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The idea of a coding school that charges no upfront tuition was intriguing to Ne-Yo.The Grammy winning artist (famous for songs like "Miss Independent") is certainly not the first musician to invest in Silicon Valley, but he's one that wants to put his talents and money into helping to solve the diversity challenges facing the tech industry.
On Thursday, Holberton School plans to announce that Ne-Yo invested in the coding academy's most-recent $2.3 million funding round and is joining its Board of Trustees as a result.
"This is not a realistic career for people who came up like me. It's more realistic to do what I do, be a singer or an NBA star," Ne-Yo said during a party celebrating his new role at Holberton hosted by Trinity Ventures on Wednesday night in San Francisco.
"Thanks to these guys it now is," Ne-Yo said. "I'm going to use this platform to spread the world."
While there are plenty of coding schools and bootcamps abound, the Holberton School is taking a different approach by charging no upfront tuition for students to enroll. Instead, graduates have to contribute about 17% of their salaries or internship pay to the school for three years after graduation.
Already, Holberton's free (at least upfront) approach has helped the coding school attract a wide-range of people wanting to break into the tech industry. Women constitute 40% of its students, and 53% of the student body is people of color.
Specifically, Ne-Yo wants to attract more Hispanics and blacks to the coding school based in San Francisco.
The school is able to keep its costs low by not hiring formal teachers or giving lectures. Instead much of the curriculum is based around students working on specific projects and helping teach each other. They also work with mentors from companies like Uber and LinkedIn to finish the two-year program. Already, some of Holberton's students have interned or been hired at companies like Apple, NASA, and Dropbox.
While the coding school is still only about 18 months old, it's early success is already attracting heavy-hitters like Ne-Yo, along with existing investors including Trinity Ventures, Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang, and Jerry Murdock, co-founder of Insight Venture Partners.
"I'm very, very excited about this," Ne-Yo said at the celebration. "Let's make Holberton one of the biggest schools on the face of the planet."