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<ul class="summary-list"><li>School districts across the US reported that <keyword id="6391540" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="canvas">Canvas</keyword>, <keyword id="9816963" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="instructure">Instructure</keyword>'s remote-learning app, was taken offline by outages Monday morning.</li><li>People first started reporting problems with the app shortly after 8 a.m., according to <a href="https://downdetector.com/status/instructure/">Down Detector</a>.</li><li>It's the first day of class for thousands of schools across the US, many of which rely on tools like Canvas for remote learning. <keyword id="10296" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Zoom">Zoom</keyword>, another tool used by schools, was also down Monday morning.</li><li>An Instructure spokesperson said that its apps are seeing higher usage than normal as schools reopen, and that the issue was resolved as of 1:30 p.m. EDT.</li></ul><p>It's the 2020 equivalent of a snow day: school districts across the US have reported outages that locked them out of Canvas, a remote-learning app.</p><p>Canvas users first started reporting outages shortly after 8 a.m. EDT, according to <a href="https://downdetector.com/status/instructure/">Down Detector</a>. The outages appear to span the US. Zoom, a videoconferencing tool that many schools rely on for remote learning, was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/zoom-down-users-unable-to-start-or-join-zoom-meetings-2020-8">also down Monday morning</a>.</p><p>An Instructure spokesperson told Business Insider that it was aware of reported slowness and outages and is working to address the problems, which may stem from an increase in traffic as classes begin. </p><p>"We are seeing a 70% increase in concurrent users since spring. We are actively working to scale up to meet the demands of school systems around the country, and we are aware that a few of our customers in Florida and Nevada, specifically, are experiencing slowness or outages," the spokesperson said.</p><p>After investigating, Instructure said the issue was resolved as of 1:30 p.m., but that users may continue to experience "some ongoing slowness."</p><p>It's not clear what caused the outages with Canvas and Zoom, but Monday is the first day of classes for hundreds of schools and colleges across the US. The technical glitches are one of many challenges educators, students, and parents have faced amid the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-surveys-schools-fall-reopening-coronavirus-covid-2020-8">abrupt transition to remote learning</a>.</p><p>Some schools initially said that Canvas was fully down for students, while others reported slow service on the app.</p>

Canvas users report that the remote-learning app is down as hundreds of schools across the US start their first day of online classes

<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Instructure, the Salt Lake company providing cloud services to educators, has raised a $40 million round from a group of investors led by Insight Venture Partners, Business Insider has learned. </span></p><p class="p3">Other investors in the round include OpenView Venture Partners, based in Massachusetts, and EPIC Ventures, a Utah investor. The $40 million round brings the total capital behind Instructure to about $90 million, and, according to a source, Instructure will use its new round to push the company toward an IPO. </p><p class="p3">Earlier, TechCrunch <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/on-the-way-to-an-ipo-education-technology-startup-instructure-is-close-to-raising-a-big-new-round/">reported</a> the news, without specifying the size of the round or the investors. </p><p class="p3">With the new round, Instructure will launch Bridge, a source said, a cloud-based corporate learning platform. Moving into the enterprise market signifies the pursuit of a new vertical for the company. </p><p class="p3">Instructure has built its Canvas learning management system since 2011, attracting 18 million students and teachers across more than 1,200 institutions. </p><p class="p3">Instructure's primary competition is Blackboard, which was acquired by private equity Providence Equity Partners in a $1.64 billion deal in 2011. </p><p class="p3">The company did not respond to a request for comment. </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/excel-index-match-vlookup-video-how-to-2015-2">This is what separates the Excel masters from the wannabes</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="50YnY4czr4ms1vJ7yz3xzq0excz_pUMs" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Education tech startup Instructure has raised $40 million

