

Blackboard-killer Instructure.com Closes Initial Funding Round - adammichaelc
http://www.adamchavez.net/blog/startups/blackboard-killer-instructurecom-closes-initial-funding-round-byu-founders-close-to-deals-with-universities/

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pchristensen
#1 - I'm a BYU alum and retired Blackboard-hater, so I'm proud that BYU
students are tackling this.

#2 - My first thought was "Blackboard's strengths aren't technical, they're in
enterprise sales. These guys are going to have to sell, sell, sell if they
want to win." Then I read it and they first did a nationwide selling tour
before they began developing. That's a team to bet on!

Other HN threads about Blackboard:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=109984>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=56229>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=247955>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=315281>

~~~
dmix
Do you have any background on the founding team and their "nationwide selling
tour"?

I couldn't find much about Mike Chasen or the team. I'm interested in how they
built the business (definitely not the software).

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nihilocrat
It seems we can't get any glimpse into what their product looks like, so I
can't answer my question:

How would this be any better than Moodle?

The most I can presume is that Instructure would be more purposely anti-
Blackboard and would probably charge to develop features on a per-client
basis, which would be very helpful for small institutions that just don't have
the staff to implement their own functions in Moodle.

~~~
adammichaelc
I don't know much about Moodle, but from what I can tell they aren't playing
the enterprise sales game... at least not yet.

With universities and other large, corporate organizations, salesmanship (not
necessarily technical polish) is what wins.

~~~
nihilocrat
Moodle is definitely targetted for smaller shops, like private colleges,
schools, etc.. There's nothing restricting it from being used in large
organizations, though, and it has a bunch of automation (automatic enrollment
in Moodle courses based on enrollment status in another database, integrate
logins with existing LDAP or other directory, etc.), but like most open source
projects it's very much a community product and not the product of a for-
profit entity trying to sell service to customers (that's available through
third parties, though).

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neovive
Major universities are already contributing to the Sakai project, which will
become the de facto learning management system over time. It's built by
universities for universities and is open source. The project is sponsored by
the same organization that sponsors uPortal, which is becoming the standard
web portal framework for universities.

<http://sakaiproject.org/portal>

~~~
teej
Is there another instance of a "by universities for universities" project
really being successful? Just saying, a product's market doesn't always know
what they really need or want.

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dmix
I'd donate money and beer to the startup that can kill Blackboard.

Its the Windows ME of enterprise software.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
The founders being from BYU, the beer would go undrunk. But I'm sure the money
would be appreciated ;)

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zandorg
At University, I liked Blackboard, except it was a little complex.

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tptacek
What's wrong with Blackboard? (I wouldn't know, never used it).

~~~
cstejerean
Their UI is terrible. Simple operations take far too many clicks. Every single
thing you do refreshes the page which can make the system incredibly slow,
especially if you use it while everyone else is using it (during class sign-up
times for example).

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
From a technical administration standpoint, the system is extremely fragile
and absolutely crumbles under load.

