Degreed is an education technology company that is engaged in enabling and recognizing professional and lifelong learning and skills. The platform allows users to learn, develop and measure their skills. Degreed is free for individuals. An enhanced version, Degreed for Enterprise, connects internal learning and talent systems to worldwide ecosystems of free, open and paid learning resources, and is available to organizations for a fee as a hosted, cloud-based solution. Degreed is based in San Francisco, CA with offices in Salt Lake City, UT and Leiden, The Netherlands.
History
David Blake, David Wiley, and Eric Sharp founded Degreed in March 2012 with a mission to "Jailbreak the Degree" and become the world's first lifelong learning platform to track, discover, and recognize all learning. In November 2012, Degreed launched in early Beta to 20,000 users who joined as 'Founding Scholars' to the platform. In January 2013, following a crowdfunded launch, Degreed launched to the public. In the spring of 2013 Degreed raised a $1.8M Seed Round from top investors from the business, venture capital, and the edtech industries, including Deborah Quazzo, Mark Cuban, Mike Levinthal, Chris Eyre, Larry Rosenberger, Kaplan, and Walt Winshall. In the fall of 2014, the company launched the Degreed for Enterprise platform to help organizations empower and measure all learning. Degreed raised a $7M Series A round in the spring of 2015, led by Signal Peak Ventures, with Peak Ventures, Deborah Quazzo, and other internal investors. In January 2016, Degreed raised a $25M Series B led by Jump Capital, along with GSV Acceleration, Signal Peak, Rethink Education, and other existing investors. In March 2016, Degreed acquired European education technology startup, Gibbon. In March 2018, Degreed raised a $42M Series C funding round co-led by Owl Ventures and Jump Capital, along with Founders Circle Capital and existing investors. Along with the funding announcement, Degreed Co-Founder David Blake took a new position as Executive Chairman of the Board and announced Chris McCarthy as Degreed's new Chief Executive Officer. In June 2018, Degreed acquired New York-based online learning provider, Pathgather. In December 2019, Degreed acquired London-based total talent platform, Adepto.
Products
Degreed provides a service that allows individuals and organizations to track, share, curate and validate their learning and skills from any source, including and not limited to: live and online courses, articles, blogs, videos, podcasts, work experience, skills, and events. In 2016 Degreed launched Skill Certification, a scientifically-backed, universal process that combines skill evidence, data science, endorsers, and reviews by an expertise panel which result in a final skill level ranking. Degreed Skill Certification uses adaptive comparative judgement, a method that reduces many forms of bias such as gender and age discrimination. Using this product, individuals can receive skill credentials at any skill level for over 1,500 different skills. In addition to the web-based platform, Degreed offers a mobile app, available for free on iOS and Android devices.
Reception
According to the director of Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce, Anthony Carnevale, services such as Degreed only take into account the time spent learning, rather than how much has actually been learnt. Degreed's customer base grew to nearly 100 clients following the launch of Degreed for Enterprise, winning multiple awards in 2015 and 2016. Angel investor Mark Cuban has said "Degreed allows organizations to inventory their existing employees, train them, and track it all. And, when employees do have external training or experience, have the company give them credit for it. I think that’s critical.” In 2018, following the launch of Skill Certification, Degreed's client base grew to over 150 organizations. Of Skill Certification, Beth Davies, Former Director, Learning & Development at Tesla said "Skill Certification has the true potential to be the great equalizer that we don't have right now." Of Degreed for Enterprise, Learning Analyst Josh Bersin of Bersin by Deloitte reported, "This new category of software will become huge, as every major company realizes they need these systems – as a complement for their LMS.”
