Instructure, Best known as the publisher of Canvas providing a web-based educational solution.

We must admit that the past two years have been the toughest for the education sector. Schools and colleges being closed have raised many questions about the future of the young generation. Every government has tried to keep up with the education for schools and higher education institutions, but the best solutions came from the private sector in the form of educational software (LMS) and online websites. Companies that have been promoting online education through LMSs have come to the rescue and have helped the students to stay updated with their educational needs. Not only for the schools and other educational institutes but for the small to big companies, these LMSs have been like a boon. One of such LMS development companies includes Instructure.
Best known as the publisher of Canvas, Instructure is a thirteen years old American educational technology company. The company provides a web-based educational solution for K-12 students to students pursuing higher education as well as for corporate training.

About the Company

Instructure is an Educational Technology and Learning Management Systems provider from the US. The company headquarters is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, US, and it operates from seven different locations in the US, serving its clients from all over the world. As per the 2019 records, over 1200 people are working for Instructure, and the company made annual revenues worth $209.5 million in 2018. The Instructure educational products include Canvas, Catalog, Studio, Portfolium, MasteryConnect, Videri, CASE Benchmarks, and Item Bank, Navigate Item Bank, Academic Benchmarks, Certify, DataConnect, Program Assessment, Pathways, Canvas for Corporate Education, etc. Among all the products by Instructure, Canvas is the most popular product of the company.

The Back Story

Brian Whitmer and Devlin Daley founded Instructure in 2008 when they were still at college. They were graduate students at BYU. The idea of Instructure came from the bad experience that the two co-founders had with the existing LMSs. They thought the existing ones were outdated, and no LMS developer companies were planning to upgrade them. Thus the two developed a new LMS under their newly built company, Instructure.
Josh Coates, the founder of Mozy, was the first investor the company got. He also became the first CEO of Instructure for the years 2010-2018. Instructure bagged its first big contract from Utah Education Network (UEN) in 2010, replacing Blackboard (one of the most preferred LMS of that time) in almost every college and university in the Utah area.
In 2011, the company launched officially Canvas LMS and made it available as open-source software for free. The software was also launched for iOS and Android devices. By 2013, the company reached almost 300 schools and colleges and built a customer base of 9 million users. The same year, Instructure held a Series D Funding raising $30 Million.
In 2015, Instructure came with its corporate LMS named Bridge and held a Series E funding raising $40 million. The company went public in November of the same year and started trading on New York Stock Exchange. The next year, the company was ranked number 4 on its Best Places to Work list by Glassdoor, whereas in 2018, it was ranked number 6 in the “Top Work Places” for large businesses list by Salt Lake Tribune. In March 2020, Thoma Bravo acquired Instructure for a sum of $2 billion. Thoma Bravo operates as its parent company, whereas Instructure operates as an independent company.

The Founders

Steve Daly is the current CEO of Instructure. He has a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Brigham Young University (BYU). Daly has also got an MBA in Strategy and Finance from the same university. He started his career as a Mechanical Designer at Glumac and Associates. Later Daly became the Director of Marketing at Intel and stayed at the company for ten years. After leaving Intel in 2002, he joined Soronti in 2003 as the CEO but then switched to Avocent Corporation to become the Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy in 2003. He has also worked as the chairman and CEO of Ivanti for ten years. In July 2002, Daly joined Instructure as its CEO.