Yet Analytics

Established in November 2014, Yet Analytics emerged from an initial setback that ultimately defined its trajectory. The company was founded in Baltimore by a team with roots in the Johns Hopkins community, including Shelly Blake-Plock, Margaret Roth, and Rose Burt, who brought together diverse backgrounds in learning science, instructional technology, and experiential education. Their first venture, an application to certify informal learning, failed due to technical limitations. This failure prompted a pivot; the founders recognized that solving the underlying data interoperability problem was a more significant opportunity than their original concept.

Yet Analytics now provides specialized software products and consulting services focused on the data infrastructure of learning and training organizations. The firm's business model centers on commercializing the xAPI data interoperability specification, originally developed by the U.S. Department of Defense, to help clients track and analyze human performance. Its clientele spans demanding sectors such as the U.S. Department of Defense—including the Air Force, Army, and Navy—as well as organizations in healthcare and education. Revenue is generated through software licenses, tiered support for its open-source products, and advisory services for complex data projects. Key offerings include the SQL LRS (Learning Record Store), LRSPipe for data forwarding, and DATASIM for generating synthetic xAPI data, which are crucial for testing and evaluating learning architectures. The company has secured approximately $2.3 million in funding over several rounds, with the latest being a $1 million seed round in January 2017.

The company's core service is enabling organizations to implement a Total Learning Architecture (TLA), a standards-based approach for creating an interoperable data ecosystem. This allows clients to collect and unify learning data from disparate sources—such as learning management systems (LMS), mobile devices, and extended reality (XR) training platforms—and translate it into actionable insights. The platform features customizable data visualization dashboards that provide insights into team behaviors, information usage, and talent performance. A significant portion of its work involves supporting government contracts, including multiple Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards from AFWERX for pilot training transformation and projects with the U.S. Space Force. The company's open-source software is recognized as a key resource for data instrumentation in the field of Learning Engineering.

Keywords: xAPI, learning analytics, Total Learning Architecture, data interoperability, learning record store, human performance tracking, corporate training, defense contracting, learning engineering, open source software