Forage
Winter 2019AcquiredOnline job simulations for companies to train, and then hire, students
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Online job simulations for companies to train, and then hire, students
Explore the risks and possibilities with a prompt for ChatGPT, Claude, or your agent.
Forage turned employer-authored job simulations into a bridge between college and work. Founded in Sydney in 2017 as InsideSherpa, it let students try short, self-paced tasks modeled on roles at firms such as JPMorgan, BCG, KPMG, and Goldman Sachs. Employers paid annual subscriptions; students and universities used the programs for free.
The company did not fail at product discovery. It pivoted early, grew through the 2020 internship shock, and reached millions of students. Its limiting factor was distribution across a three-sided system of students, universities, and employers. EAB acquired Forage in 2024 and inserted the simulations into platforms already used by thousands of colleges. Engagement nearly doubled to 10 million by August 2025.[1]
The acquisition price remains undisclosed. The operating outcome was clear: Forage kept its product and brand, while EAB supplied the institutional reach the startup had spent years assembling one partnership at a time.
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Thomas Brunskill and Pasha Rayan founded the company in Sydney in 2017. Brunskill had worked as a corporate lawyer; Rayan had worked as a consultant. Both had seen how opaque professional careers looked from the outside, especially to students without family or university connections in those industries. They entered Y Combinator's Winter 2019 batch under the InsideSherpa name.[2]
Their first product was a mentoring marketplace that connected students with young professionals. Demand pointed somewhere else. Brunskill told TechCrunch: “While students were interested in the product, they weren’t using it the way we intended.” Students kept asking, “we just want an internship at company X, can you get me one?”[3]
That request contained a narrower job. Students wanted a credible preview of a named employer and evidence that they understood the role. The founders moved from one-to-one mentoring to repeatable virtual work experiences built with employers. King & Wood Mallesons launched the first course in 2017. Three years later, Brunskill thanked the law firm for taking a chance on the “weird idea.”[4]
Rayan described the emotional problem in a UNSW interview: “Students have a large anxiety about not really understanding what the real world is like.” He said school, friends, and nominal work experience often did not show what graduates would do each day.[5]
The team called its category “preskilling”: training before hiring, rather than after. The shift also changed the buyer. Employers paid to create branded programs that taught students, expanded recruiting reach, and identified intent. Students received free access. Universities gained career content without building it themselves.
A Forage simulation was a short course about a role at a specific employer. Students browsed by company, career, difficulty, and duration. A simulation introduced a fictional team or client, supplied background materials, and asked the student to complete tasks resembling entry-level work. A banking exercise might require an analysis or spreadsheet; a law program might cover due diligence or contract drafting.
Students submitted each task to unlock a model answer. They could compare their approach with work approved by the employer, then move to the next task. Completion produced a certificate, suggested resume language, and interview prompts. Programs were open, self-paced, and free, with no application gate.[9]
That experience served career exploration more than formal assessment. Students could test whether they liked the work, learn industry vocabulary, and discuss concrete tasks in an interview. Employers gained hours of attention from people already interested in their brand. Blackbird reported in 2021 that users spent an average of five hours with a company and that nearly half enrolled in at least two programs. Those figures came from an investor and were not independently audited.
The distinction between learning and selection mattered. Forage's current help center says employers do not review individual submissions and that submitted work does not affect a job application.[10] Completion can signal motivation, but the certificate does not prove that a recruiter scored the work. This design lowered anxiety and preserved open access. It also created recurring confusion among students who called the programs virtual internships or expected a direct hiring advantage.
Forage added an educator layer as it grew. Universities could curate simulations, embed them in courses, and track participation. The Pearson partnership moved the content into higher-education products. EAB later embedded Forage in Navigate360 and Starfish, where advisers and student-success teams already communicated with millions of students.
Forage's paying customer was a large employer with substantial early-career hiring. In 2020, the company focused on organizations recruiting at least 1,000 interns or graduates a year. A simulation worked as employer marketing, candidate education, and a signal of interest. Students were users and potential recruits, not the revenue source.
The second distribution partner was the university. Forage reported more than 350 university relationships in 2021, with some faculty embedding programs in coursework. This helped the company reach students before application season and gave career centers ready-made experiential learning.
Citi Ventures estimated that organizations spent about $10 billion a year on college recruitment and more than $9 billion on employee learning and development in 2021.[11] Those adjacent budgets supported an enterprise subscription, but neither figure was Forage's addressable revenue. The company needed employers that cared enough about brand and early-talent pipelines to commission custom content.
Forage disclosed a $9.3 million Series A and $25 million Series B. TechCrunch put known funding at $11.6 million immediately after the Series A, so disclosed US-dollar rounds total at least $36.6 million. A UNSW article used a $49 million total in a passage that also translated the Series B into Australian dollars; treating that number as US dollars would overstate the evidence.
