Large companies spent heavily on employee training and had little idea what it achieved. Bobby Yazdani founded Saba in 1997 to change that. His software planned, delivered and tracked learning across an entire workforce. Saba went public in April 2000. E-learning was one of the hottest ideas in business software, and companies were moving training out of classrooms and onto screens.

Learning as a Business Process

Saba bet that learning would become a managed business process, tied to each employee's skills and goals. Its learning management system let companies assign courses, track completion and link training to performance. Large corporations and government agencies were early customers, and the list grew to include some of the largest organizations in the world. The company later widened its products to cover hiring, reviews and succession planning.

Restated, Then Sold Twice

Saba priced its IPO at $15 a share in April 2000 and listed on Nasdaq. The shares fell sharply in the crash, and the company survived and grew. In the early 2010s it faced an accounting scandal and restated years of results. In 2015 Vector Capital took Saba private. In 2020 Cornerstone OnDemand bought it, adding Saba's training and talent software to its own.

Cover: King Solomon Receiving the Queen of Sheba, Master of the Antwerp Adoration Group. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for the Queen of Sheba (Saba).