Steve Daly changed his major six times in college.
He started as a pre-med, hit organic chemistry, and decided that wasn't going to work. He went into psychology. Then mechanical engineering. Then got an MBA because he thought he wanted to start an engineering firm. Then decided he no longer wanted to be an engineer. Then spent seven interviews getting rejected before Intel finally hired him.
Then Intel fired him.
His wife said she had been praying for a change.
That firing became a startup. That startup got funded by Gavin Christensen. That startup got sold to a company in Alabama. That company bought Landesk. They asked Steve to come back to Utah and run it. He ran it for 13 years. He retired in 2020. That lasted six months. Then he took the job running Instructure, the company behind Canvas, the learning management system used by two-thirds of all U.S. higher education students and a third of all U.S. school districts.
They were losing money when he arrived. They are now doing 800 million in ARR at over 40 percent EBITDA margins. A billion is the next target.
In this Start School conversation, Steve sits down with Clint Betts for one of the most honest and practically useful conversations we have had about leadership, fear, identity, and what it actually takes to build something that lasts across multiple stages of a company.
They cover:
Why the emotions of a leader get amplified across the entire organization, and how to down-regulate yourself on both sides
What getting fired from Intel taught Steve about self-worth and where not to find it
The three things that keep people from starting something new, and why human connection is the only thing that overcomes all three
Why you have to be married to solving the problem and not to solving it a certain way
How Canvas went from two BYU students who hated Blackboard to owning more share in North American higher ed than the next three competitors combined
The fatal flaw of almost every founder Steve has seen across 20-plus acquisitions
Why giving more credit and authority to your team changed his culture, his business performance, and his own mental health
How to think about raising capital now that you do not always need it to get started
What return to office actually looks like at a 2,000-person company and why Steve has strong opinions on both sides
The hayride moment he cannot forget, and what he missed with his kids because he was too wrapped up in worry to be present
Why therapy and faith were both part of how he got through the hardest stretch of his career
Steve Daly is one of the most thoughtful and self-aware leaders we have had on this stage. He does not pretend the journey was clean. He talks about depression. He talks about therapy. He talks about the board meeting where his CEO told him he sucked. He talks about the morning he woke up convinced his startup was a dumpster fire and how that fear infected everyone around him.
And then he talks about what he did about it.
Start School is Silicon Slopes' free entrepreneurship program built for founders at every stage.
