Startup Spotlight #199: Wilco
Wilco's mission is to empower every developer, regardless of their background or skill level, to unlock their full potential.
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I got the chance to speak with On Freund, co-founder and CEO of Wilco, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.
On Freund is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wilco, a startup dedicated to empowering developers to unlock their full potential. Throughout his career, Freund has managed development teams, most notably as VP of Engineering at Handy and WeWork. Besides these roles and others, he is also a proud angel investor and a humble former VC. Freund is married to an immunologist and is a father of 3. Outside of work you'll most likely see him playing drums or tinkering with home automation.
Startup Spotlight: Wilco
Problem: The only way for software engineers to practice their skills is on the job, but that’s slow, inefficient, and doesn’t provide equal opportunity.
Market: Corporate Learning & Development is expected to be over $400B by 2025. With Software Engineering being 5% of L&D (conservative assumption), it’s expected to be over $20B. Going bottom up, multiplying about 20M developers, and an L&D budget of $1,000/year, we get to a similar number.
Solution: Wilco is a “flight simulator” for software engineers, where they accelerate their professional development by acquiring and practicing skills at their own pace. To gain invaluable hands-on experience, developers join a fantasy company where simulated co-workers send them on quests such as finding a bug in production, deploying a frontend app, or redesigning a legacy component.
Team: Wilco was founded by three experienced engineers. We assembled around us a multidisciplinary team that includes narrative designers, training specialists, and storytellers — together with a top-tier engineering department.
Recent Success:
Freund: We’re very proud of the team we’ve been able to build, both because of who they are and what they say about Wilco as a product. While others are struggling to hire top-tier developers, we keep fielding inquiries from some of the best devs in the country. They’re truly excited about our mission, and those of them who have tried the platform is somehow even more excited. It means we’re on the right track! And our team keeps growing faster than we originally expected simply because there are people who approach us to who we can’t say no to.
Recent Struggle:
Freund: Market education. Wilco is fundamentally unlike anything devs are familiar with — not just in terms of product but even the idea itself of unbundling professional development from work projects. The value we convey is clear to them, but our claimed ability to provide it puzzles them before they see the product in action. Getting to that “aha” moment is still a challenge we’re trying to solve.
Founder Advice:
Freund: Build a company culture you would want to experience yourself, and start doing it on day one of your company’s existence. I’ve experienced different work cultures throughout my career, and at Wilco, I’m not only building a platform for developers but a workplace where I myself would choose to work.
Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:
Freund: Here are three founders you should check out next!
Assaf Glazer, Founder of Nanit: Assaf disrupted the nursery. Now he’s working on disrupting your kitchen.
May Piamenta, Founder of Vee: Vee platform provides teams with a simple and interactive way to create, manage and engage around their social impact with a click of a button.
Yuval Hazaz, Founder of Amplication: Amplication is an open‑source low-code for backend developers.
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