Vancouver-based startup Riipen secures $5 million CAD investment

Vancouver-based tech startup Riipen, a developer of a popular platform that enables students at postsecondary institutions to connect with real-world projects from companies, announced this week it has secured a $3.75 million USD ($5 million CAD) investment from impact investors Reach Capital, along with Strada Education Network, SEI Ventures, EduLab Capital Partners, Entangled Group, Atrium, and Arizona State University (ASU) ScaleU.

Founded by undergraduate students in 2015, Riipen now serves more than 5,000 employers and 40,000 students at 150 colleges and universities globally.

“Riipen is a powerful, proven platform that enables companies to rapidly identify and recruit students to work on projects,”said company founder and CEO Dana Stephenson.

“The opportunity to scale project-based learning with Riipen at the largest public research university in the nation holds great promise,” said Sukhwant Jhaj, ASU vice provost for academic innovation and student achievement.

“Project-based, real-world experience has a profound impact on students,”said Stephenson. “But this kind of experience is out of reach for too many of them.”

To address this, said Stephenson, “we created Riipen to change the relationship between educational institutions and employers. Working with Riipen, educational institutions can better serve students by getting them the experience that they need—now.”

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To date, Riipen has enabled 40,000 students at 150+ post-secondary schools to do 1.5 million hours of applied learning with 5,000 companies.

Its mission, the company said, is “to help students of all backgrounds and geographies to boost their skills, gain career clarity, network, and find jobs they love.”