By Derek Newton
Reposted from Forbes, with permission
Honor Education, a skills and mindset learning platform for individuals and enterprise, has secured $38 million in Series A funding, the company will announce today.
In education and workforce training, $38 million is an attention-grabbing number. In the current education investment climate – not cold, but definitely cooler than it has been – the number will raise an eyebrow. Investing in Honor this round, the company will share, are Alpha Edison, Wasserstein & Co, Audeo Ventures, Interlock Partners, and others.
Honor was founded by Joel Podolny, the founding Dean of Apple University and former Dean of the Yale School of Management – experiences and brand names that no doubt attracted the interest of investors.
The company, “addresses a rapidly evolving world where individuals are living, learning, and transitioning between roles more frequently. Honor integrates breakthrough educational methodologies, personalized guidance, AI course enhancement, and mobile-first technology, empowering individual learners and organizational leaders to navigate change with confidence,” the funding announcement says.
Even before this funding, Honor was rolled-up with big names such as The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Miami Herbert School of Business. Its corporate affiliations also include Netflix, Moderna, Pinterest, and Synopsys.
In a pre-announcement Q&A, Podolny said Honor was “rethinking online learning from the ground up – not as a content delivery platform, but as a powerful social and motivational experience. While much of the digital learning industry has focused on scaling access, Honor is tackling the harder, more human challenge of how to make online anywhere, anytime learning engaging and stimulating.”
Different among the chorus of providers in the continuing education and online learning space, Podolny said, “The company was founded on the premise that people learn better when they learn together, and we don’t believe that the benefit of anywhere, anytime access to digital content implies that learning has to be lonely.” Based on his work at Apple and at Yale, he said that, “the result is a radically more effective experience, one that blends social dynamics, smart design, and behavioral science to drive real learner progress.”
As for the influx of funding, Podolny said Honor will use it to, “reach and serve more partners and clients. It will help expand Honor’s AI enhancements for both course creators and learners – helping subject matter experts quickly spin up engaging courses grounded in the content that they curate.”
In the online continued learning market, the devil has always been completion rates, usually slow and abysmally low. But in his interview, Podolny said that Honor’s “completion rate for self-directed courses is 85%,” which would rival, and even surpass, most big-name, on-campus programs. “The typical self-paced online course sees completion rates between five and 15 percent,” he said. The 85% number Honor boasts, Podolny says, is “the result of fundamentally rethinking how digital learning works.” He said later, “Where most platforms focus on delivering content, Honor puts human connection at the center. Our courses are designed to feel socially alive, even asynchronously.
“We believe that by offering our partners a turnkey credentialing engine that combines instructional design, platform delivery, and branded certification, we’re providing them with everything they need to convert intellectual capital into high-impact, high-completion learning experiences that drive reach, revenue, and long-term engagement,” Podolny said.
Citing the company’s 2024 impact survey, Podolny shared that 92% of learners in that survey said Honor increased their engagement while 90% said it improved comprehension.
“Five years from now,” Podolny said, “Honor will be the connective tissue for the learning experiences that not only support individuals in realizing their own goals and ambitions, but also help the groups, teams, and organizations of which the individual is a part to realize theirs.” He added that by 2030, “A credential on the Honor platform will mean more than just a badge. It will be a marker of shared identity, trust, and long-term impact.”
If his vision arrives even in part, it would shake up a massive market with big, well-funded players such as Udemy, Coursera, and Skillshare – some of which have struggled recently to prove their long-term potency and use, seeing dips in customers and revenue. Accordingly, it’s not too hard to see why investors may be interested in a new model and new approaches in this mega-market.
In fact, Podolny sees a whole new market. Or at least one that’s built on different foundations.
“Today’s online learning is based on false assumptions – presuming that learners lead lives where they can hole themselves up with a laptop and keep themselves engaged staring at their screen as they play videos and scroll through PDFs. That isn’t today’s reality,” Podolny said. “Individuals need learning that can be woven into the other demands of their lives, while still connecting them to peers or fellow team members that bring insight and motivation through shared learning.”