Case Study

lynda.com is the leading online learning library of video tutorials for software, technology, business and creative skills.

Spectrum partnered with lynda.com after more than 5 years of getting to know the founders and management team, during which time the company emerged as a category leader in online learning and education technology. Lynda.com was growing both individual subscribers and enterprise accounts rapidly, leveraging the size of its content library and passionate user base. Spectrum drew on its deep experience with similar business models to help recruit senior management, implement best practices, guide strategic direction, and introduce acquisition targets.

At the time of its acquisition by LinkedIn, lynda.com had grown to more than 300,000 subscribers and 11,000 enterprise accounts accessing over 3,500 courses. In addition, the company had accelerated its rate of content creation while increasing efficiency.

Team Building

Spectrum partnered with CEO Eric Robison and helped recruit Andrew Wait as Chief Revenue Officer, Erik Nierenberg as GM of Enterprise. Additional senior hires included Shveta Mujumdar as VP of Corporate Development, Madhav Mehra as VP of Product, Alex Zivoder as VP of EMEA, Beatrice Spaine as VP of Marketing, and Reto Matter as VP Data Analytics.

Organizational Scale

Over the period of our relationship with lynda.com, the company grew employee headcount by more than 3x.

Company Building

The management team implemented infrastructure improvements, including ERP & billing systems and a marketing automation stack, to support its rapid growth.

M&A

lynda.com acquired video2brain, a European-based competitor with more than 6,300 courses in German, French and Spanish-languages, and Compilr, a cloud-based platform for people to learn, write and test code.

Customer Base

The company expanded its enterprise footprint to over 50% of the Fortune 50 and 40% of all U.S. colleges and universities.

News

Spectrum-backed lynda.com Acquired by LinkedIn

LinkedIn today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire lynda.com for an estimated $1.5 billion.

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lynda.com Adds General Manager of Enterprise

Former Salesforce.com executive, Erik Nierenberg will join lynda.com as General Manager of its Enterprise business unit.

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lynda.com Approved as Registered Education Provider by Project Management Institute

The Project Management Institute (PMI), the world’s largest project management member association, has named lynda.com as a Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.) effective August 22, 2014.

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lynda.com Launches New IT Training Category

lynda.com launches a new IT training category including big data to network administration courses to help businesses and individuals keep their technology skills current.

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