Fueled By $21MM In Recent Series B Funding, Degreed Acquires European Learning Company, Gibbon
Degreed Expands Company To Enrich User Experience For Customers.
Mar 23, 2016, 11:43 ET
SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Degreed, the fast growing learning technology company, is thrilled to announce that it has agreed to acquire Gibbon, the European creator of a popular platform for curating "playlists" of learning content. Gibbon will enable Degreed to enhance its product experience and expand its global reach.
The acquisition agreement comes just two months after Degreed announced a $21MM Series B round of funding led by Jump Capital, and illustrates significant shifts in the career and lifelong learning markets. In 2015, Degreed grew from 25 employees to more than 100 and from three clients to nearly 100, including several Fortune 500 companies such as Microsoft, MasterCard and Xerox Services.
Gibbon, funded by Rockstart Accelerator, was founded in 2013 in the Netherlands by Wouter de Bres, Petar Radošević, and Joeri Djojosoeparto. The platform offers innovative social learning tools that make it fast, simple and fun for anyone to collect, curate and discuss learning resources from anywhere on the Internet—in the form of "playlists".
As recent research by Deloitte Consulting reported, employers are increasing investments in innovative platforms that enable people to independently develop and hone their skills. This deal between Degreed and Gibbon will give Chief Learning Officers, training managers and instructional designers a more powerful and cost-effective toolkit for curating both informal learning and structured training experiences.
"Our mission has always been to make all learning count regardless of the source," explains Degreed CEO and Co-founder, David Blake. "Gibbon is the most elegantly designed learning curation service in the world, and their community includes some of the top product and design experts. We are excited, both to grow our network of worldwide learners, and to add the Gibbon team's product, design and engineering capabilities to the Degreed platform."
The acquisition will also give Degreed its first international office, in Leiden, The Netherlands. According to de Bres, Gibbon's Co-founder, "Degreed and Gibbon are chasing the same mission. Joining forces enables our team to focus on what we are most passionate about: Building beautifully simple products that help people and organizations to learn and grow."
Over the coming months, Gibbon clients and users will have the option to either migrate their accounts to Degreed or to download RSS feeds of their existing playlists.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
ABOUT DEGREED:
Degreed is an award-winning learning platform built for the way people really learn and grow in their careers and throughout their lives. Degreed integrates corporate learning systems and vendor content with the world's largest ecosystem of free, open and low-cost informal learning resources – nearly 3 million online courses and micro-learning tools from 1,300 providers.
ABOUT GIBBON:
Gibbon is a social learning platform that makes it easy for everyone to create and follow simple paths of resources to learn anything. Inspired by its rich educational history, Gibbon is handcrafted in Leiden, the Netherlands.
---For more information visit degreed.com
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SOURCE Degreed