Bootstrapping an Online Education Company to $12M: Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard (Part 7)

Sramana: You mentioned earlier that you have bootstrapped your online training offerings via your on-site training courses. Has bootstrapping been your funding model or have you taken outside funding? Aaron Skonnard: We are a bootstrapped company. We started this company with $5,000 from each of the partners and we have not taken any money. Last

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Bootstrapping an Online Education Company to $12M: Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard (Part 6)

Sramana: Are people able to take your courses and then move on to find new careers or jobs? Aaron Skonnard: Definitely. There is a woman in Sweden who was a dietician, but she really wanted to make a career change and become a programmer. She started taking some classes at a local institute and got

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Bootstrapping an Online Education Company to $12M: Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard (Part 5)

Sramana: What plans do you offer today, and what are the feature of each plan? Aaron Skonnard: We have a standard plan and a plus plan. Our standard plan provides access to the entire library as long as you are connected to the Internet, and it is $29 a month. We also have mobile apps

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Bootstrapping an Online Education Company to $12M: Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard (Part 4)

Sramana: When did you release your first ten courses online? Aaron Skonnard: In 2008, just as the banking system collapsed. Training budgets were slashed, and Wall Street fell apart. We had an early adopter price of $699 for full access to the library of courses for a year. The idea was that we would move

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Bootstrapping an Online Education Company to $12M: Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard (Part 3)

Sramana: Once you realized your business was not making a revolutionary change, what were your first reactions and steps? Aaron Skonnard: The most immediate was a feeling that I did not want to continue doing what I was doing. I did not want to spend the rest of my life doing something I had lost

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Bootstrapping an Online Education Company to $12M: Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard (Part 2)

Sramana: Let’s trace the journey of your company. When did you start your first company? Aaron Skonnard: Coming out of school I worked as a programmer for three years at larger companies. I worked at Microsoft, 3M, and Intel. I worked for those companies as a developer before I found a smaller company in Utah

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Bootstrapping an Online Education Company to $12M: Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Aaron is a co-founder of Pluralsight, where he serves as the chief executive officer. Aaron has spent years developing course materials and teaching professional developers throughout the world. He has presented at many popular developer conferences like PDC, TechEd, and VSLive! Microsoft recognized Aaron as an

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Building India’s Blue Nile: CaratLane CEO Mithun Sacheti (Part 7)

Sramana: How much capital has gone into this company? You spent $100,000 to launch. Did you have to add more capital? Mithun Sacheti: We did. We had to put in some capital to launch and then periodically added more. In 2011 we got funded by Tiger Global.