<ul class="summary-list"><li>PowerSchool sells student data without parents' informed consent, a federal lawsuit alleges.</li><li>The edtech giant calls the lawsuit's allegations "unfounded and inaccurate."</li></ul><p>It's been 10 years since Emily Cherkin helped her son log onto a school computer on his first day of Kindergarten.</p><p>"He can't even write his name. Why am I teaching a five-year-old control-alt-delete?" she remembers asking herself.</p><p>Cherkin, a Seattle mother of two, former teacher, and author of the new parenting guide <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=emily+cherkin+the+screentime+solution&amp;rlz=1C5GCEM_enUS1094US1095&amp;oq=emily+cherkin+the+screentime+solution&amp;gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigATIHCAYQIRirAtIBCTEwMzY5ajBqN6gCALACAA&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8">"The Screentime Solution,"</a> is now the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that alleges the education technology giant PowerSchool is selling student data, including health and disciplinary records, to its third-party "partners," and doing so without the informed consent of kids or parents.</p><p>The lawsuit, filed in May in federal court in San Francisco, takes on the world's largest provider of cloud-based software for K-12 schools.</p><p>PowerSchool, based in Folsom, California, manages data and crunches it into what it calls "analytics and insights" for more than 60 million students and their educators, including <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.powerschool.com/global/north-america/united-states/">at 90 of the top 100 US school systems by enrollment size</a>.</p><p>Boston-based private equity firm <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rak-garg-bain-capital-ventures-youngest-partner-2024-7">Bain Capital</a> acquired PowerSchool for $5.6 billion in a deal finalized October 1. PowerSchool <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.powerschool.com/bain-capital/#:~:text=(%E2%80%9CPowerSchool%E2%80%9D%20or%20the%20%E2%80%9C,value%20of%20approximately%20%245.6%20billion.">CEO Hardeep Gulati said</a> the merger will help the company expand its award-winning products, including <a target="_blank" href="https://www.powerschool.com/powerschool-ai/powerbuddy/?utm_id=ps00032&amp;utm_campaign=powerschool_powerbuddy_paid-search__pkg00035&amp;utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=paid-search&amp;utm_content=text-only&amp;_bk=powerbuddy&amp;_bt=702266406463&amp;_bm=e&amp;_bn=g&amp;_bg=161909434485&amp;cq_plac=&amp;cq_net=g&amp;cq_pos=&amp;cq_med=&amp;cq_plt=gp&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjwsoe5BhDiARIsAOXVoUucdfp2kkZDiwXnqSDBRfimw6rztJoPhTxmV5nwd8F7Y9ZtUlGzj3IaAqMIEALw_wcB">PowerBuddy,</a> its new generative AI platform.</p><p>With two parents and their children as sole plaintiffs, the Cherkin lawsuit may seem a small effort by comparison, but it's throwing big rocks.</p><p><a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25260275-cherkin-v-powerschool-complaint-20240506">The lawsuit</a> caps Cherkin's decade of concern about children and screen time. It calls PowerSchool a "multibillion-dollar surveillance-technology empire." It demands that the company pay back untold millions of dollars earned by selling student data "products" to more than 100 of its <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.powerschool.com/company/partners/">partners</a>, including educational consulting firms and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25259171-powerschool-guide-to-p20w">government policymakers</a>.</p><p>One partner, an educational consulting firm, offers marketing guidance to colleges, trade schools, and the military based on data from the 6 million high school students who use PowerSchool's Naviance college-planning software, the lawsuit alleges.</p><p>"PowerSchool collects this highly sensitive information under the guise of educational support," the lawsuit alleges, "but in fact collects it for its own commercial gain," while hiding behind "opaque terms of service such that no one can understand."</p><p>PowerSchool is throwing big rocks back.</p><p>The days of "spiral-bound grading books" are long over, the edtech company's lawyers counter in <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25260257-cherkin-v-powerschool-motion-to-dismiss-20240722">a motion to dismiss</a> filed in July.</p><p>The motion argues that PowerSchools is legally allowed to collect data voluntarily submitted by students and administrators, along with metadata about "unique device identifiers," IP addresses, and "cookie data."</p><p>PowerSchool also argues that it "adequately discloses" what data it collects.</p><p>PowerSchool spokesman Austin Zerbach told BI that no PowerSchool product sells any form of student data. </p><p>"PowerSchool does not endorse or support any use of student educational records other than as agreed to by our customers, the schools and districts controlling the student education record, nor do we conduct targeted advertising with personal data of students," PowerSchool spokesman Zerbach said in a written statement.</p><h2 id="d912114d-9964-433f-80b6-1ed9123210db">A 345-terabyte trove of data</h2><p>The information PowerSchool collects from students is "virtually unlimited," the lawsuit says.</p><p>It lists more than 50 kinds of data that PowerSchool says in public disclosures it "may" collect, including "extracurricular program membership" and "student assessments."</p><div type="image" title="Categories of data PowerSchool public disclosures mention the edtech company &quot;may&quot; collect." height="1076" width="766" msid="114945245" hostid="261" sizebytes="23708"></div><p>PowerSchool also tells users it may collect "student behavior data" and information about "physical and mental disabilities," according to the lawsuit.</p><p>PowerSchool's "data trove" totals some "345 terabytes of data collected from 440 school districts," and includes information from nearly 20 edtech companies it has acquired since 2015, including Schoololgy and Kickboard, a "student behavior management and reporting program," the lawsuit alleges.</p><p>What's done with the data?</p><p>The lawsuit alleges that in addition to being aggregated into lucrative analytics "products" for third parties, it's used to "train its AI technologies," including a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.powerschool.com/powerschool-ai/powerbuddy/?utm_id=ps00032&amp;utm_campaign=powerschool_powerbuddy_paid-search__pkg00035&amp;utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=paid-search&amp;utm_content=text-only&amp;_bk=powerschool%20powerbuddy&amp;_bt=702266406463&amp;_bm=e&amp;_bn=g&amp;_bg=161909434485&amp;cq_plac=&amp;cq_net=g&amp;cq_pos=&amp;cq_med=&amp;cq_plt=gp&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjw-JG5BhBZEiwAt7JR6wXcuxvpa0vkLTae4QJjMPAdsAXLaqF5-fArp6Ea0cuLbThmuvw7YBoCCiwQAvD_BwE">PowerBuddy</a> chatbot marketed not only to educators but to "state officials" for the purpose of "workforce planning," the lawsuit alleges.</p><div type="image" title="PowerSchool also publicly discloses that it may collect &quot;student behavior data&quot; and records of &quot;physical and mental disabilities,&quot; the Cherkin lawsuit alleges." height="1512" width="822" msid="114945247" hostid="261" sizebytes="38602"></div><h2 id="58f65212-0185-4112-b583-39eb1ada3ba6">The data is anonymized</h2><p>The data shared with third parties is anonymized, but the lawsuit raises concerns that it is so "granular" that it can be reverse-engineered to identify individual students.</p><p>"There are data brokers — they're called identity-resolution companies — that collect information from internet users, re-identify the data, and then sell it," said attorney Julie Liddell, whose Austin, Texas-based <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://edtech.law/about-us/">EdTech Law Center </a>represents Cherkin in the suit.</p><p>Technology can easily re-identify anonymized student data, said Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, where he focuses on privacy, surveillance, and technology issues.</p><p>"A generation ago, the most private student data was kept in a locked steel file cabinet in the principal's office, and it was very hard to share that information," Marlow said. "Nowadays the ability to share and reshare that data can be as easy as pressing a key on a keyboard."</p><div type="image" title="PowerSchool's marketing of student data systems to state government agencies." height="2394" width="1955" msid="114945234" hostid="261" sizebytes="89902"></div><p>Among the "products" PowerSchool offers educators, policymakers, and government agencies is its <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.powerschool.com/college-career-and-life-readiness-cloud/connected-intelligence-p20w/">"P20W Cradle-to-Career State Data Systems."</a></p><p>Its data is touted as "longitudinal," captured from the same students from K-12 through post-secondary education and into the workforce.</p><div type="image" title="PowerSchool markets &quot;efficient access to both historical and current data&quot; from students to government agencies." height="1486" width="1744" msid="114945238" hostid="261" sizebytes="109230"></div><p>"It's telling state and local governments, 'You will not get a more robust picture of children, starting from their earliest days,'" said Liddell.</p><p>"And this is not just for educational services," she told BI. "It's for workforce planning, for healthcare planning, for juvenile justice and law enforcement planning," she said.</p><p>PowerSchool's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, including on grounds that it misapplies the law and fails to state "actual damages," will be argued in San Francisco on Thursday before US District Judge James Donato.</p><p>"The claims made in the complaint are unfounded and inaccurate," Zerbach, the PowerSchool spokesman, told BI.</p><p>The company "strictly and proactively follows all legal, regulatory, and voluntary requirements for <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.powerschool.com/privacy/">protecting student privacy</a>," the statement said, pointing to PowerSchool's online "<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.powerschool.com/blog/commitment-to-protecting-student-data-privacy/">commitment to protecting student data privacy.</a>"</p><p>"No PowerSchool product, including Connected Intelligence P20W, sells any form of student data," the spokesman said. "Connected Intelligence P20W provides a unified, secure, and integrated platform for education and government agencies to securely unify, integrate, and access their own source system data in a state-specific data cloud. As with all PowerSchool products, only authorized users have data access with stringent data governance as defined by the state agency. "</p><p>PowerSchool began selling software to help schools track grades, attendance, and enrollment in 1996.</p><p>Apple purchased the company for $62 million in 2001, then sold it to Vista Equity Partners in 2015. Vista Equity retains a minority investment stake, as does Onex Partners, according to PowerSchool's Bain merger announcement.</p><p>When the deal closed on October 1, shares of the edtech leader, which had been trading as PWSC, were delisted from the NYSE.</p><p>The Bain-PowerSchool deal comes on the heels of global investment firm KKR &amp; Co. Inc's $4.8 billion acquisition of the Salt Lake City-based edtech firm Instructure Holdings, Inc., <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/instructure-to-be-acquired-by-kkr-for-4-8-billion-302206622.html">announced in July.</a></p><p>"It's unsurprising that private equity firms are increasingly interested in acquiring companies that have access to troves of highly valuable data," Liddell told BI.</p><p>As a private company, "they will no longer be legally bound to make even the minimum disclosures required by a public company," she said.</p><p>A spokesperson for Bain Capital did not respond to a request for comment on this story.</p>

