How 5 years at Lynda.com changed my life

June 25th is exactly 5 years since I started at Lynda.com in the UK. Now looking back five years later, it has been an amazing journey which I would love to share with you.

The birth of Lynda.com

Lynda.com was created by Lynda Weinman and her husband Bruce Heavin in 1995. A couple of years before that, Lynda was teaching computer graphics at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. When she discovered the world wide web, she realised that this was a great medium for her art students to use. So she searched for books within that subject without success. At that time, domains were still a new thing so Lynda bought Lynda.com for $35. She had a place to do research while she was writing her first international best-selling book on web design. With more books released, Lynda opened up a training facility in 1998 which became a huge success. The training facility was also a big success with people from all around the world wanting to learn more about web design. With waiting lists over 6 months long, Lynda decided to record the courses on VHS and selling them. The internet seemed to be a great distribution channel so The lynda.com Online Training Library was born in 2002. From now on, consumers could subscribe to the library for a monthly fee. In 2004, Lynda.com reached their first milestone with 100 courses released.

In 2007 consumer evangelism led to institutional demand, which meant that Lynda had to create a multi-user solution. Four years later, in 2011, the LyndaCampus was born early in the year and 6 months later LyndaEnterprise was released. Lynda.com then had around 750 courses.

Video2Brain and Compilr

With a corporate sales team in place and a new CEO, the decision was made to expand internationally. So in 2012, the first international office was launched in Farnborough outside London. It was in a Regus office and I was one of the first employees. Selling into the learning space was a whole new experience. The first campaign I did was to learn why people like Lynda.com. I asked every subscriber in my territory, which was the Nordics, what they liked about Lynda.com and why they subscribed. The positive feedback was overwhelming. In fact, in my whole career, I hadn't seen people raving about a corporate solution as I was hearing. It was an amazing thing to experience, and I knew this was something special.

In February 2013, Lynda.com acquired video2brain. We wanted to expand with international languages and through this acquisition, we had access to creating learning content in German, French and Spanish. This was the same year we reached 2,000 courses in the library.

The year after, in April 2014, we acquired Compilr. This was a Canadian startup company that focused on edit and compile source code through a web browser so that the learner didn't have to install any software on their computer. It was all done within the web browser. We built that into our courses.

Lynda.com had now two film studios. Our headquarter in Carpinteria and one in Graz, Austria. The film studio in Carp is the largest film studio west of Hollywood.

During this time we also started partnering with investors to support our growth. Our largest investor, TPG, invested $186 million which was one of the largest investments done in the learning space.

Moving to Sydney and LinkedIn

During the beginning of 2014, I went through a transformation process relocating from our London office to Sydney.

Our Sydney office was also a start-up with only a couple of employees. We were based in Bondi Junction with beautiful views and short access to Westfield. My first territory was APAC outside Australia and New Zealand. I learned quickly how to sell into countries such as India, Pakistan, Philipines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and China. It was an amazing experience to see how well lynda.com was received in countries where English is the second language. With an experience of approaching non-native English speaking countries in Europe, I saw that in the APAC region they faced the same challenges. It was an amazing time going through the growth of the library and seeing how organisations were embracing this "new" type of learning.

One year later, on the 9th April 2015, LinkedIn announced that they would buy Lynda.com. The deal was closed one month later and we were now branded "Lynda.com® A LinkedIn Company"

It was a great surprise to see LinkedIn moving into the learning space and we soon found out that this was a perfect match between the two companies. When I started, there were around 250 people in the company. And when we got acquired by LinkedIn, we moved from 700 to over 10,000 overnight. This was no longer a start up. We have now become one of the major players in the online learning space. With only a few hundred courses to start with, today we have almost 6,000 courses adding 30+ courses every single week.

Looking back at the journey and the influence that Lynda Weinman has had on my life, it has changed my perception about online learning and how it transforms people's lives. It helps me to understand that having access to a complete library is all about the learner.

After all it’s just a library — accessible anytime - anywhere

What's next?

After working with thousands of organisations over the last 5 years, I see the impact we are making. I see how we are influencing people's personal and professional life. How online learning in TV quality is here to stay. How mobile learning is going to be a new way.

I am so excited to be part of this journey and I am so excited about what the future will bring. To be a part of a company that could change the way we address and approach learning is like a dream come true.

... to be continued...