Leland

Leland is a coaching marketplace founded in 2021 that connects ambitious individuals with expert coaches for career and educational goals. The platform covers more than 50 categories, among them MBA admissions, management consulting, product management, investment banking and career coaching, and it uses matching algorithms to pair clients with coaches. Since launch, tens of thousands of people have used the service, drawing on a roster of thousands of coaches. The company has raised $19M.

The company's technical work centres on its marketplace platform, its matching algorithms and the online coaching infrastructure that delivers sessions. Leland describes itself as outcome-focused: its stated purpose is to help people reach specific goals rather than to provide open-ended mentoring. Its core values are openness, an action bias and what it calls "Always Be Coaching".

In hiring, Leland says it weighs potential over pedigree, looking at the slope of a candidate's learning rather than at their background. It reports building its team from people who have worked at Amazon, Google, Uber and LinkedIn, and states that it is deliberate about maintaining a supportive environment in which employees pursue their own career goals while helping others do the same.