A lawsuit accuses Bain Capital's PowerSchool of trafficking in student data. The edtech giant says everything it does is legal.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/strelka/41601455802/">Gleb Leonov/Strelka Institute/Flickr</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>A lack of career growth is one of the biggest reasons workers leave their jobs, second only to low pay, according to a survey from <a href="https://www.instructure.com/">Instructure</a> and <a href="https://theharrispoll.com/">The Harris Poll</a>.</li><li>77% of employees feel they're 'on their own' to develop their <keyword id="6354910" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="careers">careers</keyword> at the company.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/signs-you-should-quit-your-job-2017-7">Employees moving around</a> in today's tight labor maket could cause challenges for employers that don't give workers what they want.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.</a></li></ul><p>Employees want managers to help grow their careers - and if bosses don't step up, they leave.</p><p>A new survey found a third of employees who quit their jobs did so because they didn't learn new skills or better performance. A lack of career growth is one of the biggest reason workers leave, second only to low pay.</p><p>Public-opinion research company <a href="https://theharrispoll.com/">The Harris Poll</a> administered the survey using responses from 1,433 full-time employees at 310 workplaces. Nearly all of the companies surveyed said they provide career-development tools.</p><p><em><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-should-never-surprise-a-boss-2019-4">13 things that should never surprise a boss</a></em></p><p>Only one in four employees surveyed, however, felt the employeer helped them grow "very well." Around 77% of employees feel "on their own" to develop their careers at the company.</p><p>"Today's workforce has options, and people are clear about the fact that they want to work for companies that will invest in their careers," said Mitch Benson, a vice president at <a href="https://www.instructure.com/">Instructure</a>, an educational technology company that worked with The Harris Poll on the survey. </p><p>Younger employees are especially susceptible to moving around if they feel they aren't getting promoted fast enough, leading companies to make new titles just to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-workers-expect-quick-promotions-and-better-office-perks-2019-4">appease their Gen Z workers</a>.</p><p>Career experts also say staying at a company that's underutilizing your skills could hurt your career. Lynn Taylor, <span>workplace expert and author of "</span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tame-Your-Terrible-Office-Tyrant/dp/0470457643/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1248186483&amp;sr=8-1&amp;tag=bisafetynet-20">Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job</a>," urges her clients to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/signs-your-employees-are-about-to-quit-2016-3">quit if they feel stuck in the same position</a>.</p><p><span>Marc Cenedella, founder and CEO of career resource The Ladders, also told <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/signs-you-should-quit-your-job-2017-7">Business Insider's Rachel Gillett</a> to quit if you haven't picked up a new skill, viewpoint, or way of doing things in six months.</span></p><p>Employees moving around in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/workers-ghosting-jobs-quitting-2018-12">today's tight labor maket</a> could cause challenges for employers that don't give workers what they want: companies can lose out on <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-much-does-employee-turnover-really-cost_b_587fbaf9e4b0474ad4874fb7">thousands of dollars</a> hiring and training costs, plus lost productivity. </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/beyonce-jay-z-net-worth-music-first-billionaire-couple-money-billion-2019-4">Jay-Z is hip-hop's first billionaire. See how he and Beyoncé make and spend their money.</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Bosses, take note: Workers say lack of engagement is a top reason they'd quit their jobs

