Instructure

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.