Founder's letter
A message from CEO Aaron Skonnard
Technology has the power to drive progress, but only if there are people who have the right skills to create with it. And with Pluralsight, those people are everywhere. Take a developer who, after spending just 80 minutes on our platform, learned how to build an app that allows people to pay anyone, anywhere with just a voice command.
Or a man in Nigeria who taught himself to code on his phone because he didn't have a laptop. He took a Pluralsight skill assessment and found out he's in the 93rd percentile for JavaScript skills, giving him confidence and credibility as he searches for work.
Or a team of engineers who builds software to monitor the air quality of NICU wards or help nurses identify deadly infections faster.
They’re technologists and businesses across every major industry committed to innovation that matters. And they’re doing it while navigating digital disruption. To succeed, they must compete for talent, build better customer experiences and match the pace of technological change.
These are the people driving change in the world. These are our customers.
And that's why they need us.
Solving for the scarcity of skills
In the U.S. alone, there are half-a-million computing jobs unfilled and this number is expected to double by 2020. This matters to leaders today. In a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, 94% of surveyed executives said their organizations had a moderate or severe digital skills gap. Without the right skills on their teams, even the longest-standing companies risk becoming obsolete. It’s why nearly 50% of the S&P 500 will disappear over the next 10 years.
While these tech leaders struggle to hire and develop talent, the pace of technology is accelerating. I remember decades ago, there were only two programming languages: Cobol and Fortran. Today, there are more than 250 languages and they're constantly being updated. It's hard enough for one developer to keep pace with change like this, but imagine this gap across thousands of technologists. Businesses can't innovate when their most critical teams are behind.
Built by developers, for developers
My co-founders and I started Pluralsight as an instructor-led training company. We were developers who were passionate about helping other developers. And after several years, we realized old-fashioned classroom training wasn’t cutting it. It didn’t allow us to move fast enough or reach developers at scale. We knew that as the pace of technology accelerated, the only way to keep up was with technology.
By moving to the cloud, our platform became accessible by everyone, everywhere—unlocking opportunity for people and making our mission to democratize technology skills a reality.
It allowed us to expand the breadth and depth of our content. We spent a few years consolidating all the best technology content under our brand. Over time, we’ve grown the number of courses to over 6,700 and our author network to 1,400+ experts. Learning from our authors are like learning writing from Ernest Hemingway or investing from Warren Buffet. They are rockstars in the technology community, and they’re a big reason for our success. They provide deep expertise our customers can’t find anywhere else.
Helping CIOs and CTOs develop technology skills at scale
We’ve also been hyper-focused on building enterprise experiences that give leaders unprecedented visibility into their team members’ skills and the ability to align learning to business objectives. With Pluralsight IQ, technologists can measure their skills in under five minutes and know exactly where they stand against their peers. Skills analytics allow managers to see the strengths and skills gaps that exist on their teams. And channels empower organizations to curate content—both within Pluralsight and externally—that aligns to their unique teams, projects or goals.
It’s all to help businesses build tech skills at scale, so they can deliver life-changing products faster.
The center of the universe for tech skills
Businesses simply can’t survive today if they don’t have a supply chain for tech skills. And that’s what our platform provides for teams of 10 or 10,000. For organizations that are shattering the status quo. For individuals who want to advance their careers or build the next big thing. For communities looking to solve their gravest challenges.
It’s why we launched Pluralsight One, our initiative to drive significant, lasting social impact by equipping individuals and nonprofits with tech skills that can change lives and change the world.
Today, we become a public company. Doing so lays a strong foundation for the work we still have ahead of us. When we say our mission is to democratize technology skills, we really mean it. We won’t stop until everyone, everywhere has the opportunity to create with technology.
Pluralsight is leading the digital transformation of companies across all industries. Join us on this amazing journey.