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Rockset</span></p><p class="caption">Rockset co-founders Venkat Venkataramani (CEO) and Dhruba Borthakur (CTO)</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>On Thursday, Rockset - a serverless search and analytics startup founded in 2016 by two ex-Facebook employee - announced that it has formally launched its new data platform and raised $21.5 million in funding.</strong></li><li><strong>For the past two years, Rockset has been lying low, as its engineers have been working on developing a platform targeted at developers and data scientists.</strong></li><li><strong>Venkat Venkataramani, Rockset co-founder and CEO, tells Business Insider about how his experience working with Facebook's data instructure influenced his startup today.</strong></li></ul><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For the past two years, a startup founded by two ex-Facebook employees has been lying low. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Since 2016, the employees at Rockset have been quietly working on a new kind of data platform. But on Thursday, the now startup has formally launched its product, and announced it had raised $21.5 million in seed and Series A funding from top-tier Silicon Valley venture firms Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Rockset's new cloud-based data platform is targeted at developers building data-driven applications and data scientists managing this data. Right now, software teams using traditional databases - like those from Oracle - have to take extra steps to prepare data to be read by software. Rockset aims to cut the middleman, speeding the process by which data and apps can "talk" to each other.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"There's nothing like this out there," Venkat Venkataramani, Rockset co-founder and CEO, tells Business Insider. "One of the challenges has been how quickly we can build for the market. We've been working very, very hard."</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Before leaving to start Rockset, Venkataramani spent eight years at </span><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-workplace-url-change-2018-10"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Facebook</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> managing online data and search infrastructure, which supported </span><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-warns-security-and-safety-costs-will-rise-in-2019-2018-10"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Facebook</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">'s growth from 40 million up to a peak of </span><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-daily-active-users-q4-2014-2015-1"><span style="font-weight: 400;">1.5 billion users</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> at the time. He credits </span><a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/facebook-stock-price-earnings-decelerating-growth-what-wall-street-says-2018-10-1027676111"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Facebook</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> with much of the philosophy he learned and applies at Rockset. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For example, he says, </span><a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/facebook-stock-price-earnings-reaction-2018-10-1027675660"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Facebook</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is known for being fast and never going down (well, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/news-website-traffic-jumps-facebook-goes-down-chartbeat-data-2018-9">almost</a>). And from </span><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-give-evidence-by-global-lawmakers-2018-10"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Facebook</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, he realized that he wanted Rockset to make complex problems as simple as possible.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"I walked away thinking, the world [of data infrastructure] is way too complex," Venkataramani said. "It's not available for everyone. We started thinking, why does it have to be complex? What's the simplest product we can build?"</span></p><p><strong><em>Read more: </em></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-workplace-url-change-2018-10"><strong><em>Facebook's product for businesses, Workplace, is taking a step to distance itself from the social network after a string of scandals</em></strong></a></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Leaving Facebook to start something completely new was a risk. Venkataramani left in 2015, but it still "feels like yesterday." Ultimately, he says, he settled into a groove to the point where things were "really comfortable" at Facebook, to the point where he "personally got uncomfortable."</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"I didn't feel like I was learning as much as I used to. I wanted to make myself uncomfortable again."</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">He and co-founder Dhruba Borthakur, another ex-Facebook employee, started talking to other developers about his vision, writing out the problems on a whiteboard. The two would ultimately team up to make Rockset a reality.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">With the funding, Rockset plans to hire more employees as it grows its customer base. Rockset now has 16 employees, and they're about to add four more employees who have been hired but have not yet started. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"Product engineers should be bottlenecked by their creativity, not what the data infrastructure can do for me," Venkataramani said. "We value how much we can add to customers' lives. We take complex, hard things and make them as easy as possible."</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/valentina-tereshkova-first-woman-space-travel-russia-2015-11">The first woman in space almost didn't make it back to Earth and she had to keep it a secret for 30 years</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Two ex-Facebook employees just came out of nowhere with $21.5 million in funding for their new startup

