Pluralsight

Pluralsight was founded in 2004 as a classroom training company that involved sending an instructor to a business or training event. When Pluralsight first started, its four founders each contributed $5,000. For the first nine years, the company and its founders received no outside funding. By 2007, the company shifted its emphasis to online video training.

In December 2012, the company raised $27.5 million in Series A funding from Insight Venture Partners. On March 18, 2014, it received an additional $2.5 million in Series A Funding. On August 27, 2014, it received $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 estimated total valuation had increased from less than $100 million in 2012 to nearly $1 billion.

In December 2016, the company raised an additional $30 million in a Series C round that valued the company over $1 billion. The round included funding from existing investors Insight Venture Partners and Iconiq Capital.

In April 2018, Pluralsight filed for an initial public offering. On May 17, 2018, the company opened on the NASDAQ exchange at a $15 share price, and closed its first day of trading at $20.

The company raised $456 million from investors with a secondary public offering in March 2019.

In 2020, Pluralsight had 18,000 corporate clients which includes 70% of Fortune 500 companies.

In December 2020, Pluralsight announced it would be acquired by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for $3.5 billion. Regulatory approval was expected in the first half of 2021, and Pluralsight would no longer be publicly traded.

In April 2021, Vista Equity Partners successfully completed its acquisition of Pluralsight for $22.50 per share.

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 $1 million in royalties from his courses.

The company also offers a complete SaaS platform for its enterprise users.

Pluralsight was reportedly working with roughly 40% of Fortune 500 companies in 2017 and with 70% by 2019. That year, business-to-business sales accounted for 86% of the company's billings.

In 2017, the company announced its participation in the Pledge 1% movement—a global initiative to encourage corporate philanthropy by asking companies to commit 1% of their efforts towards nonprofit organizations. The company launched Pluralsight One in September 2017, with the goal of improving technology education in the nonprofit sector.

Starting in 2013, Pluralsight expanded through a series of acquisitions. 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, it acquired Chicago-based TrainSignal, a company providing training for Information technology personnel, for $23.6 million. It absorbed 35 TrainSignal employees, and maintained its office in Chicago as a satellite. On October 31, 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 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 $45 million. This acquisition expanded the company's training catalog to more than 3000 titles, broadening its topic coverage to media and design. 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, Pluralsight announced it had acquired Smarterer, an online skills assessment platform, for $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 $36 million. Code School's office, and its team of 39 full-time employees, remain open in Orlando. On July 9, 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 two years.

On July 19, 2016, Pluralsight announced it had acquired Train Simple, a video training company with a focus on Adobe software.