Guild Education, which started as a graduate school project at Stanford in 2015, has created a new way for working Americans to think about college education. It has also become the latest female-founded company to reach a $1 billion valuation. With student debt skyrocketing, Rachel Carlson and cofounder Brittany Stich launched Guild to offer an alternative to traditional four-year colleges for the estimated 70 percent of U.S. adults who don’t have a degree. Or as Carlson puts it, Guild teams up with companies to offer employees education benefits and tuition reimbursement incentives that they’ll actually use, while providing its educational partners—for-profit and not-for-profit online schools—with a way to recruit and retain new students. “The economy’s moving so fast,” Carlson told Forbes last year. “We can’t let higher education dictate the skills and competencies that we need five to 10 years from now.” Guild signed Chipotle as its first major partner in 2016, and companies including Walmart and Disney followed. Investors including Bessemer Venture Partners and Aileen Lee’s Cowboy Ventures have poured $228 million into helping Guild join forces with new education and employer partners.