<p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Mike Windle/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff</p></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><ul><li><strong>Software as a Service (SaaS) companies like Salesforce and Workday could see their enteprise values double by 2020 if they focus on growing margins, Morgan Stanley forecasts.</strong></li><li><strong>Among 32 companies with similar profiles, Morgan Stanley projects a 21% growth in annual revenue, and 40% growth collectively in terms of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) by 2022. </strong></li><li><strong>Salesforce (CRM), ServiceNow (NOW), Proofpoint (PFPT), RealPage (RP), Workday (WDAY), and Veeva Systems (VEEV) are forecast to see the biggest gains. </strong></li></ul><p><br />Cloud-based software companies like Salesforce and Workday could see their values double in the next four years thanks to unique opportunities among this breed of tech companies to boost profit margins, according to the Morgan Stanley report published on Tuesday.</p><p>Analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote that while Software as a Service (SaaS) stocks may look expensive to investors under most traditional valuation metrics (such as price-earnings ratios), this ignores the real potential of cloud-based software companies that have recurring-revenue businesses.</p><div title="Page 6"><p><span>"Across our coverage group of 32 subscription-based models, we saw an average 30% revenue growth in 2017 (29% median)," the report says.  </span></p><p><span>That strong topline growth, combined with the improving efficiencies inherent in subscription software businesses translates into lots of room for operating margins to grow. Morgan Stanley has even coined a name for its SaaS company valuation model: Margin Medicine, which it defines as a framework for "for projecting efficiency improvements in subscription revenue models."<br /></span></p><p><span>Companies in this group could see 40% growth in terms of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT). Collectively, these companies generate $3 billion in EBIT, which Morgan Stanley forecasts will grow to $16 billion in EBIT by 2022.</span></p><p><span>Among the stocks Morgan Stanley marks as most likely to see gains are Salesforce (CRM), ServiceNow (NOW), Proofpoint (PFPT), RealPage  (RP), and Workday (WDAY), and Veeva Systems (VEEV).</span></p><h2>5 key ingredients</h2><p>Morgan Stanley lists five factors that it believes will combine to provide a 30% point average boost in operating margins at SaaS companies:</p><ol><li><strong>Sales and Marketing efficiency, as headcount growth slows </strong></li><li><strong>Shifting in revenue mix towards subscription revenue instead of professional services</strong></li><li><strong>Spreading R&amp;D investments across a broader group of customers</strong></li><li><strong>Savings in General and Administrative costs</strong></li><li><strong>Improving subscription renewal rates from <keyword id="6356323" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> customers</strong></li></ol><div title="Page 8"><div><div><p><span>"Across our 32 recurring revenue software companies, we see significant room for revenue growth and profitability expansion," the report says. </span></p></div></div></div><p>With these gains, some of the SaaS companies could double in enterprise value, Morgan Stanley says.</p><p>Here are the 32 companies included in its analysis: </p><p>8x8 Inc., AppFolio, Appian, Box, Cloudera, Coupa Software, Castlight Health, EllieMae, Five9, GoDaddy, HubSpot, Instructure, Mindbody, Medidata Solutions, MongoDB, New Relic, Proofpoint, Qualys, Q2 Holdings, RealPage, Red Hat, RingCentral, Salesforce.com, SendGrid, ServiceNow, Shopify, Sophos Group, Veeva Systems, Workday, Workiva, Yext, Zendesk.</p></div><p> </p><p class="tagline">Visit  <a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/">Markets Insider</a> for constantly updated market quotes for individual stocks, ETFs, indices, commodities and currencies traded around the world. <a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/">Go Now!</a></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/myths-earth-true-science-2016-4">5 common 'facts' about Earth that everyone gets wrong</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

