Degreed

Degreed is an enterprise learning company whose platform helps organizations collect, understand and build workforce skills. Founded in 2012 by David Blake and Eric Sharp with a stated mission to "jailbreak the degree" — to track and recognize learning that occurs outside formal education — the company began with content aggregation and curation and describes itself as the creator of the industry's first learning experience platform (LXP).

The product set spans Degreed Learning (personalized plans, pathways, personalized homepages and workflow automation), Skills+ (skill data harmonization, scale and label normalization, role-to-skill mapping, ratings and assessments), Degreed Maestro and other AI capabilities (conversational AI coaching, personalized recommendations, skill inference and assessments), Academies for collaborative learning experiences, and Professional Services covering implementation, skills activation, engagement and adoption, learning experience design and technical consulting. An Extended Enterprise configuration lets administrators manage multiple organizations, user bases, configurations and content catalogs, extending learning to customers, partners, resellers and suppliers. Degreed also markets packaged solutions for AI fluency, leadership development and revenue effectiveness, and states that its platform provides skill intelligence, AI-powered coaching and role-plays, and reporting on skill progression before and after learning.

Alongside the enterprise offering, Degreed operates a free personal upskilling product that lets individuals select topics and skills, receive recommended articles, books, videos, courses and people, benchmark their skills, and build a lifelong learning-and-skills profile, with browser extension/bookmarklet tools and iOS and Android apps.

Founding story

Degreed was founded in 2012 by David Blake and Eric Sharp around the idea of "jailbreaking the degree": tracking and recognizing all learning that happens beyond formal education. Blake had previously helped launch a competency-based accredited university and was a founding team member at Zinch (acquired by Chegg), and later co-founded Learn In and BookClub.

Business model

Degreed sells a learning and upskilling platform to enterprise organizations, complemented by professional services engagements (implementation, skills activation, adoption, learning experience design and technical consulting) and an Extended Enterprise configuration for multi-organization deployments. A free personal upskilling version of the platform is offered to individual learners.

Enterprise software sold to organizations, with additional professional services; the company reported annual revenue of roughly $100 million as of April 2021.

Traction

As of the About page, Degreed reports 400+ global employees, 10 million activated users, users in 160+ countries, 50 million skill ratings, 39 million learning resources available to its AI, and 3,500+ connections to learning, talent and HR systems. At the April 2021 Series D, the company reported annual revenue of about $100 million, compound annual revenue growth of 76% and an 800% increase in enterprise value over the prior CEO's three-and-a-half-year tenure, more than a doubling of its active user base in 2020, and headcount growth of 50% to 600 employees that year. Customer-reported outcomes published by the company include a 26% cost reduction at Tata Communications, a 50% increase in speed to competency at ZS, and €32 million in new client contracts linked to an AI certification learning strategy at Capgemini.

Latest developments

Degreed's current positioning centers on AI-powered learning for continuous change, including the Maestro AI coaching capability, AI coaching and role-plays, packaged AI fluency, leadership development and revenue effectiveness solutions, and planned adaptive feedback loops powered by MCP.