Desire2Learn – A Growing Canadian Tech Company
John Baker, founder and CEO of Desire2Learn founded the company in 1999 at the age of 22. Baker’s privately owned, independent e learning company is headquartered in Kitchener, Waterloo with offices in New Brunswick and British Columbia. Desire2Learn has staff in Canada, United States, Australia, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
Desire2Learn provides a suite of elearning applications, anchored around its Learning Management System, D2L. These integrated collection of products that offers users the tools for creating, delivering and managing courses, enabling users to collaborate and connect around learning activities and course content and include a LMS, ePortfolio, and Learning Object Repository. Most recently, Desire2Learn has added mobile functionality, lecture capture services and a learning analytics product to their suite of offerings. Their products and services are utilized by over 450 educational institutions around the world.
Desire2Learn has enjoyed significant growth over the past number of years. The following table illustrates this growth:
This growth is even more remarkable given that Desire2Learn successfully defended itself against a lawsuit by Blackboard, who claimed patent infringement. Blackboard has the largest share of the LMS market. This two year legal battle must have distracted the executive team and negatively impacted sales. A good summary of the settlement and links to background information can be found here:
John Baker’s venture began, while he was still a System Design Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. His first client was the University of Guelph in 1999 and spawned Baker’s belief that online learning could offer more to teaching and learning than the current learning management systems. Desire2Learn continues to be a private company and was started by John and a core team, largely self financed through family and friends.
Desire2Learn has put together a knowledgeable, innovative executive team, consisting of John Baker, CEO and president, Jeremy Auger, CTO and executive vice president, Dennis Kavelman, COO and Kenneth Chapman, vice president of product engineering. Jeremy and Kenneth are long standing members of the Desire2Learn team. Dennis Kavelman joined the company in early 2012 stepping down from his position as a senior executive with RIM.
Desire2Learn is among the fastest growing tech companies in Canada. In 2009, it had about 100 employees, grew to 200 employees by the end 2010, and has grown to just under 400 employees currently, with plans to grow to at least 480 this year. It was named one of the Top 50 Small to Medium Size Employers for 2011 and 2012 by National study. Baker’s company has formed partnerships with companies such as McGraw Hill, Pearson Education, Microsoft and Turnitin.
Desire2Learn is a good example of how a simple idea from an innovative thinker can grow into a successful venture. This research has prompted me to examine my own entrepreneurial potential and left me questioning whether I have the innovative thinking skills to be a successful entrepreneur.
References
http://www.communitech.ca/d2ls-john-baker-desire-to-make-a-difference/
http://www.deltainitiative.com/higher-education/lms-strategy
http://www.desire2learn.com/about/discover/
http://www.mri.gov.on.ca/english/ontario_innovates/desire2learn.asp
Posted in: Week 04: Entrepreneur Bootcamp
Danielle 3:55 am on June 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Valerie,
This is a very interesting read! Coming up with D2L at the age of 22 just goes to show that some were born to innovate! And thanks for sharing the “LMS Market Share” chart – very interesting statistics. I had not heard of Sakai before and I see that it is fairly new. It will be interesting to follow these statistics over the next couple of years to see if any innovative and new (as well as old) open source LMS software will ever give Blackboard a run for its money!
Danielle
karonw 3:20 pm on June 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Valerie,
This is an awesome post, thanks for sharing! I based mine on Desire2Learn’s competitor. Like Daniele, I am very amazed that John has founded Desire2Learn at age 22. It was a smart move for Desire2Learn to form partnerships in adding more to their portfolio rather than trying to create it themselves to add more work to their workload.
Karon
karonw 3:22 pm on June 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Oops, sorry Danielle I didn’t mean to misspell your name in my previous post!
Karon