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Education is a key driver behind Sweater—we view it as a cornerstone for building a more transparent and equitable venture ecosystem. So when we saw a company like Accredible with the vision to become the world’s first truly verifiable repository of human capital through digital credentialing, we were excited to learn more.
Our investment into Accredible is an exciting part of a strategic fundraise for insiders and key investors in anticipation of their Series B. We’re thrilled to support their mission around lifelong learning and building tools to advance the world’s human capital.
During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, we saw a new kind of postsecondary education begin to emerge in the form of IT (Information Technology) certifications. These were led by major corporations like Microsoft, Cisco, and others.
In the last few decades, technical and professional credentialing has exploded. However, unlike the certifications of the 90s and 2000s, it has transformed to be more focused on broadly acceptable technology and professional skills like digital marketing, software engineering, and cloud computing rather than proprietary technologies.
Today, hundreds of thousands of educational, technical, and credentialing institutions are rewarding their students’ achievements with a piece of paper or a PDF. And the industry is fraught with fraudulent credentials from companies taking advantage of a quickly evolving landscape.
Accredible’s technology modernizes the experience for these institutions by issuing secure, verifiable credentials digitally and making it easy for users to access and share their credentials in a digital world, proving they are credible.
As a market leader in the digital credentialing space, Accredible provides higher education institutions, certification providers, professional associations, corporate training organizations, and LXPs (learning experience platforms) with the tools they need to create robust credentialing programs.
They are bridging a necessary gap between traditional education and professional skills. Microlearning and upskilling is on the rise as employers increasingly seek the right person for the job. Accredible believes that “it doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, or how you learned something. If you can prove you're credible, you should be credible.”
Learners can store their credentials in a digital Accredible wallet and even add them to their LinkedIn profile. And Accredible’s Spotlight Directory further increases the value of these credentials by providing a searchable home base for the issuers of those credentials.
Accredible has issued over 50 million credentials to date and recently launched Accredible Recommendations—a product to inform learners about relevant educational opportunities and eventually provide expected ROI of those opportunities to issuers. This launch propels Accredible from only issuing digital credentials to becoming a true partner in educational and career pathways.
Co-founders Danny King and Alan Heppenstall draw from their own experiences navigating an outdated education system that wasn’t keeping up with the fast-evolving professional landscape. They are dead-set on addressing the growing need for secure and trusted digital accreditation, and they’ve built the platform to do it.
Accredible has proven they can win the land grab as institutions move to digital credentials. They have issued over 50 million credentials to more than 12.1 million recipients and are serving over 1,779 customers including Harvard, Google, ETS, Toyota, and more. With over 98% customer retention, their sales process is dialed-in to the point we feel confident in their ability to continue explosive growth into the future.
There are hundreds of thousands of universities, technology companies, professional associations, and credentialing bodies with the need to issue millions of new credentials every year. The opportunity to digitize this process represents a $6b+ market with their current product alone.
Accredible’s mission is to change how education is measured—beyond the GPA. For recipients, Accredible’s growing database will one day give users the power to discover and chart their educational course in a data-backed way. For issuers, Accredible will use their near-perfect customer retention and relationships to build new products for their educational efforts, multiplying Accredible’s growth potential.
We’re looking forward to Accredible’s continued growth and global expansion—Accredible digital credentials are already issued, verified, and shared daily in more than 160 countries. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see a Sweater Venture Partner credential in the near future.
See how Accredible can help you build a customized credential solution to develop talent to your specific business needs. And if you want to find more details about our investment into Accredible or learn more about how you can invest in a portfolio of high-potential startups like Accredible, download the Sweater mobile app.
