security

Cyber is a broad term; it means different things to different employers. But there is an unfilled need for comprehensive cyber-literacy for the general population. 

At one end, everyone needs to know how to safeguard their computer against cyber attacks, and there are basic terms that every employee needs to understand. 

On the other hand, there's a need for specialists who can protect an organization from cyber attacks, as well as a need for managers to oversee cyber teams.

That's a lot of different learner personas in this area. And a vast market. Bootcamp providers are nibbling around the edges of this problem for a good reason.

Cybersecurity is anticipated to be the fastest-growing tech job in the U.S. in the coming decade. Bootcamps like CAPSLOCK and Ironhack are tackling the specialist end of the market, but the numbers still need to be bigger. For providers who can figure out a scalable model, there is pent-up demand for hiring graduates in this area. 

2. AI Literacy

Despite AI increasingly being deployed in a range of roles, most knowledge workers need more clarity about how to implement it and how to work with the technology to enhance their jobs. And employers need help with how to define the AI skills they need. 

This is a particular issue for manufacturing, where the shift in digital literacy has been substantial. In 2002, 47% of jobs required only basic digital skills (and 38% required digital literacy, while just 15% required mastery). 

By 2016, the share of advanced manufacturing jobs requiring mastery of digital skills had increased to 34%, and those in the digital literacy tier had increased to 48%. Those needing only the most basic digital skills shrank by nearly 30 percentage points to a mere 18 percent share.

This correlates to a broader (although less extreme) shift in the U.S. workforce, with an increasing number of jobs requiring at least literacy in digital skills. Over 70 percent of U.S. jobs now need literate to mastery levels of digital skills.

Ability to incorporate AI skills will soon become a critical component of manufacturing jobs and many other positions across the entire U.S. economy. Course Report lists 89 bootcamps that provide courses in AI, but this is small compared to the 600 in software development.

3. AR/VR developers

The market for immersive training solutions is expected to grow from $20.6 bn in 2020 to $463.7bn by 2026. Many industries already use AR/VR training to upskill or reskill workers, from manufacturing to hospitality to diversity and inclusion training in offices.

AR/VR training allows workers hands-on experience in low-risk simulation environments. But these experiences have to be built by someone. X.R. Bootcamp and Game Art Institute are two providers already chipping away at this problem – but we can expect more bootcamps to lean in this direction.

The programming languages required are more advanced than a typical bootcamp will teach. AR/VR engineers must be familiar with programming languages such as C++, C#, JavaScript, and Swift. 

Bootcamps have typically not focused on teaching advanced skills, reasoning that the senior end of the market was smaller (true) and less willing to pay (debatable). But bootcamps have created a demand for this type of advanced training. There are over 100,000 graduates of coding bootcamps in North America.

Earlier this week, I did a small sample survey of 50 graduates of coding bootcamps from the top 5 programs in 2015 (the aforementioned hole I went down). 48% of these graduates are now in senior developer roles.

All are looking for ways to evolve their career and are open to the concept of an accelerated learning provider to help them get there.

Looking ahead

For bootcamps looking for new growth areas, choosing which end of the skills spectrum to focus on (digital literacy vs mastery) is almost as important as the topic area. 

Cyber, AI, and VR are three important growth areas for bootcamps, particularly at the advanced end of the skills spectrum. As we can see from the table below, each of the three subject areas is still small compared to software development and data science (although this is changing rapidly with cyber security).

And there is still a lot of opportunity for providers to own specific niches within an industry, e.g. data for agriculture, AI for manufacturing, and V.R. for hospitality. 

As an example, Hypercampus in Germany focuses on I.T. for Healthcare. I’m sure there are plenty more places to look for this type of growth.