Zach Sims - Co-Founder and CEO of Codecademy
This Week in Startups This Week in Startups
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 Published On Jun 28, 2013

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http://codecademy.com

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0:02:30 What's a Venture Fellow?
0:02:30 How old are you?
0:02:45 When did you start working in startups?
0:03:00 When was the first one?
0:03:15 How did you stumble upon the first business?
0:03:30 How many cases did you source?
0:04:30 Did you meet a lot of similar teenagers?
0:05:15 How long did you last at Columbia?
0:06:00 What was your parents' response?
0:06:45 What was the moment you realized Codecademy needed to exist?
0:07:30 What is Codecademy?
0:09:45 How hard was it to build?
0:10:30 So great to have New Relic as a sponsor!
0:13:30 How many people have used the product? How hard was it to scale after that?
0:15:00 How important is the fun factor?
0:15:30 Can anyone learn to code?
0:15:45 How far can the average American go?
0:16:30 What does it take to become a good versus a great programmer?
0:17:00 When do most people give up?
0:17:45 How will this impact higher education & the work force?
0:19:00 What does it cost? How do you make money?
0:19:30 Is it as simple as charging for courses?
0:21:00 Is the proctored exam an important part of this process?
0:21:45 When people hire coders, how often to they look at their code?
0:23:00 Do you work on the developer culture?
0:23:30 What about adding apprenticeship to the offering?
0:24:45 What is an example of people building communities on the site?
0:26:00 Have your VCs given you a timeline for revenue?
0:27:00 What do you think the company will look like in 5 years?
0:28:00 What are the companies doing in the system?
0:28:30 Are companies like Google looking at programmers in your system?
0:30:00 Do you think Codecademy will have meetups?
0:31:15 Thanks to GoToMeeting for supporting this show
0:34:30 What percentage of people are international?
0:35:00 What is the biggest country outside the US?
0:36:00 Are the governments contacting you to localize?
0:36:15 How do users translate the site?
0:36:45 How do you verify the translations?
0:37:45 How important are tools for teachers?
0:38:30 What do universities think of Codecedmy?
0:39:15 What do you think of the "flip the classroom" model?
0:40:15 What is the value of the classroom?
0:41:00 Does starter league use Codecademy?
0:41:45 Will you have in-person classes?
0:42:00 Have far is the skill level? Can you teach higher levels?
0:43:15 What's the biggest challenge?
0:43:45 Why do you think hiring is hard?
0:44:30 Do hackers love education & teaching?
0:45:30 Is it harder or easier to operate in NYC?
0:47:15 What are you planning to do with mobile?
0:47:45 What would the mobile experience be like?
0:48:30 What business models have you eliminated?
0:49:45 Has LinkedIn ever asked to buy?
0:51:00 What's next?
0:51:30 How do you do user assessment?
0:52:30 Do you do user testing?
0:53:30 Follow Zach at @zsims

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