[November 19, 2014]

Pluralsight Acquires Boston-Based Skills Assessment Company Smarterer for $75 Million

Pluralsight, a global leader in online training for technology professionals, today announced that it has acquired Boston-based Smarterer, an innovative skills assessment company, for $75 million. Smarterer assessments enable individuals and enterprises to close the gap between skills they have and skills they need by utilizing crowdsourcing and a proprietary dynamic assessment engine that can validate anyone's skill in as few as 10 questions and 120 seconds.

The company's approach enables people to change as fast as their industries by benchmarking their skills against peers and industry trends. This model allows Smarterer to continuously capture new developments as today's most relevant skills evolve. Smarterer's consumer platform and its enterprise product, Flock, both enable users to author questions, provide feedback, and collaboratively develop skill tests. To date, Smarterer's community has answered more than 56 million questions across 1.7 million test sessions.

Pluralsight's acquisition of Smarterer marks the first step toward creating a more advanced and credible industry standard for skills measurement, one by which individuals and enterprises may quantify and authenticate skill sets against current demands to unlock new professional opportunities.

"The assessment capability Smarterer provides is invaluable in this tech-reliant era, enabling individuals and companies to measure talent and change in pace with their constantly innovating industries," said Aaron Skonnard, co-founder and CEO of Pluralsight. "We are excited to fuel Smarterer's growth and help establish an industry stadard for skill assessments and measurement. Smarterer's distinctive technology paints a clear picture of true skill level, and creates opportunities for more efficient workforce planning and individual self discovery."

The acquisition is Pluralsight's fifth in the past 15 months, and comes on the heels of the Utah-based company raising a $135 million Series B funding round led by Insight Venture Partners, ICONIQ and Sorenson Capital. Pluralsight's previous acquisitions have been focused on expanding the company's library of online video courses for high-tech and creative professionals, which is now the world's largest with more than 3,500 titles.

"Change is the only constant today. Employment skills are evolving more rapidly than ever," said Dave Balter, co-founder and CEO of Smarterer. "We are thrilled to partner with Pluralsight as the momentum heats up in online learning. Together, we can fast-track Smarterer's trajectory, providing individuals and employers with assessments tools that serve as a respected barometer for skill measurement."

Smarterer will continue to operate as an autonomous but aligned company, working with global Fortune 500 companies, education providers, and talent platforms like Care.com and Elance, helping people quantify their skills to remain relevant and competitive in their industries.

Smarterer assessments will be incorporated into Pluralsight's subscription-based learning and development platform, helping individuals and enterprise customers accurately measure learning. While Pluralsight currently offers skills assessments, Smarterer's technology will provide Pluralsight users with more acute, progressive measurement through adaptive testing and the ability to compare skill mastery with others who have taken the assessment. Test results will be linked to Pluralsight's course library to create data-driven learning paths, offering specific course suggestions to help learners improve their scores.

For more information on Pluralsight and Smarterer, visit www.pluralsight.com and www.smarterer.com.

About Pluralsight

Founded in 2004, Pluralsight is the global leader in online learning for professional software developers, IT specialists and creative technologists. As the world's largest curated professional development platform for professionals, the company offers instant access to more than 3,500 courses authored by top experts. With customers in more than 150 countries, Pluralsight serves as a career catalyst, delivering hands-on, practical training for the most in-demand and understaffed jobs of today. For more information, visit Pluralsight.com.

About Smarterer

Smarterer helps individuals and enterprise companies close the gap between the skills they have and the skills they need. By leveraging a library of the freshest crowdsourced tests, our dynamic assessment engine can quantify anyone's skill in as few as 10 questions and 120 seconds. Smarterer's community of Fortune 500 employees and consumers has answered over 56 million questions, across 1.7 million test sessions. For more information, visit Smarterer.com.

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