Brothers Sam and Ryan Kroonenburg founded A Cloud Guru (“ACG”) in 2015 with a mission to teach the world to cloud. At the time, the available cloud training options were both expensive and unable to keep pace with rapidly changing technology. Frustrated, the pair aimed to make cloud learning relevant, accessible, affordable – and even fun. We met Sam and Ryan a few years later, in 2018, and by that time their initial cloud training course had evolved into a state-of-the-art e-learning platform with a rich content library, hands-on labs, interactive quizzes and certifications.
At Summit Partners, we’ve witnessed the significant and growing challenge that the technology skills gap can cause companies across all industries – slowing product development cycles, constraining cloud initiatives, impacting talent acquisition, and hindering diversity efforts. A Cloud Guru was tackling this challenge head-on, and we were thrilled to partner with the ACG team in early 2019. Since then, ACG has remained focused on its mission, and we have worked to support the company’s rapid growth as they expanded the team, extended the platform and completed the acquisition of Linux Academy. In July 2021, ACG was acquired by Pluralsight. To mark this milestone, we are taking a look at how innovative SaaS e-learning companies like ACG are working to close the technology skills gap while improving accessibility and diversity across the technology industry.
