From Hacking Facebook to Hacking Education: The Anshuman Singh & Scaler Dossier
He saw tech education was broken while building products at Facebook. So he quit to build Scaler, a $710 million ed-tech unicorn. This is his story.
The world of tech is filled with founders who build solutions to problems they see in the market. But for Anshuman Singh, the co-founder of Scaler, the problem wasn’t something he observed from a distance—it was a personal, daily frustration he faced while building elite engineering teams at Facebook. He realized that traditional university education was failing to produce industry-ready engineers, creating a massive chasm between talent and opportunity. This single, painful insight became the bedrock of Scaler, his ambitious venture to build an "online Stanford."
In a candid conversation on the Founder Thesis podcast, Anshuman detailed his entire journey from competitive programmer to a founder rewriting the rules of tech education. You can watch the full episode here to dive deeper into the insights that built his company. This dossier captures the story, strategy, and vision of Anshuman Singh and his mission to re-engineer learning.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
🚀 The Founder's Journey: Forging a Vision
Anshuman Singh's path seems almost perfectly designed to lead him to create Scaler. His identity is deeply rooted in the culture of elite engineering, problem-solving, and a relentless drive for excellence.
The Coder Prodigy: His journey began not in a corporate boardroom, but in the trenches of competitive programming. As a student at the prestigious International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad, Anshuman became a two-time ACM ICPC World Finalist, a competition often called the Olympics of programming. This wasn't just an academic achievement; it was a trial by fire in high-stakes problem-solving that would later become a core pillar of Scaler's curriculum.
The Facebook Crucible: In 2010, at a time when Facebook rarely hired engineers directly from India for its US office, Anshuman landed a coveted role. He was an early member of the team that built and scaled some of the platform's most critical features, including Facebook Chat and Messenger. This experience gave him a masterclass in building systems for a billion users.
However, his most formative experience came when he was tasked with helping build Facebook's new London engineering office. He was on the front lines of recruitment, and the skills gap became a tangible bottleneck."I had to recruit new talent for projects, which turned out to be a tedious job. Even after screening hundreds of resumes and conducting interviews, we were only able to find the right talent in single digits. Almost 90% of the candidates we interviewed did not have the necessary tech skills that were required for the job."
This frustration was the entrepreneurial spark. He reconnected with his college friend and fellow IIIT alumnus, Abhimanyu Saxena, who had faced the exact same recruiting challenges while scaling his own team at the e-commerce startup Fab.com. With a shared mission and a financial cushion from their tech careers, they left their jobs and launched their first venture, InterviewBit, in 2015.
💡 The Venture: The "Aha Moment" That Built Scaler
InterviewBit was the perfect MVP. It was a free, gamified platform for interview preparation that allowed the founders to build a massive community of over two million developers and gather invaluable data on where they struggled. But the business model of charging companies for hiring was operationally heavy and wasn't solving the root problem.
The real breakthrough—the "aha moment"—came from analyzing their most successful users.
"We talked to about 100 people who had used our platform and made incredible career transitions. A surprising fact we discovered was that 98 out of those 100 people had an elder cousin, sibling, or a close senior who was already working at a good company and helping them prepare. That was such a high correlation that it became an eye-opener."
This led to the foundational insight that drives Scaler today:
"Education is not about content. Content is hygiene. The real secret sauce of education is engagement, addiction, and the ecosystem you create."
With this new thesis, they pivoted. In 2019, Scaler was born—a premium, high-touch "tech-versity" designed to mimic the immersive support system of an elite university like Stanford, but make it accessible online.
⚙️ How Scaler's Engine Works
Scaler’s model is deliberately designed to solve for the failures of traditional online courses (MOOCs), where completion rates are notoriously low. It’s built on four key pillars:
🎓 1:1 Mentorship: Every student is paired with a mentor who is a working professional at a top tech company like Google, Amazon, or Microsoft, providing personalized guidance and real-world context.
💻 Live, Interactive Learning: Instead of pre-recorded videos, the emphasis is on live, cohort-based classes. This fosters accountability and a dynamic peer-to-peer learning environment.
🤝 A Thriving Community: Scaler actively cultivates a strong community through online forums, city-based meetups, and even cricket matches. This network becomes a lifelong resource for career opportunities and problem-solving.
🎮 An "Addictive" Product: The platform is engineered for engagement. With gamification, leaderboards, and daily streaks, it keeps students hooked. The results are astounding: the average user spends 186 minutes per day on the platform—more time than many people spend on Netflix.
📈 Scaler by the Numbers: Funding, Revenue, and Impact
Scaler’s success in delivering outcomes has attracted top-tier global investors and fueled its rapid growth.
Total Funding: $76.5 million from leading investors including Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India), Tiger Global, and Lightrock India.
Valuation: $710 million (as of its Series B fundraise in February 2022), making it a "soonicorn."
Revenue & Growth: The company reported revenue from operations of approximately $46 million (₹384.5 crore) in FY24. In the podcast, Anshuman mentioned the company was at a $45 million annualized booking run rate and aimed to cross $100 million before June of next year.
Student Outcomes: The model's success is reflected in its graduates. The average salary increase for a Scaler alumnus is a staggering 2.7x.
Strategic Acquisitions: A core part of Scaler's growth strategy is acquiring smaller companies to integrate new capabilities, including Applied Roots ($50M deal), Coding Minutes ($1M), and Coding Elements ($1M).
🌍 The Vision: Building the Future of Education
Anshuman Singh’s ambition extends far beyond just upskilling. He is focused on building an institution that can fundamentally replace the traditional university model for tech-focused careers.
Skills vs. Degrees: While Scaler’s brand was built on prioritizing skills over credentials, the company has pragmatically expanded into formal education. It now offers a four-year residential undergraduate program in partnership with BITS Pilani and a postgraduate business program, recognizing that degrees are still a practical necessity for visas and other systemic requirements.
Long-Term Philosophy: Anshuman operates with a clear philosophy of building for the long run, even if it means making decisions that are counterintuitive for short-term revenue. This includes no longer charging companies for hiring Scaler graduates, instead using those partnerships to create a better, unbiased, skills-first hiring process.
The Future is Tech: He firmly believes that every industry is becoming a tech industry, creating an exploding demand for skilled engineers and data scientists. Scaler’s focus will remain on tech, with plans to expand internationally and launch programs for students right after high school, creating a true alternative to a four-year college degree.
Anshuman Singh isn't just building a company; he's architecting a new pipeline for human potential, one designed to power the next generation of technology and innovation.
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