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Pluralsight is a privately held online education company that offers training 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, Pluralsight is headquartered in Farmington, Utah. In September 2014, Pluralsight stated it uses more than 400 subject matter experts as course authors, offers more than 3,000 courses in its catalog, has more than 700,000 individual subscribers and more than 6,000 corporate clients.

Business Model
Pluralsight markets its products to individuals, businesses, and educational institutions. Individual plans cost US$29/month. A premium individual subscription, at US$49/month, provides additional features such as offline viewing and other study materials. Yearly plans offer discounts. Business and educational plans do not have standard pricing and are quoted individually.

Pluralsight courses are developed by third-party authors who are paid a royalty based on the number of times their course is viewed. Pluralsight attempts to recruit topic experts as course authors and states that its most successful author to date has earned over US$1M in royalties in one year.

History
Pluralsight was founded as a classroom training company in 2004. By 2007, the company shifted its emphasis to online video training. Pluralsight has seen rapid growth in the last several years. It reported revenues of US$5M in 2011, US$16M in 2012, US$38M in 2013, and project revenues of over US$85M in 2014. The company 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.

Company Milestones

 * 2004: Launched with classroom trainings.
 * 2007: Shifts emphasis to online video training.
 * 2008: Incorporated online learning.
 * 2010: Fully transitioned to online training model.
 * 2012: Posted US$16M in subscription-based billings.
 * Dec 2012: Raised $27.5M in a Series A funding from Insight Venture Partners.
 * 2013: Notable recognitions:
 * Utah Business Fast 50 (No. 21)
 * MountainWest Capital Network Utah 100 (No. 26)
 * Inc. 500 | 5000 (No. 692)
 * Deloitte Technology Fast 500 (No. 202)
 * Utah region Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in the Consumer Products & Distribution category.
 * May 2013: Launched free kids programming suite.
 * May 2013: Opened office in Bangalore, India.
 * Jul 2013: Acquired PeepCode.
 * Jul 2013: Acquired TrainSignal.
 * Oct 2013: Acquired Tekpub.
 * Dec 2013: Author Scott Allen reached US$1M in teaching fees and royalties for all of 2013.
 * Apr 2014: Acquired Digital Tutors.
 * Jun 2014: Received Utah Business Magazine CXO of the Year Award (Greg Woodward).
 * Aug 2014: Raised $135M in a Series B funding, the largest venture funding round ever received by a Utah company, from Insight Venture Partners with additional funding from Iconiq Capital and Sorenson Capital.
 * Aug 2014: Partnered with Utah’s GOED and Stem Action Center Initiative to donate US$5-10M in free Pluralsight access to Utah K-12 teachers.
 * Aug 2014 Utah Fast 50 (No. 15)
 * Aug 2014: Inc 500/5000 list #621
 * Sep 2014: Gold Stevie American Business Award – Best Training Site
 * Nov 2014: Acquired Smarterer.
 * Jan 2015: Acquired Code School.

Venture Funding
Pluralsight has received 3 rounds of funding, totaling US$165M. On Jan 3, 2013, the company received US$27.5M in Series A funding from Insight Venture Partners. On Mar 18, 2014 they received an additional $2.5M in Series A Funding. On Aug 27, 2014, they received $135M in Series B funding from Insight Venture Partners, Iconiq Capital, and Sorenson Capital. The $135M was reported to be the largest venture funding round ever received by a Utah company. Co-founder and CEO Aaron Skonnard stated that the company’s valuation, at the completion of the third round of funding, approached US$1Billion.

Acquisitions
For most of its history, Pluralsight grew its author base and course catalog from within. Starting in 2013, Pluralsight has acquired a number of e-learning companies to bolster its technology, its course offerings, and its executive leadership.

On July 24, 2013, Pluralsight acquired PeepCode, a provider of training to developers on Open Source technologies, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition 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, Pluralsight acquired Chicago-based TrainSignal, a company providing training for IT personnel, for US$23.6M. Pluralsight absorbed 35 TrainSignal employees, maintained its office in Chicago as a Pluralsight satellite, and added founder Scott Skinger to its executive ranks as Vice President of its IT Division. This move helped Pluralsight broaden its offerings into new territories covering IT development and operations.

On October 31, 2013, Pluralsight acquired Tekpub, producer of a series of screencasts covering new development technologies for an undisclosed amount. Co-founder Rob Conery joined Pluralsight, and continues to produce training videos under the Pluralsight brand. Other high-profile authors from Tekpub, including Jon Skeet and Scott Hanselman, became Pluralsight authors as a result of the acquisition.

On April 9, 2014, Pluralsight announced it acquired Digital-Tutors, a company providing training for creative professionals, for US$45M. This acquisition expanded Pluralsight’s training catalog to over 3000 titles, and helped broaden their topic coverage to all aspects of software design, programming, maintenance and operations, for games, apps, business systems, services, and web sites. Approximately 30 employees from Digital-Tutors joined Pluralsight, and Pluralsight maintained the former headquarters in Oklahoma City as its newest satellite office.

On November 19, 2014, Pluralsight announced it had acquired Smarterer, an online skills testing site, for US$75M.

On January 26, 2015, Pluralsight announced its acquisition of Code School, an online site offering courses and video training related to entry-level and intermediate coding and programming. It was reported that the acquisition was for $36M.

Courses
Some of Pluralsight’s most popular courses include:
 * AngularJS: Get Started
 * Building Applications with ASP.Net MVC 4
 * C# Fundamentals with C# 5.0
 * AngularJS Fundamentals
 * ASP.NET MVC 5 Fundamentals
 * Encapsulation and SOLID
 * jQuery Fundamentals
 * Design Patterns Library
 * ASP.NET MVC 4 Fundamentals
 * Object-Oriented Programming Fundamentals in C#

Partnerships
In May of 2011, Microsoft and Pluralsight announced a partnership making Pluralsight courses available to MSDN subscribers and through its DreamSpark, BizSpark, WebsiteSpark and Engineer Excellence programs.

In 2014, Pluralsight partnered with the state of Utah’s Office of Economic Development to offer all Utah K-12 teachers a free one-year subscription to their training library. Utah Governor Gary Herbert valued the donation at between US$5M and US$10M.