Instructure just announced the hiring of a new president. Dan Goldsmith is a software executive with experience in SaaS, international markets, and business-to-business sales, but not with education. He “will have broad responsibilities overseeing sales, marketing, product, customer experience, engineering and business development.” At the same time, COO Mitch Macfarlane is leaving. So this is a major reorganization. Taken together with the earlier departures of the company’s long-time sales and marketing executives, there has been a near complete turnover and reorganization of their top-level management.
To some extent, this is to be expected. People do start to cash out after an IPO. But the turnover and reorganization at Instructure seems quite significant—at a company that has stood out in the industry for having a tight, highly functional management team.
We’ll have more to say about these changes in the coming weeks. For now, I’ll predict that 2018 and 2019 will continue to be eventful in the higher education LMS space.
This looks like pure strategy from where I sit. The new President (Dan) will bring a strong rolodex of clients for the Bridge platform and has a background in large scale CMS and CRM solutions ~ should we start predicting a possible CRM solution from Instructure?
I do appreciate the apprehension shared by many in the edtech community about relying on a single product line, however the apparent Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder exhibited by many in the corporate world and particularly in the edtech sector should be of concern to all. At least until they display that they “Do something, they are the best at something and they’ve determined they’ll maintain superiority in that niche.” At that point, if the bug bite is still itching, then consider a new product line, but not before that time! .
At the end of the day those quarterly SEC reports are what drives the business. IPO changes everything.