MORGAN STANLEY: Enterprise software companies like Salesforce and Workday could double in value by 2020

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Matt Weinberger</span></p><p class="caption">Amazon Web Services boss Andy Jassy at AWS Summit San Francisco 2015</p></div><p></p></div></div>Amazon on Wednesday <a href="http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161019005697/en/Amazon-Web-Services-Adds-Capabilities-AWS-Educate">announced</a> that it had expanded its AWS Educate program to provide an internship job board.</p><p>Students who sign up and complete the AWS Educate coursework will get access to internship opportunities beyond those available at Amazon. Other companies recruiting include Cloudnexa, Instructure, Salesforce, Splunk, and Udacity.</p><p>Specifically, AWS Educate is an online training program that computer science students can use to train up on all things cloud computing, particularly Amazon's own cloud. Amazon has divided the training into four main buckets: cloud architect, software developer, operations-support engineer, and analytics and big data specialist.</p><p>The materials include instructional videos, lab exercises, podcasts, and the like. Over 30 courses were designed by online training school Udacity. And students also get a bit of free access to the Amazon's cloud so they can learn and practice. </p><p>But the classes are not intended to be DYI study. Applicants must be students enrolled in school. As you might expect, Amazon is also recruiting teachers and universities to use this program to train students. For instance, Dr. Majd Sakr at Carnegie Mellon University uses AWS Educate for a cloud computing course and likes it because students can practice their computer science skills, learn about Amazon's cloud without cost to the university. It is used at Penn State, too.</p><p>With AWS Educate, Amazon is stealing an old play from a playbook Microsoft and Apple perfected. By giving away materials to students for free, these students will become proficient and comfortable with Amazon's tech and take it with them as they enter the job force. Now, Amazon is also trying to help broker those first jobs for its students.</p> <p class="tagline">Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through hispersonal investment company Bezos Expeditions.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/us-government-run-janet-airlines-2016-9">There is a secret US government airline that flies out of commercial airports</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="5uYWc3djp_WwFcNEae4eW__Ya2XMybSQ" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Amazon will now help computer science students find internships at a bunch of companies

