HackHands Acquisition is Pluralsight's Seventh in the Past Two Years

Service Brings One-On-One Mentoring to Pluralsight’s Growing Suite of Companies 

SALT LAKE CITY – Pluralsight, a global leader in online training for technology professionals, today announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based HackHands, an online mentoring platform for programmers. HackHands gives programmers access to a network of more than 4,000 developers and industry experts from all over the world for one-on-one coding help. 

The digital mentoring service expands Pluralsight's capabilities beyond video tutorials and assessments, providing live assistance for technology learners. HackHands allows its users to submit instant requests for coding help and be matched with an expert in minutes. Through video and audio chat, bi-directional screen sharing and text editing, coders get the assistance they need in a quick and efficient manner, saving both time and money on technical projects. 

"We believe that the way we train, credential and mentor technology professionals is fundamentally changing, and Pluralsight is building an expanded platform where all of these components will be integrated for the long-term benefit of companies and enterprises around the world,” said Aaron Skonnard, CEO and co-founder of Pluralsight. “We believe in the power of virtual communities and collaboration, and the HackHands acquisition is central to our strategy of democratizing and revolutionizing professional technology training.” 

The HackHands acquisition marks Pluralsight's seventh deal in less than two years, and it comes on the heels of the recent acquisitions of Code School, a learn-to-code platform used by more than 1.3 million people, and Smarterer, a tool for assessing a user's technical ability quickly and in relation to his or her peers. 

After bootstrapping for nearly a decade, Pluralsight has raised nearly $170 million since 2013 for the express purpose of rapid growth. Claiming a leadership position in the corporate online learning market, valued at $107 billion according to Global Industry Analysts, Pluralsight has quickly expanded its course offerings, expert author base and international reach. 

“We’re extremely excited to join the Pluralsight family. We see HackHands as a ‘911’ for developers and as a resource that will perfectly complement Pluralsight’s existing ecosystem,” said Ed Roman, CEO of HackHands. “By infusing online learning with real-time collaboration and mentorship, we’ll be able to help increase productivity for technology professionals and businesses across the globe.” 

An idea originally incubated by the Brazilian development shop 6PS, HackHands co-founders Assis Antunes, Geraldo Ramos and Forest Good, created a network of expert mentors that to- date have provided more than 77,000 minutes of live coding and programming help. To expand upon its core mission, the company is also working to bridge the gap in productivity between experienced and novice programmers through its HackPledge. This initiative encourages industry experts to commit an hour of time to mentoring and teaching in order to help novice developers master their craft. The company also launched the HackSummit, the largest virtual conference and programming conference in history, which had more than 64,000 registrants.