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"All visionary entrepreneurs must, at some point, find their own sense of romance in the compromises they make to build a profitable business, and the size of the crowd is where Thrun finds his. He's moved by the idea of many, many students from many, many places learning something because of him--even if it's something as mundane as a Salesforce.com API. I have a hard time believing that he really wants his son to get Salesforce certified rather than Stanford educated, but in this one thing Thrun seems entirely earnest."

"Modules introduce you to specific topics in bite-sized units. Learn what a feature is, when it's helpful, and how to use it. Then test yourself with interactive challenges."

Pioneers like Salesforce popularized SaaS, web-based business applications that were easy to use and even easier to purchase, with a click. With that, they took one of the first swings at the command-and-control business culture that has defined the Industrial Age. A $40 billion SaaS industry followed.

"LeBlanc and College for America are calling it a "learning relationship management system," a composite term to describe a learning management system build on top of Salesforce, the popular customer relationship management software. LeBlanc said the system aims to strike a balance between "lots of things that CIOs love" -- such as software as a service and cloud hosting -- with "what educators love.""