<p class="p1"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>$1,600 if you can tell us who took office as the 19th president of the US in 1877.</p><p class="p1">Don't feel bad - we had to look it up, too. </p><p class="p1">But for Ken Jennings, the president's name - Rutherford B. Hayes - was easy to produce. It was June, 2004 and <a href="http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=224">the first</a> of 74 "Jeopardy" games Jennings would go on to win.</p><p class="p1">It wasn't as though Jennings was especially interested in or knowledgeable about <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-memorize-every-us-presidents-name-in-less-than-an-hour-2016-2">US presidential history</a>. But he'd found a way to make memorizing obscure facts a little easier using a strategy he calls "<strong>links in a chain</strong>."</p><p class="p1">Here's how Jennings explained the technique. </p><p class="p1">He started with the president's name: Hayes. That reminded him of the song "Purple Haze," which reminded him of someone playing on a trombone. Then he thought of the play "76 Trombones," which led him to remember that Hayes was president in the 1870s. </p><p class="p1">"It's just like a pulling a wallet chain out of your pocket; you're sort of reeling it in and finally the wallet comes out, but you had to go through a few steps to get there," he told Business Insider.</p><p class="p1">The "links in a chain" technique points to an overall principle Jennings learned while preparing for "Jeopardy": Information is easier to remember when you can link it to something you already know.</p><p class="p1">Today, Jennings is a freelance writer; he's written several books for kids and adults and is currently finishing up another. He recently partnered with employee-learning platform <a href="https://www.getbridge.com/">Bridge by Instructure</a> to create an <a href="https://retain.getbridge.com/Course/featuredCourse">online course</a> about memory skills. </p><p class="p1">Jennings also recommended telling yourself a story about the obscure fact and an idea you're already familiar with.</p><p class="p1">Here's another presidential example: If you want to remember that John Quincy Adams was elected in 1824, you might tell yourself a story about the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074042/">television character "Quincy"</a> who worked a 24-hour shift.</p><p class="p1">The idea is to have fun and get a little weird - unless you're being interviewed for an article, you don't have to tell anyone what your personal links in a chain are. As long as they help you remember the information, they work.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ron-white-memory-champion-explains-remember-speech-2016-6">A national memory champion reveals an easy way to remember a speech</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="t1cmloNDE6uwlTjWNf2zVDp2JaIsRP7y" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The man who broke records by winning 74 games and $2.5 million on 'Jeopardy' memorized the most obscure facts using the 'links in a chain' technique

<p class="p1"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>"Jeopardy" is a "crucible."</p><p class="p1">So says Ken Jennings, who holds the record for most consecutive wins on "Jeopardy" - he won 74 games back in 2004, and walked away with a total of over $2.5 million in prize money.</p><p class="p1">"A lot of people are very good at 'Jeopardy' on their couch and assume that they're just going to kick butt," he told Business Insider. "And then they go on stage and they realize: It's a whole different ball game." </p><p class="p1">There are bright lights and cameras zooming in on your face and - oh, right - the prospect of losing thousands of dollars. Even if you know the questions to the answers, you can still sweat and stammer and get everything wrong. </p><p class="p1">"I was aware of that," Jennings said - and he prepared accordingly.</p><p class="p1">Specifically, Jennings said <strong>he tried to recreate the experience of being on the game show while he was practicing</strong>. That way, it would feel less intimidating.</p><p class="p1">Jennings got the call informing him that he'd been selected to appear on "Jeopardy" just three weeks before the date of his audition. In that time, he said, he would watch the show and stand behind his recliner, pretending it was a podium. </p><p class="p1">And using one of his son's toys as a makeshift buzzer, Jennings would play along with the show. </p><p class="p1">On the day of the audition, Jennings said, it was still overwhelming. But "I sort of slid into some zone like, 'Oh yeah, this is the thing I do every night standing behind my recliner at 7:30.' And I could sort of get by on muscle memory." </p><p class="p1">Today, Jennings is a freelance writer; he's written several books for kids and adults and is currently finishing up another. He recently partnered with employee-learning platform <a href="https://www.getbridge.com/">Bridge by Instructure</a> to create an <a href="https://retain.getbridge.com/Course/featuredCourse">online course</a> about memory skills. </p><p class="p1">Jennings emphasized the importance of both <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/body-language-tricks-appear-more-confident-2016-3">confidence</a> and comfort - whether you're appearing on "Jeopardy" or giving a presentation at work - so that you walk in "feeling like you're the most prepared person in the room." </p><p class="p1">"The sense of mastery and peace you get from that - it's very real."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/world-champion-public-speaking-preparation-presentation-speech-2016-12">This is how a world champion of public speaking prepares for presentations</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="U0Y28wNDE66-ugzjAB2GWL82GJHHm4PN" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The man who broke records by winning 74 games and $2.5 million on 'Jeopardy' explains how he trained himself out of being nervous before his first show

