Nominee Name: Rising Star Award: Certiverse
Award category:Rising Star - for companies with $1MM+ in revenue
About the nominee:Certiverse puts certifications within reach by democratizing exam development and delivery. The revolutionary online platform uses industry-leading psychometric standards, intuitive machine learning, and asynchronous crowdsourcing from experts to quickly create rigorous, cost-effective exams. Certiverse is an industry innovator, empowering organizations to rapidly develop valid test content at scale; engage, expand, and diversify their pools of subject matter experts; and create exams with less environmental impact.
CEO and co-founder Ruben Arturo Garcia grew up in the US as a “Dreamer.” After taking an interest in technology and teaching himself enough to become certified while working his way through college, he became a US citizen and earned his Novell certification the same year, and credits that certification with transforming his future. After gaining considerable knowledge about certifications and testing over the next two decades, and with the experience of successfully launching and then selling a business in the same industry, he knew the model of exam development was ripe for innovation that would create more opportunities. With that background and mission, Certiverse was launched.
Our technology solution removes barriers for organizations that may want to offer a credential by making it easier and more affordable to create high-quality exams covering current topics and get them out into the market more quickly. Our platform also allows a broader range of people to participate in the exam development process. With training and AI-assistance built into the platform under the guidance of our chief psychometrician, experts can contribute exam content from the comfort of their homes when it’s most convenient for them. By allowing global participation regardless of location along with flexible timing, and eliminating the traditional model’s need for test content creators to travel to a specific location to training workshops, Certiverse helps ensure that the exams are more diverse, equitable, and inclusive — and more representative of the people who may be earning the credential — while also being more environmentally friendly.
The end-to-end platform allows seamless, turnkey exam development from concept to candidate, in unprecedented time frames. Instead of recreating the traditional process with online tools, Certiverse reimagined each step and worked to make them better, providing features no other system can offer, including revenue-sharing with subject matter experts who create the exam content, truly asynchronous functionality allowing contributors to work fully on their own (while supported by a messaging center) within the system, and AI guidance and gamification throughout the content writing and review process. As our initial clients at The Linux Foundation said, “It’s said that between better, faster, and cheaper, you can only pick two, but Certiverse enabled us to have it all.”
Why they should win:Certiverse is founded on the belief — and first-hand experience — that certifications change lives, but a lack of innovation and competition in the testing industry have made it harder to create and access new, relevant exams. To solve this, we built a transformative online system that reduces the time and cost of developing and delivering high-quality exams by an average of 80%, allowing organizations of any size to start or streamline their certification programs and creating more opportunities for learners.