Esme Learning Raises $7.5 Million In Series A Funding For Its AI-Enabled Digital Learning Platform

When you think about true and meaningful innovation in the learning and education space, it’s hard to picture how it looks, purely because there’s been a drought for so long. 

What’s lacking right now in many learning experiences is evidence. So, if you’re in the classroom, it’s hard to know if you’re having an impact on learners. Instructors use traditional assessments to measure performance and they use their human senses to assess engagement, but they don’t often know if a learner is really connecting ideas. One solution to this knowledge gap – which can make online learning as effective, if not more effective than some in-person learning experiences – is measurement. You won’t know if a course or teaching method is effective unless you measure. And a truly unique opportunity in online learning is that you have a ton of ways to measure what’s happening. If educators are not measuring, then they are missing an opportunity to really learn how to be more effective in delivering educational content. 

There has to be a fundamentally different approach in how educational experiences are currently provided remotely and online. Effective educational experiences should not only be measurable, but experiential and applied – and the topics should not just be grounded in academic and foundational principles, but actually applicable to challenges people will be facing on the job in workplaces and in industries undergoing massive disruption and change over the coming years. 

A new kid on the block – Esme Learning – is addressing this head-on to give people experiences and tools to learn how to work within the new future of work. Founded by edX and Pearson alum Beth Porter, and AI futurist David Shrier, Esme Learning is creating online learning experiences that are truly transformational in educating people – especially working professionals seeking new paths or wishing to make new careers for themselves, in industries such as cybersecurity, fintech, and blockchain. 

“Esme Learning grew out of a series of conversations that my co-founder David Shrier and I were having with leading academic institutions about what’s next, including a desire to realize true innovation in digital learning. This was a discussion running for many years, well before the pandemic changed everything. A lot of people in academia who were working with us wanted to know what’s actually engaging and effective in digital learning, so we knew we had to build something meaningful and different,” Beth Porter, the company’s co-founder and Managing Director, shares with me in an email.

Esme Learning uses artificial intelligence systems to deliver critical knowledge to working professionals on behalf of top-ranked university partners, across cutting-edge topics – such as fintech, cybersecurity, and blockchain. Its digital learning platform incorporates AI-enabled tools to emphasize experiential learning with numerous opportunities for applications – including live simulations, and small group exercises that expertly parallel work scenarios. What’s unique about it, is that a mix of university faculty and 30-50 industry experts per course provide critical insight into current trends and on-the-ground perspectives about how these topics play out in a commercial context. Students spend an average of 45 to 60 minutes a week in an AI-coached group chat environment, solving for one of the biggest challenges of online learning, which is that it can often be a lonely, solitary experience. 

But how does this look in action? “The AI coach gives specific real-time feedback to learners about their interactions in small groups, gently prompting participants toward more collaborative behaviors as they work through course materials. Learners receive concrete data about their own participation and start to understand the interpersonal dynamics of collaborative work, which helps them improve future interactions and, ultimately, leads to better overall performance. The AI coach also helps students reflect on interactions, and adjust behaviors to become more effective collaborators and contributors, maximizing everyone’s learning experience,” explains Porter. 

In its first year, Esme Learning has launched classes with the University of Oxford and is developing classes with MIT, with more universities to come in the next year. Another achievement Porter’s team is proud of is course completion rates – impressive 90%-plus – which is significantly higher than many others in the industry.

There are a few converging trends that contribute to why business professionals need platforms like this. According to Porter, digital learning is broken. It’s growing 400% faster than the general education market, yet most online courses haven’t evolved since they were first introduced more than a decade ago. As experiences that largely rely on the learner to be a self-directed consumer of static content, most online learning doesn’t engage. This affects completion rates: on average, just over 3% of students who start massive open online courses (MOOCs) finish it. At the same time, digital transformation, accelerated by the pandemic, has forced employees and entire countries to consider what must be done in order to rapidly upskill and reskill to remain viable in workplaces. 

“There’s a massive skills gap between digital and traditional teams. On top of all of this, the pandemic has caused many to reexamine their industries and overall career paths – a recent study from AllBright found that 2 in 3 women are now planning to invest in upskilling themselves in a bid to better their career options. What all of this means is that it’s important to learn how to learn effectively to keep up with all of these challenges and pressures affecting the workforce. While it is imperative to attain hard skills in order to become versant in new technologies, it’s also important to learn how to discern truly disruptive secular trends that will affect your career from ideas that are merely trendy and distracting. People must develop a new way of looking at the whole world of technological disruption, and be able to identify new types of jobs and opportunities. It all comes down to learning how to learn, effectively and well. People who keep learning as a constant way to approach every single problem inside of any organization – the Esme platform aids students with this — will be better equipped for workplaces of the future,” adds Porter.  

The confidence of their investors is extremely important to Porter and her team. She admits they didn’t expect there to be such a strong response to the digital learning solution and model they’ve put out in the marketplace. The company recently raised $7.5 million in a Series A funding round, led by Adit Ventures – a venture capital firm with a technology thematic investment focus, and an investor in Palantir, SoFi, and Airbnb.  

“One of the real challenges in fundraising during the pandemic, as the world shifted online, is that we didn’t get to meet anybody in person. So much of the process is meeting people, reading in-person cues, and building trust. On a video screen or a call, it’s more difficult to build relationships and convey who you are and what you deeply care about in a personal way – but I’ve found it’s also harder to make snap judgments based on more surface-level attributes, like how firm a handshake you have. There are pros and cons. We raised money through the shift, having only video and phone calls while trying to build relationships and convey our vision through this digitally mediated experience. This investment is a testament to our shared vision, which is to create the premier digital learning company for working professionals, enabling them to transform their careers. 

At the end of our discussion, we had to touch upon the massive problem of diversity and inclusion in the STEM space, and the underrepresentation of women. Only a fraction of students in higher STEM education are female, and only 30 percent of all female students select STEM-related fields in higher education. Globally, female students’ enrollment is low in ICT (3%); natural sciences, math, and statistics (5%); engineering, manufacturing, and construction (8%). Obstacles facing females in STEM are widely known: there are fewer female STEM role models in mainstream media, combined with an unequal pay gap (men’s annual salaries are nearly $15,000 higher per year than women, and Latina and Black women in STEM earn around $33,000 less.

“Our courses seek to open up pathways for underrepresented groups by presenting educational experiences where more diverse groups (including women) are represented. We’re very intentional about getting a diversity of voices into the courses themselves, seeking out instructors and guest speakers across regions, disciplines, backgrounds, and experiences. Likewise, because we operate online, we can attract learners from all over the world. People come to the courses from different industries in different stages of their careers — including people who might never otherwise have an opportunity to take courses in person at an elite institution. We’re looking for that variety in our learner community because we know that it’s going to give learners the best experience – and, ultimately, drive better learning outcomes,” concludes Porter.