<p class="p1"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>If there's one thing most "Jeopardy" champions have in common, it's that they find everything - even the stuff you consider weird and boring - interesting.</p><p class="p1">That's according to Ken Jennings, who broke records back in 2004 when he won 74 "Jeopardy" games in a row, ultimately walking away with over $2.5 million in prize money.</p><p class="p1">Jennings explained that having a "wide-ranging curiosity" is key to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ken-jennings-jeopardy-how-to-remember-obscure-facts-2017-2">remembering obscure facts</a>. </p><p class="p1">In fact, while most people think memory has a limited capacity, Jennings argued that our memory is continually expanding to make room for the stuff that fascinates us.</p><p class="p1">Here's Jennings: </p><p class="p1" style="padding-left: 30px;">"People wrongly think there's a [memory] capacity and you can fill it up like a gas tank or an attic. That's not true at all. The complexity can just keep increasing and increasing. </p><p class="p1" style="padding-left: 30px;">"But what drives it - and this is what people get wrong - is interest, not effort. It's not the number of hours you spend studying; it really is going to be how engaged you are in the thing."</p><p class="p3"><span class="s1">Today, Jennings is a freelance writer; he's written several books for kids and adults and is currently finishing up another. He recently partnered with employee-learning platform <a href="https://www.getbridge.com/"><span class="s2">Bridge by Instructure</span></a> to create an <a href="https://retain.getbridge.com/Course/featuredCourse"><span class="s2">online course</span></a> about memory skills. </span></p><p class="p5"><span class="s1">On his <a href="http://www.ken-jennings.com/about"><span class="s3">personal website</span></a>, Jennings writes: "I apparently have a pretty good memory for things I'm interested in-like everybody else I guess, but maybe I'm just interested in more subjects than is normal."</span></p><p class="p6">As an undergrad, <a href="http://www.ken-jennings.com/faq">he led</a> Brigham Young University's Quiz Bowl team, and wrote and edited questions for <a href="https://www.naqt.com/">National Academic Quiz Tournaments</a>.</p><p class="p6">"A lot of people think, 'Oh, I'm not one of these people, with one of these 'Rain Man' type memories that you see on 'Jeopardy,'" Jennings told Business Insider, referring to the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095953/">1988 movie</a> featuring a savant character with an incredible memory. </p><p class="p6">He went on:</p><p class="p6" style="padding-left: 30px;">"The people you see on 'Jeopardy' are not savants, either. They are just normal people who are less specialized than us. </p><p class="p6" style="padding-left: 30px;">"We all get into our little career niches and our little hobby niches, but the people you see on 'Jeopardy' are trivia buffs, which means they think everything's interesting.</p><p class="p6" style="padding-left: 30px;">"If you can convince yourself of that by having a wide-ranging curiosity, then really you become one of them. That's all it takes."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ron-white-memory-champion-explains-remember-speech-2016-6">A national memory champion reveals an easy way to remember a speech</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="t1cmloNDE6uwlTjWNf2zVDp2JaIsRP7y" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

You Searched For "instructure" and got 10 results

Canvas users report that the remote-learning app is down as hundreds of schools across the US start their first day of online classes

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Education tech startup Instructure has raised $40 million

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A lawsuit accuses Bain Capital's PowerSchool of trafficking in student data. The edtech giant says everything it does is legal.

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Bosses, take note: Workers say lack of engagement is a top reason they'd quit their jobs

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Two ex-Facebook employees just came out of nowhere with $21.5 million in funding for their new startup

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MORGAN STANLEY: Enterprise software companies like Salesforce and Workday could double in value by 2020

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Amazon will now help computer science students find internships at a bunch of companies

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The man who broke records by winning 74 games and $2.5 million on 'Jeopardy' memorized the most obscure facts using the 'links in a chain' technique

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The man who broke records by winning 74 games and $2.5 million on 'Jeopardy' explains how he trained himself out of being nervous before his first show

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The man who broke records by winning 74 games and $2.5 million on 'Jeopardy' says everyone gets the same thing wrong about human memory

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