Forage occupied the space between education content and recruitment assessment. LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, and universities taught general skills. Handshake and job boards distributed openings. HireVue, Vervoe, TestGorilla, HackerRank, and similar tools evaluated applicants. Forage gave students a company-specific rehearsal before the formal funnel.
That position reduced direct competition but weakened the certificate as proof. Vervoe now lets employers create role-specific assessments, review work samples, score responses, check identity, and pass candidate records into recruiting systems.[12] TestGorilla markets more than 350 skills tests and structured interviews as a response to rising application volume and polished AI-assisted resumes.[13] These tools answer “can this person do the work?” Forage primarily answered “does this person understand and want the work?”
Student discussions exposed the boundary. Participants valued practice, vocabulary, and confidence but questioned whether employers treated certificates as experience.[14] The ambiguity was commercially useful because Forage could promise career preparation without turning a free course into a high-stakes test. It also limited how directly the product could replace screening.
Employers paid annual subscriptions to publish branded simulations and reach participants. Students used all programs for free. Universities distributed and sometimes embedded the content without becoming the main payer. This model placed the expense with the party that gained recruiting reach and employer-brand exposure.
Forage said it was profitable before raising its Series A, but it never disclosed revenue, subscription prices, gross margin, renewal rate, or customer concentration. Content creation likely mixed software with implementation work: each company needed realistic tasks, employee videos, model answers, and brand approval. The marginal cost of another student was low; the cost of adding another employer program was not.
The company tried to make each simulation pay twice in operating value. It educated candidates before they applied and supplied employers with a pool of people who had spent hours learning about the role. Citi Ventures described a land-and-expand pattern in which one recruiting use case led to introductions elsewhere in the customer.
Forage reached one million students by September 2020 and almost two million by August 2021. The company reported 90 major corporate partners and more than 350 university relationships that year. Named customers included Citi, KPMG, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, BCG, GE, Microsoft, Lululemon, and King & Wood Mallesons.
At the acquisition announcement, EAB said Forage had more than 350 live simulations and nearly six million student engagements.[15] EAB later reported 10 million engagements in August 2025. It also said completers were more than twice as likely to receive an interview and three times as likely to receive an offer from a participating employer. The release did not explain enough methodology to show that the simulation caused those outcomes; motivated candidates may select into the programs.
Forage's first idea failed its intended use test. Students entered a mentoring marketplace and asked for access to named employers. The founders replaced a labor-heavy matching service with reusable employer content. That decision made free global access possible and gave companies a reason to pay.
COVID-19 then pulled years of adoption forward. Internship cancellations removed the ordinary route to work experience, and online enrollment rose more than 86% to one million. The team used the surge to raise a Series A, rebrand, add staff, and broaden employer content. This was strong timing paired with a product already in market, not a pandemic concept assembled after the shock.
The same design that produced reach weakened the product's hiring proof. Any student could participate, submissions unlocked model answers, and employers did not score individual work. That kept the experience educational and low pressure. It also meant the certificate showed completion and interest rather than independently verified competence.
Forage addressed this by emphasizing employer-specific tasks, recruiter contact, skills language, and higher hiring rates among completers. It did not turn the product into a proctored assessment. That restraint preserved the student experience, but competitors such as Vervoe and TestGorilla owned the high-stakes selection layer. Forage remained most valuable before the application or interview.
The product involved three constituencies. Employers created and paid for programs. Students supplied attention and candidate intent. Universities introduced the product at the right moment. Each side made the others more useful, but a startup had to sign and support the institutions separately.
Forage tried to solve distribution through organic student referrals, 350-plus university relationships, curriculum integrations, employer expansion, and the Pearson deal. Those efforts produced millions of engagements. They also show why the acquisition made strategic sense. EAB already served more than 2,600 institutions at announcement and could place Forage inside Navigate360 and Starfish. Seramount already worked with hundreds of employers.
Brunskill stated the mechanism in EAB's announcement: “With EAB, Forage can connect employers with a vast network of future candidates at critical points throughout their college journeys.”[8] The acquirer did not need to change the simulation. It changed where students encountered it.
The 2025 result supports that thesis. Engagement nearly doubled to 10 million after EAB embedded Forage in its student-success systems. A platform integration replaced part of the university-by-university distribution effort.
EAB preserved the product, kept Brunskill as general manager, and continued reporting growth. That distinguishes the transaction from a shutdown or silent acqui-hire. Yet the purchase price, proceeds, and terms were not disclosed. With at least $36.6 million in known US-dollar funding, the evidence cannot establish whether the deal produced a venture return.
The strongest interpretation is operational success followed by distribution consolidation. Forage proved that employer-authored rehearsal could attract students and buyers. EAB owned the institutional channels needed to make that content routine across campuses. The sale joined a successful product to the system that could distribute it most cheaply.