Instructure/Canvas is very interesting actually. Also started by 2 college students and overtook blackboard bc of a couple of things.
1) blackboard used to stop competitors by being a patent troll. when their patents became invalidated, opened space up for Canvas.
2) blackboard stopped innovating. their product was just so much worse in terms of ux. Canvas met with almost 30 university CTOs and built an MVP on ppt to figure out what they hated about blackboard/how to build the perfect alternative
3) at the time, blackboard didnt have servers on the cloud, so the software was installed directly in the universities. when they were making the switch, it allowed canvas to swoop in steal customers as they were cloud based from the start.
2 additional readings I def recommend anyone to check out: Brian Whitmer (Instructure's cofounder) has a good blog where he goes more into detail about this stuff and Instructure's ($INST) annual reports
Instructure/Canvas is very interesting actually. Also started by 2 college students and overtook blackboard bc of a couple of things.
1) blackboard used to stop competitors by being a patent troll. when their patents became invalidated, opened space up for Canvas.
2) blackboard stopped innovating. their product was just so much worse in terms of ux. Canvas met with almost 30 university CTOs and built an MVP on ppt to figure out what they hated about blackboard/how to build the perfect alternative
3) at the time, blackboard didnt have servers on the cloud, so the software was installed directly in the universities. when they were making the switch, it allowed canvas to swoop in steal customers as they were cloud based from the start.
2 additional readings I def recommend anyone to check out: Brian Whitmer (Instructure's cofounder) has a good blog where he goes more into detail about this stuff and Instructure's ($INST) annual reports