Instructure Case Study

Instructure partnered with Oakstone International to replace its SVP EMEA and lead the next phase of European growth. Leveraging deep education technology and public sector sales expertise, Oakstone delivered 8 qualified candidates, progressed 5 to interview, and completed the hire within six weeks, securing a leader experienced in long sales cycles, enterprise education sales, and scaling regional teams.

Company Background

Search Background

The Challenge

Result

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Company Background

Instructure, Inc. is an educational technology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is the developer and publisher of Canvas, a web-based learning management system, and MasteryConnect, an assessment management system. The company is owned by private-equity firm Thoma Bravo.

• Founded in 2008 by Brian Whitmer and Devlin Daley.

• HQ Salt Lake City, USA. Approx 1500 employees.

• Total funding $89.1M (Series E)

• Learning technology company and the creator of the Canvas learning management system for K-12 and higher education (SaaS)

Search Background

• EVP people, Jeff Weber was recommended to reach out to Dan Hammond-Smith, Divisional Director at Oakstone to discuss European sales team expansion.

• Looking to replace the existing SVP EMEA as they we’re moving on.

• Looking for someone with experience of managing a sales teams in the education technology sector and who is a proven leader, used to longer sales cycles and public sector functionalities.

• Exclusive Contingent agreement

The Challenge

• Time: managing time expectations with the candidates as the internal hiring process had many touch points.

• The education sector is very small and therefore Oakstone had to make sure paths had crossed in the right way and references were collected.

Result

• The successful candidate had a background in the education space, consulting, and enterprise.

• They understood how to build teams from a cultural and numbers standpoint.

• Oakstone put forward 8 candidates, and Instructure interviewed 5 of these, which resulted in a successful hire.

• Total hiring time from search to signing: 6 weeks.