Michael London and the business of proving it

A child walks into the room during an online exam. To a monitoring system, this may look like a broken rule. To a parent taking a test at home, it looks like Tuesday. In 2019, Michael London used that example to explain why human judgment still belonged in a business increasingly equipped with cameras, identity checks and automated alerts. A computer could notice an interruption. Someone still had to decide what it meant.

It was a revealing distinction for the founding CEO of Examity. His company sold ways to supervise tests at a distance, yet he acknowledged that technology could produce false alarms and could not settle every difficult case. The exam had moved out of the classroom. Ordinary life, inconveniently, had declined to move out of the house.

London had spent years working around education’s consequential moments: applying to college, paying for it, proving what you knew. Examity, which he co-founded in 2013, put him at another threshold. If a student could study anywhere, how would a university establish that the person earning the credit had done the work? His career offers a useful view of the businesses that grow around questions schools cannot simply ignore.

The college application becomes an employee benefit

Before London sold services to universities, he worked in marketing. His early career included Digital Equipment Corporation, ADVO and Harte-Hanks Communications, where he developed direct marketing programs for large companies. These were jobs concerned with reaching customers and making an offer understandable. Education would give those commercial skills a different subject.

London graduated from Babson College in 1992 and earned an MBA from Boston University. In 1998, he and Stephen Kramer founded College Coach. They assembled former admissions officers to help families work through applications and college choices. Their proposition was straightforward: people who had evaluated applicants could explain the process to people preparing to become applicants.

The interesting business decision arrived in 1999. College Coach began offering its service through employers as a benefit. College applications might be written at the kitchen table, but a parent’s preoccupation with them could travel quite comfortably into the office. An employer could buy access to advice for its workforce rather than leave each family to find help individually.

By its 2006 acquisition, College Coach had served more than 50,000 families at over 50 employers. Bright Horizons reported approximately $6 million in annualized revenue. The all-cash transaction closed on August 31 that year, with London and Kramer continuing to lead the division. A small company had found a distribution channel that made a private family concern legible to a corporate buyer.

There was a book, too: The New Rules of College Admissions, published by Simon & Schuster, with London credited as author and Kramer as editor. Its subtitle promised the experience of ten former admissions officers. The same idea ran through the service and the book: make an opaque decision process easier for the person standing outside it.

First, prove what you know

London’s education businesses extended beyond admissions. He founded EdAssist, which also became part of Bright Horizons, and later served as founding CEO of Bloomberg Institute, an education venture backed by Bloomberg. Here the question was about getting a job: could an assessment help an employer find ability beyond a familiar university name?

The Bloomberg Assessment Test, known as the BAT, gave candidates another way to demonstrate skills relevant to financial services. In 2012, London explained how it could help distinguish applicants whose university, subject and grades otherwise looked much alike. It was an attempt to give recruitment another piece of evidence, and students another way to be seen.

But evidence comes with an awkward prerequisite. Before treating a test score as meaningful, someone has to trust how the test was taken. London’s work at Bloomberg Institute exposed him to the limitations of existing online proctoring. In a 2014 interview, he described dissatisfaction with services’ ability to detect cheating, protect privacy and dispense with paper records. The irritation was specific enough to become a business brief.

He also encountered skepticism about whether remote supervision could work at all. “I knew as soon as I left my post that I wanted to solve those issues,” he said in 2018. Examity was his response. He had moved from helping applicants present themselves to helping institutions establish who was actually sitting the exam.

A business with more than one kind of invigilator

Examity offered live, recorded and automated supervision. That range mattered because a short quiz and a career-defining credential do not necessarily require the same arrangements. Administrators could choose a level of oversight rather than accept a single format for every assessment.

In live sessions, proctors could help students prepare their computers and then monitor the exam remotely. Faculty could review reports and recordings before deciding what action to take. The product sat between the person taking the test and the institution responsible for its rules. Its usefulness depended on both sides being able to get through that encounter.

London was taking this argument abroad as well. In May 2017, he was scheduled to speak at the Open edX conference in Madrid, alongside a program that included edX CEO Anant Agarwal. At the time, Examity described relationships with more than 150 institutions and certification programs. Online learning crossed borders; its assessment arrangements needed to travel, too.

By April 2019, the company reported more than 500 institutional and certification relationships. Its customers included universities as well as employers such as Amazon and MongoDB. The appeal extended beyond a college semester. Professional credentials also needed a way to attach a credible result to a particular person.

“People here are loyal to our company and we are loyal to our people.”

Michael London, 2018

The numbers rise. So does the need for people.

The revenue figures show how quickly the enterprise grew. Examity recorded $744,000 in 2014 revenue and $8.605 million in 2017, an increase of 1,057 percent. Those are completed-year figures, distinct from the forecasts that often accompany a growing company. They describe a business that was already persuading customers to pay.

London’s account of the workplace combined competition with loyalty. Employees went to Celtics games, and were encouraged to break company records. The juxtaposition is pleasantly concrete: a business concerned with exam rules also made time to watch people argue with referees. Staff were part of his explanation for growth, rather than an afterthought beneath the software.

In April 2019, Great Hill Partners invested $90 million. The announced plans included expansion and further research into machine learning and biometrics. The transaction gave Great Hill a majority stake, and earlier investor University Ventures sold most of its holding. The sum was investment in a company, not a statement of London’s personal fortune.

That distinction also helps explain the moment. Examity had become a business that an institutional investor wanted to expand. Its next stage would involve more than the founder’s original conviction: additional capacity, continued product development and the management of an increasingly substantial operation.

Knowing when to change chairs

On February 14, 2020, Examity announced Jim Holm as its next CEO and London as chairman. Holm brought experience from Certiport, Pearson and assessment businesses. London’s public explanation emphasized Holm’s knowledge of assessment and his ability to oversee further growth. The founder was changing his relationship with the company he had built.

Meazure Learning completed its acquisition of Examity on September 1, 2023, announcing the deal five days later. Holm was still identified as Examity’s CEO. The combination brought remote proctoring together with test development, delivery services and a network of testing centers. Ten years after its founding, Examity had become part of a wider assessment operation.

London continued building elsewhere. He is the founding CEO of Uwill and remains connected to Babson through its College Advisory Board. In 2018, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker had also sworn him onto the Commission on Digital Innovation and Lifelong Learning. His work had reached from selling individual services to participating in a public discussion about how learning opportunities could expand.

The questions around the classroom

A pattern emerges across these ventures. College Coach helped families navigate an application. Bloomberg Institute supplied another signal for employers assessing candidates. Examity addressed confidence in a test taken beyond a classroom. Each business occupied a point where an institution and an individual needed something from each other, and the existing process left room for help.

There is a temptation to describe educational technology entirely through its machinery. London’s career keeps returning to people making decisions: parents choosing advice, employers choosing benefits, faculty reviewing an alert, a founder choosing a successor. Even the automated exam needed someone who understood why a child might enter the room.

That remains the most useful image of the Examity years. A test can be delivered through a screen. Its consequences land in an actual life. London built a company around the work required to connect the two.