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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), Pluralsight is headquartered in Farmington, Utah. In September 2014, Pluralsight 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.

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, Pluralsight has seen rapid growth. 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.

Business model
Through a subscription model, Pluralsight provides online professional tech training to individual and business customers. According to the company site, individual plans range from US$29/month to $49/month. The company also offers yearly plans at a discounted rate. Business and academic plans do not have standard pricing and are quoted individually.

Company milestones

 * 2004: Launched with classroom trainings.
 * 2007: Shifts emphasis to online video training.
 * 2010: Fully transitioned to online training model.
 * 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)
 * May 2013: Launched free kids programming suite.
 * May 2013: Opened office in Bangalore, India.
 * Jul 2013: Author Scott Allen reached US$1 million in teaching fees and royalties.
 * 2014: Notable recognitions:
 * Utah Fast 50 (No. 15)
 * MountainWest Capital Network Utah 100 (No. 14)
 * Inc. 500/5000 list #621
 * Deloitte Technology Fast 500 (No. 77)
 * Gold Stevie American Business Award – Best Training Site
 * BIG Awards for Business Finalist
 * Aug 2014: Partnered with Utah's GOED and Stem Action Center Initiative to donate US$5-10 million in free Pluralsight access to Utah K-12 teachers.
 * 2015: Notable recognitions:
 * Forbes America's Most Promising Companies (No. 42)
 * Fortune Magazine Unicorn
 * Utah Startup Awards Startup of the Year

Venture funding
When Pluralsight first started, all four of its founders contributed US$5,000 each. For the next nine years, the company and its founders received no outside funding. As of March 2015, Pluralsight 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 Pluralsight received an additional US$2.5 million in Series A Funding.

On August 27, 2014, Pluralsight received US$135 million in Series B funding from Insight Venture Partners, Iconiq Capital, and Sorenson Capital. The US$135 million was 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, Pluralsight has acquired a number of e-learning and education companies to bolster its technology, course offerings, and executive leadership.

On July 24, 2013, Pluralsight acquired PeepCode, a provider of Open Source training to developers, 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$23.6 million. Pluralsight absorbed 35 TrainSignal employees, and maintained its office in Chicago as a Pluralsight satellite. 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$45 million. This acquisition expanded Pluralsight's training catalog to more than 3000 titles, and helped broaden the company's topic coverage to all aspects of software design, programming, maintenance and operations, for games, apps, business systems, services, and websites. 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 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.

Courses
Pluralsight has a large author base, with more than 600 industry experts contributing content and courses to Pluralsight's training platform. As of January 2015, Pluralsight has close to 4,000 courses available, which have subtitles available in 50 different languages. The company has reported that it is adding 100 new courses every month.

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 and community involvement
In October of 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 including ALM with TFS 2012 Fundamentals, Microsoft Fakes Fundamentals, and IntelliTrace, among others. In November 2014, Pluralsight and Microsoft partnered again, giving MSDN subscribers a 12-month e-learning benefit, granting users access to a selection of Pluralsight's courses.

In May 2013, Pluralsight launched a free programming suite for kids ages 10 and up to help teach coding in school. The initial three courses included Learning Programming Scratch, Android Beginner App Inventor and Teaching Kids Programming.

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 between US$5 million and US$10 million.

Pluralsight also partnered with LaunchCode (co-founded by Square's Jim McKelvey) 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, kicking off the event with Utah's Governor Herbert and the Utah Technology Council. More than 200 students across the state participated in the Hour of Code.