Type Private Number of locations 7 offices Key people Aaron Skonnard (CEO) | Industry Online education Area served Globally Founded 2004, Cedar Valley | |
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Products Online Technical training Headquarters Farmington, Utah, United States Subsidiaries HackHands, TrainSignal, Inc. Founders Aaron Skonnard, Fritz Onion, Keith Brown, Bill Williams Profiles | ||
We are pluralsight
Pluralsight is a privately held online education company that offers a variety of video training courses for software developers, IT administrators, and creative professionals through its website. Founded in 2004 by Aaron Skonnard (current CEO), Keith Brown, Fritz Onion, and Bill Williams (no longer with the company), the company has its headquarters in Farmington, Utah. In September 2014, it stated it uses more than 600 subject-matter experts as course authors, offers close to 4,000 courses in its catalog, has more than 750,000 individual subscribers and more than 6,000 corporate clients.
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History
Pluralsight was founded in 2004 as a classroom training company that involved sending an instructor to a business or training event. By 2007, the company shifted its emphasis to online video training.
Since 2011, the company has seen rapid growth. It has been named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies, ranking as the #9 Top Education company and the #19 Top Utah company.
Business model
Through a subscription business model, Pluralsight provides online professional tech training to individual and business customers. The company pays its course authors a royalty, based on how often their videos are viewed. In 2013, author Scott Allen became the first of its authors to earn over US$1 million in royalties from his courses.
Venture funding
When Pluralsight first started, all four of its founders contributed US$5,000 each. For the first nine years, the company and its founders received no outside funding. As of March 2015, the company has received US$169 million in venture funding.
In December 2012, the company raised US$27.5 million in Series A funding from Insight Venture Partners. On March 18, 2014 it received an additional US$2.5 million in Series A Funding. On August 27, 2014, it received US$135 million in Series B funding from Insight Venture Partners, Iconiq Capital, and Sorenson Capital—reported at the time to be the largest venture funding round ever received by a Utah company. Co-founder and CEO Aaron Skonnard stated that after this round of funding, the company's valuation had increased from less than US$100 million in 2012 to nearly US$1 billion.
Acquisitions
For most of its history, Pluralsight grew its author base and course catalog from within. Starting in 2013, it has acquired a number of e-learning and education companies to bolster its technology, course offerings, and executive leadership.
On July 24, 2013, it acquired PeepCode, a provider of Open Source training to developers, for an undisclosed amount. This added about 100 new courses in the Open Source category to Pluralsight's course catalog, expanding it beyond its traditional realm of offerings focused mainly on developers who worked on Microsoft technologies.
On August 5, 2013, it acquired Chicago-based TrainSignal, a company providing training for Information technology personnel, for US$23.6 million. It absorbed 35 TrainSignal employees, and maintained its office in Chicago as a satellite.
On October 31, 2013, Pluralsight acquired Tekpub, producer of a series of screencasts on new development technologies, for an undisclosed amount. Co-founder Rob Conery joined Pluralsight, and continues to produce training videos under its brand. Other high-profile authors from Tekpub, including Jon Skeet and Scott Hanselman, also became Pluralsight authors.
On April 9, 2014, Pluralsight announced it acquired Digital-Tutors, a company providing training for creative professionals, for US$45 million. This acquisition expanded the company's training catalog to more than 3000 titles, broadening its topic coverage to all aspects of software design, Computer programming, maintenance and operations. Approximately 30 employees from Digital-Tutors joined Pluralsight. Pluralsight maintained the former Digital-Tutors headquarters in Oklahoma City as a satellite office.
On November 19, 2014, Pluralsight announced it had acquired Smarterer, an online skills assessment platform, for US$75 million. Based in Boston, Smarterer was founded in 2010 and was backed by Google Ventures, among others. Smarterer founder and CEO Dave Balter stated that his entire 18-person staff would remain with the company.
On January 26, 2015, Pluralsight announced its acquisition of Orlando-based Code School, an online training site offering video courses and exercise-based lessons related to entry-level and intermediate coding and programming. It was reported that the acquisition was for US$36 million. Code School's office, and its team of 39 full-time employees, remain open in Orlando.
On July 9, 2015, Pluralsight announced its acquisition of HackHands for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2013, San Francisco-based HackHands provides on-demand live assistance for technology learners via video and audio chat, instant messaging, and screen sharing. The HackHands acquisition marked Pluralsight's seventh deal in less than two years.
Partnerships and community involvement
In October 2012, Microsoft and Pluralsight announced a partnership making Pluralsight courses available to MSDN subscribers and through its DreamSpark, BizSpark, WebsiteSpark, and Engineer Excellence programs. The customized "Pluralsight Starter Subscription" consisted of several Visual Studio 2012 courses. In November 2014, the two companies partnered again, giving MSDN subscribers a 12-month access to a selection of Pluralsight's courses.
In May 2013, Pluralsight launched a free programming coding bootcamp for kids ages 10 and up to help teach coding in school.
In 2014, Pluralsight partnered with the state of Utah's Office of Economic Development to offer Utah K-12 teachers a free one-year subscription to their training library. Utah Governor Gary Herbert valued the donation between US$5 million and US$10 million.
Pluralsight also partnered with LaunchCode in November 2014 to help candidates secure jobs in technology by offering one year of free access to the Pluralsight course library. In December 2014, the company supported the "Hour of Code" movement by hosting an hour of code for a week. More than 200 students across the state participated.